R

E

C

L

I

N

E

R

LE WEEKEND

 

In a Friday

Trying not to let go of it

I lay down on the altar

 

If I could wake up

From this dream

Not eat today

Not feed the cats

Not go to Lowe’s

I thought I might give

Birth to a calla

 

Friday Friday Friday

My heart cried

Holding on like a cat

To a string of sun

 

I lay Friday down

Brush her hair

Hold her purring in my arms

Still she dies

The week dies

The year dies

And I lay reading

 

Bolt up from the striped day bed

Doctors shout from the other room

It’s going to be a calla!

But it’s not mine

It has your nose your eyes

 

 

 

EGGS

 

I woke up in tokyo

The sun white as an egg

 

Outside my window in the tree

My ancestor warmed my egg

 

His white robes fluttering

 

I opened the paper door

And left the hotel

 

When I passed he dropped

 

Yen in clean bills

All around my head

 

I stopped and neatly placed them

In my wallet thinking

What a wonderful dream

 

I had lined my eyes with black

Filled my mouth with red

 

Like a monk putting on his saffron robes

I slipped into the mask of a woman

 

Walking down a stone path

I met someone who looked like me

 

This happens in asia

I smiled wryly and carried on

 

Shopping I lost my wallet

In one of the alleys

 

Unable to buy anything all pleasure lost

I returned to my hotel

 

In the mirror there was another mirror

In which there was another hotel

 

The kind someone howls and thuds against

The kind of hotel you go to die

 

In this mirror I watched myself

Dance naked

My black hair flowing to my ankles

 

Wet black fur glistening like a dream

That cannot forget itself

 

Thin and weak as seafoam

Clinging

 

Soon three more women joined in

Black hair black eyes red mouths

Naked I had lost my identity

 

I could not spot the one for whom

I bought

Candles chet baker and little blue and white dishes

 

We ate each other up

In a race to exist

 

Chewing I looked up and saw everyone

Was watching

Everyone was there

 

Dressing hastily I pulled shut

the paper door

But still

 

Everyone was there

Everyone was watching