THAT'S WHY

For Gilbert

“… That’s why we are put on earth—
to be in love,” you said,
in one of our first conversations.
Not knowing you then,
I didn’t understand….
Now, of course, I do.

_____________________________
http://gaypapistfiles. wordpress.com/2011

http://hadrian6.tumblr. com/image/146478463882 

THE WORLD’S

The world’s an old carrousel

in an abandoned amusement park.

I’m a unicorn nailed to a pole,

a tiger impaled on a post,

in the dark.

 

The world’s a theater, half empty.

I’m a ventriloquist’s doll, thought to be

the magician’s assistant—on me

(manacled, fettered, locked in a box)

he practices fake levitations

and similar feats.

 

The world’s a post office.

I’m a dead letter,

Thrown in the mail with no destination,

No one to greet.

The world’s a Lost-and-Found

full of old watches and shoes and keys without locks.

I look around—

and I find

I’m lost.

 

The world’s an old burial ground.

All day people come and go,

come and stay

to pray before angels of stone.

The angels are looking away.

Me they don’t see; I’m going,

I’m light, I’m disappearing,

I’m a ghost.

 

____________________________
Carrousel from http://dailyphotoparis.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html
Angel from http://www.fotopedia.com/wiki/Angel#!/items/egcedflhitn88-AvK0331soFA

EL MONTAÑISTA

En el costado cálido del risco,
entre las curvas suaves de la piedra,
espirales fragantes de helecho
erizan mi piel.

Rueda la noria gigantesca de la Tierra,
arrastrándome al borde del abismo,
y el vacío gira...

Aferrándome,
me sueldo al promontorio vivo,
que se remonta
y vuela conmigo...

tumblr_mog6euelel1s0tgwso1_500.jpg

untitled

Go to 12 April 2009.

ARTISTS AND LOVERS

They say Hitchcock got his kicks

shooting on the set,

by slyly humiliating his virginal chic

blondes—not from the gritty films that stressed

and drained the rest of us.

Thrills and catharses are not for the artist:

What poet or composer knows the quick

intake of breath, the delighted shock

his music causes? —Beethoven’s explosions,

Mozart’s soaring luminous voices, or the oblique

harmonies of Chopin?

And while our eyes, tongues, noses, hands

explore the transitions

from smooth to rough, and in between

the folds of skin

the dissonance of ginger, clove, and cinnamon,

while straining joints, the thrust and slide

of hips and thighs create

sure, syncopated counterpoint

around a core of pleasure,

I might wonder

whether you are ravished as I am

by the naked progression from dominant

to subdominant

and back again . . .

and back again . . . .

Many things I might ponder

as we play together

with our bodies

making variations

on their own

suspensions

and

delayed

resolutions . . . .

Oh I might—but I am taken beyond wonder.

_______________________________________________
Top image, photo by George Platt Lynes, from a source I can no longer identify.
Middle photo from http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1297/1351215750_8cbe61fd5f.jpg

Bottom image from http://www.christopherpiercestudio.com/new_paintings.htm