Carpe Diem

Three bees seize
this opportunity to
buzz me, but see:

now, instead of three,
there are many: lazy,
buzzing me and the blue

Felicias, all of us convened
to please the powers
that be, bees and me

in this blue haze of
daisies, lazily seeking
the slow leak of

summer’s sweetness. So
be it: these fuzzy
spinners of honey,

interested in me
only incidentally--
me, a soft, dazed,

lazy she, going
slowly, deliciously,
daisy and bee crazy.





Warscape With Lovers

Scent of plumeria, and the smell of burning.
Not one or the other, but both. Destruction, and the blossom.
Sweetheart, I'm afraid. That boy with the rifle breaks
the catechism in two. And in two. Let me
see us whole, beside the sea. My body
busy, paying attention to yours. Already

we rock each other with our voices. Already
we're braiding the invisible cord. That burning
hut on T.V. could be ours. My body
hers, child at dead breast. That blossom
of blood and bone could be your face. Let me
say truth: no place, no one, is safe. Breaking

of vows, we know, is a given. Sweetheart, you'll break
my heart. I've broken yours, but look: already
you love me again. Destruction and the blossom: let me
say it another way: that soldier, burning
to become fabulous, torches the thatch (see blossomy
flame) of the enemy's hospital: cut to my body,

clay taking shape in your hands. Body by body,
war piled on war: when will the heart break
all the way open? Thunder of mortar, blossom
in the gutter. The soldier firing the mortar already
dead. How we live: running from the burning
field, into each other's arms. Let me

lie along your side. Give me something to hold. Let me
ride those waves pouring from your fingers. The bodies
of the disappeared toll like bells. Our koan burns:
it cannot be solved. The whole and the broken,
dream and nightmare: your hand in my hair, already
familiar, could be the torturer's. Vase and its blossoms

camouflage for the bomb. You love where you can. Blossom:
a thing of promise. That's us. Now: let me
let this go. Our glass, half full--already
there's more--swells toward the rim. Ours the bodies
the death squads passed by. The refugees make a break
for the fence, running for their lives, crossing this burning,

broken, blossoming Century. They've already
paid our dues. Sweetheart, let me show you how.
Hand on the body's book: swear the burning vow.





Skipping the State

Know I did not speak ill of you
when you left me weeping and pregnant
in the suburbs, for that girl with spiked hair
and a tongue stud. I have not defaulted
on the mortgage, nor revealed to your enemies
your smoldering secret--how you liked it
when I pretended to have betrayed you with Robert
and you turned on the spit of minor league jealousy,
the kind with no penalty, since you knew I was
faking. Nor in regard to naughtier longings
did I turn loquacious, nor list for other women

your shortfalls. Grant me then the child support
payments, which, after all, result from your indulgence
and my gullibility, trusting that things you said
in privacy might be taken literally. Forgetting,
under the spell of your rhetoric, that declarations
men make while inside women
will be retroactively rescinded

on withdrawal. Though you, of all people, had the temerity
to question my fidelity, believe me the child
is ours. In honor then of our sonís innocence,
rise, please, to this fiduciary occasion.