XI. Berkeley, CA Summer 2009

SUDDENLY
My heart is painted with targets while you
READYAIMFIRE
And we’re exploding postcards:
Two dumb kids with wayside grins
Spin down the street like tops and are stopped
Presently, at the street’s end, by the corner Blackman,
Who merely requests the best of clothed critters:
“Don’t ever change this”

I laugh, in fact, and say to the parish
“Thank you sir but don’t be so garish”
While silently, I hope the same.

Floored,
In the corner consignment store, as
You examine a dress and request (flippantly)
My opinion;

You look like your mother
Or my mother
Or the relative of one of us
Indentured in, and perhaps yet again,
Reliving that youth,
Uncouth through covenants of love:
Contracts signed and underlined
Dotted eyes internalized
Like circles within squares
And up the stairs to that Teahouse where

I’m suspending you in water at dawn
And a dozen naked strangers look on
Because we’re naked also

And all our prose and all our tact
Nor the clothes on our back
Could ever hope
To change
That fact