Jerry Gordon (8.27.06)

IF and OF

Little Billy IF
is a little stiff
because he worries just to much
about it that were this,
or if those were them
what would he be then?
"Perhaps a Spanish soccer star
or a boy named Ben?"

But, little Bobbi OF
wonders just enough
to see that all the this and that
and them and those and thus
are changing all together
while dancing with each other,
and this make Bobbi as she is
and Billy IF her brother.


--
Hommachi

3 shades of gray build a Hommachi sky
and concrete stairways lead pathes
up the daisy
to all happy heavens,
where the honking songs of cranes bleat
with car horns and the black top back beat
of all the heels running for health from the heat
in this city summer business
eek-ahh-no-me.

The men in the suits of their suits--
the slouch sack pant legs color
of construction workers off their job site at 5:30
with a heft canvas bag of tools and what-not
poking sharp bulges along a gravity seam.
The last labor of their day,
getting their bodies home or drunk.
And the salsalsalsalary man's-a-kin with all
the TV spots for weekends sports
who seem to die a day each day
like all the resting rest of us
but with a stress that teems from their leaning lines
on the subway lines
and the bottom lines
and the receeding reason hairlines.

A truck driver
parked in the shade of the gray sky
is screaming a tonefilling tune to the black wires
in his ears and clutching at all his quirks
of jumping back and forth in and out of this cab-high chair
in the truck he's delivering nothing from
but songs and dance
and late Friday-on-the-job-fucking-off
like every good man of culture knows how.

And I, like a self-imaged Jack,
Kerowacked to watch and crook my neck
from left to right to zenith to nadir
to catch glances in my net for trapping wind,
charging my eyes with a po-faced plastic cappicino
(you know the shit I'm talkin' 'bout)
while the muse-axed jazz
plays copy right moods of ambiance
which still sound good to my romantic ear.

And I see myself cast in glass
each time I look
past the 30 foor window-wall I face
to reach the outside through.

And I see you, too.


--
Strangers

I walk the city
tonight as quiet
as the Van Gogh shade
that touches your face
with its almost violet smoke.

If this sky were in mountains
dark enough to be
your blue-black coat of night,
we would not be
spelled out in chemical sums for emotions.

We would feel
with all that romantic hegemony.

From this far, I can see
your eyes looking through
the words you were never named,
through the danger of your parents
never meeting--
never weaving your Celtic nest of hair.

This is where we know
one another
as strangers passing
on opposite sides of a building.

How much of our belongings
are in each others' pockets?

If you listen at a granite wall,
the echo in all its grey
will be my whispering song.


12.3.5
for a Chika Yoshii painting titled: Melissa


--
21 Words for Your Left Breast

Everybody says the eskimos
have 20 words for snow
as though that example
best captures the truth of
each thing's subtle complexity.

Well, I have 21 words
for just your left breast
this morning,
and each is untranslatable
and by noon expired from currency.

Four words described your left breast's shape
in the minutes before you woke
as you shifted against the mysteries in a dream.

Seven more conveyed your left breast as
qualities of weight when in my hand and mouth
and when against me and the sheet
at different angles.

Five words generalized it as stages of arrousal
with special nuances on its density against my tongue
and the nipple's degrees of eraser-like gumminess.

One was for it when I suddenly closed my eyes
and it echoed as a retinal ghost.

Three were for it as tastes.

Two were it as poetic inspirations
that, as yet, have no meaning
in the world of mental awareness.
(Thus they have been excluded from my sum of 21.)

And the last word was for your left breast as
it hung above me like a sky heavy with rain
and I completely lost track of what it even was.

So, the eskimos can keep their 20 words for snow
and can teach them to philosophy students.
I'll just try to pay attention
as the dictionary of your body writes itself in my eyes
and then vanishes before anyone can nod in understanding.


--
Barbie's Been Arrested

Well, finally, Barbie's been arrested
on charges of terrorism
and as a threat to Homeland Security.

I could see it coming years ago, like
when she let me undress her
and rub my body against her tiny nudity.

The bait of passivity.

So human in her hardness
and the excessive concentration of big hair
restricted to her scalp.

She said she didn't shave,
but come on!

And so, I cheered when they led her away
in shackles and the orange jumpsuit of guilt,
as ill-fitting as all her clothes always were.

It's nice to know
one more agent of subversion
is off the streets of the suburbs.
Nice to know
that one more thing I fear
is hidden away.


--
This End of Night

I have no pet.
I only have my ignorance
so I chain it to a leash
and walk it proudly
through this end of night,
dressed up
in elaborate fashions
that never hide the fact
that it is really my ignorance.
People smile as it barks and bays
and yips and yaps
and tries to hump their shoes.
"Oh, so cute." "Look, look at it. It's
just like you," they say
as their dog squats, delicately shitting
polite memories on the sidewalk.

My ignorance sniffs itself
in such delight. It would be happy
to do it all night long, but I drag it on,
against its will. We have our loop to make
and a schedule to keep. We have to get back
to see the man made of light
and nod when our cue is flashed.

I have no pet.
I only have my ignorance.
I walk it proudly
through this end of night.


--
Portrait

From what appears to be
the pocket of your vagina,
you pull out a chair--
from nowhere--and take a seat.

All of us over here
on this side of the train
work our eyes back and forth
beneath our boldly knitted brows
as thought we've finally understood
the words that have always been
written halfway up the sky.

Our first urge is to want
to share this shining confusion.

But how can witnesses converse
in the words of the world they left?

When two small children meet
their first act is to reach
through all the sky that falls
between them.
They grab hold
with nothing in their eyes.

Lost
over here on this side of the train,
I pull out this blank
sheet of paper from my pocket
and draw this self-portrait:
a tree growing
from a howling table-saw.


--
An Old Man Bathing in the Hosoegawa

I have come around the world
to see this,
an old man bathing
in a 6 inch stream
between Osaka apartment buildings.

The dance is the same
as at Banares
as the exposed anatomies
of the bony old
enter the Ganges
in a ritual of river
and soap
and a yellow terry-towel.

He sits on the stone edge,
scrubbing the streets
off his legs,
and then he enters the stream
and works his white suds way up
across the odd rectangle of this back
with its knot-dotted spine
and the wing-severed stumps of this shoulder blades.

A skeleton working away
beneath a thin gauze of skin--
a man
washing the suit of himself.

And I can see how much
he's enjoying it,
how good clean feels.

And I don't mind staring
like a tourist to the sooty gats
who can't back away
from the awe-filled link
of where we all come from
and where we will return.

The body draws itself
to water,
and we dip our hands
as a primordial cup
to pour the baptism's trickle
and remake ourself
clean.


--
When I die
steal my bones
and give some to Ophelia,
so she can weave them
through her hands
like ashy fragile pansies.

And give my clicking
clacking black-
smoked finger joints
and knuckles
to the children 'round my house
who pick all things up
transfixed
and know their bones inside
by feel,
so nothing's fearful
in those cracking facts.
Just drop my brittle digits
in the play-pails by their doors;
mix them in
with plastic toys
and other broken pink parts.

And take my pelvis,
that butterfly-bulbous set of wings,
and perch it on a wall somewhere--
balanced
and Humpty Dumpty frightened.
Or, wedge it up
with rocks you'll find
in someone's weedy garden,
set in amidst the hum of dandelions
and yellow jackets--
all the color that hides just for surprising.

And pour the nonsense sand of me--
my dust and dried white chips--
out in your travels,
forgetting where I am all spread.

But save my femur from the scatter
and stand it in an alcove.
Prop it up
in a place only noticed with desire.
And in the top-notch tiny bowl
float a leaf
you find in passing--
as scrap made beautiful
in realizing something else.


--
As Fallen Flowers Do

Ophelia floats within
her world of fluid blues.
Watching the past grow faint upstream,
she dreams of gravity
and our only moment.

Her shoulders fall.
Her hair looks full of wind.
A bubble escapes from her lips,
rising past paper flowers folded for emotions:

Irises of papyrus for guessing.
Roses of vellum for rememberance.
A hyacinth of cigarette foil for doubt.

They float around her breasts
as fallen flowers do; obscuring
what is too beautiful.
They will never get to burn
and leave their lines of smoke in our eyes.
For that, we must imagine
beyond what is and isn't
possible.

for a Chika Yoshi painting at Panarama 9.10.05


--
*** More of Jerry's poetry can be found at: http://moontriangle.blogspot.com/