ENTOURAGE

My reflection claims

He used to be an agent

Of a police so secret

Even he didn't know

Who they were.

His favorite partner

Was a retired seraph

Who'd gambled away

Three of her six wings.

My shadow's grown ragged.

Ashamed to be seen,

She urges me to go abroad

Only on moonless nights.

My name ages rapidly.

Childishly, it keeps picking up

Stray letters in the street 

And sticking them anywhere.

Because of this it's become

Unpronounceable; people 

Wishing my attention

Are obliged to flick my ears 

Or throw things at me.

JMWT AND CATS

 

If you asked Turner the painter 

How many cats he owned he

Would turn slightly away from you

And gesture at his ear with 

A loaded paintbrush (he could 

Summon a brush by thinking of it)

And shrug, feigning deafness.

If you persisted he might pause

As if in deep thought before saying

"Many." In his great painting "Venice 

From the Porch of Madonna della Salute"

You will sometimes see a calm grey cat

On the center-rightside gondola.

TRYING

A word flies by

Girandole, say, or gasogene,

I bid it stay while I

Construct a poem;

It will have none of it.

More evidence that I 

Am not Li Po;

Words always obeyed him!

HOMELESS

Unhappy with being assigned

To an abandoned building 

In Beijing, my great-grandfather 

Juda (his name once had an "h;"

He bartered it away for

Magic beans which grew overnight 

But led only to the floating castle

Of a giant so impoverished that Juda

Lent him two dollars and a half)

Searches for new places to haunt.

The store he rented in 1912 

Was torn down to widen the entrance 

To the Holland Tunnel. Drivers,

Seeing him approach, rolled their windows

Lest he squeegee them. Graph paper,

Toy cars, rose bushes and old issues

Of The Forward all proved unsatisfactory.

For now, he's haunting a silver teapot

His daughter Jenny gave my mother 

But this cannot last; the teapot

Houses too many ghosts already.

 

TENSES

There is or was or will be a river 

In China or Guinea-Bissau or Ohio;

Those heavy with grief 

Travel or have travelled or

Will travel to its banks relying 

On its promise to ignore them.

RUMMAGING ABOUT

You find a knife

So sharp 

It cuts infinity

In half

Leaving two things 

Both infinite.

Soon you've a sea

Of tiny infinite things 

All of them 

Insisting you

Must take care of them.

SINCE

By now the men

Standing around the fire 

Must have noticed Spring

Is decades late, the fire 

Doesn't burn out and I 

Am standing there, waiting   

To be shooed away or

To take my place with them.

BUDDENBROOKS

Reading the book 

I see my father 

Reading it. He is

Younger than I am

And has a yellow pad

Next to his elbow

(Of course he does;

Where else for 

Stray thoughts,

Written in pencil?)

He notes the same figure

I do now, candlelit,

Stepping from a tapestry 

Then back.

UNWELL

Illness makes me 

Attenuate and

Inhuman. 

Imaginary nuns

Gather to debate

What's to be done.

They carry me

To an intersection

Fifty years ago

Where a fire burns

In a trash barrel.

"If he looks left

Or right to see

Who else is there 

He may be saved."

CRITICS

In Ohio, glaring down the length 

Of her interminable drive, she thinks 

"He is writing again about Verlaine's 

Miscarried brothers who were kept

On a kitchen shelf by their mother!"

Her small cat, to soothe her, offers

To reveal the name Achilles used

When he lived among the women but

She's known it since she was sixteen: 

Pyrrha, the Redhaired girl.

SISTER

Verlaine's mother noticed
A new tinted bottle
Among those which housed
Her four unborn sons.
When Verlaine reeled home
He said necessity had made him,
Pawn one of his brothers
But, being once more in funds
 He'd returned to redeem him.
Offered two labeless bottles
He took both  of them home.
"You didn't notice one was a girl?"
"As the drunken glory of French poetry
I never vote or pay taxes
Or concern myself with infant genitalia."

BEFORE

In the dark air angels hang

Not knowing this feeling 

Is uncertainty. One of them 

Reaches a hand out to see

If a weapon appears in it

Or a harp or another hand.

Harbonah, angel of confusion,

Thinks of trading his second job

As patron of mule drivers 

With Shakziel, ruler

Of bugs who live on water.