SEA BREEZE Part Three

3.
Everlasting maze.
                                        For you, my friend,
you went through it
and out her other side
                                                 but you were there
abaft the barnacled bottoms of old books,
sleek traffic, sand in your Nikes
everything was yours.  She drove.
No need for caution, kept your thoughts
to yourself,
                        
you always do,
                                                          the
night
was like a crucifix
                                      on
the wall over somebody’s bed.
What does that mean?
                                                  You know,
you always know,
                                      just
stop thinking
and start talking.

SEA BREEZE Part Two

2.
that’s why we chose
to be in body in the first place
or be in her
                             in
grace of union,
and no word said,
                                      I
am the hum of whom
she has chosen,
                                 small trout
busy in her stream,
broken kayaks litter her backyard,
                                                                             capisce?
I didn’t, I thought he wrote capsize
and laughed,
                             he
slugged me
the way they do, men,
                                                and
I was only ten
or something, who knows
how old anybody really is.

SEA BREEZE Part One

                                                          for Tamas in Brooklyn
1.
Luxurious antidotes,
                                                phasellus ille,
the sea
                   you
mean to float on is
                                                                coterminous
with her affections
                                          (Coney Island, minuit)
midnight, I see it already, the car
she’s driving
                             down
Ocean,
the stately Jewish houses,
                                                          then shining
boardwalk full of maybes
and far away the curl of moonlight
on the tenth-night wave
                                                   cresting way out there
the way they do,
                                      where
sharks calve and play,
happy hunting, lover,
                                                the
stick-shift
never felt so good, staggered green lights,
a car knows how to go,

GRAVITY FEED Part Seventeen (final section)

17.
But Hammerklavier
is what he wrote
music defined by its instrument,
the womb that bore it
brass and wood and steel
as if I were to call these words
men or women walking in a peculiar land
because you are my music too
I heard you with my hands.
FIN