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indictes poem is in A Night Without Armor.
IT IS LIKE A DREAM (II)
I want to take you
I want to hold you
Telling you everything--
let the world fall
into its sleep!
let these nations
destroy them selves
with swift roads and
impartial vow
For we shall be spared!
we shall be left standing
with four eyes and four hands
to face what's left
of concrete and honey
The things you fear
not by their nature
ROSARITA, MEXICO
These strange tongueless people
with their large eyes and muddy sponges
absorbing every detail of
our white bodies
Our flesh an unfathomable dream
sex and cigarettes
and other visions of America
brought to their haveless little hands
through the miracle of TV
12/9/95
BUKOWSKY'S WIDOW
My prince has slipped!
and his face has turned
his tongue no longer strong
but gray (how sad!)
it used to be so full
My prince the stars have
fallen from your crown!
And I can not fathom
their fading--
some things should be forever!
You've taken your coal
and your seaward gaze--
You've taken you're will
and your weakness and left
me with nothing but
words to keep me warm
I want Paris
I want you drunk on wine
I want to walk with you
and giggle and kiss
God how I miss
your smile and thick skin
At night
and you'd press me tight
against you. Extinguishing
of my head against
your shoulder
you'd laugh in the face of
death and uncertainty
You'd say time knew nothing
well now you're gone
I MISS YOUR TOUCH
I miss your touch
like a migration of birds
nesting momentarily
upon my breast
silver and quick--
sabotaging the landscape
with their absence
my skin silent without
a thirsty pool of patient flesh
INSECURITY
you don't call
I check again
I become uneasy--
Suddenly I'm not so sure
I check my sources
each conversation becomes crumb
how easily I'm led
how stupid I've been
to believe
you could be
loving me
you who can not be seduced
by anything other than
the temperance
of need
and suddenly I see my place
the phone rings
you say hello
but I don't believe you
SOMETIMES
Sometimes
I feel
my heart
to vague depths
words there
are such
spaces that
I can't help
but feel
My Heart
the pregnant pause
of all you will
not say
and all
I can
not ask
FATHER OF A DEAF GIRL
Every time her hands began to stutter he became
enraged. She threw these fits sometimes and he
never took the time to understand what they meant.
Her words were wasted on him. Her hands useless
birds caged by their quietness, and he would
immobilize them, tying her wrists together so they'd
jump like awkward fish, gasping at the shock of air.
Un-heard they'd dance like that for hours, her eyes
full of silent desperation, on the other side of the
closet door. He never even knew what they were
saying.