I. Lines Lifted from Sexton

    I've been flying right along
    since we last kissed,
    two tender birds in a cage.
    Tempestuous daddy,
    I put two daisies in a bowl
    and cover them with hissing.

    Silly magic, heart so hard,
    a cigar burn to the hips.
    Let all rejoice whose twine
    feels feet of house wrens and ravens.

    And if you fetter any sea, love,
    paddle shoreward nevermore.
    Live in its blue room
    and bright bright stare.

    Yellow is the color of night
    and green the grove of despair.
    I give you new hair to grow
    and a starfish to suck on all night.

    You will not rust until the insomniac
    sky sees your limbs twisting like wheat.

    I was made in a dream
    from your wooden bones.
    Come, violent one
    to your broken bed.

    You burn in sleep and draw
    telephone wires on my back.
    You live in your deep blue bedroom
    my yellow, voluptuous sight.

 

    II.

    Loving you in the evening
    means grating you with my tongue.
    Your socks lay, limp brown trout
    under the carpet's wing.

    Always, old man, your boy's body
    bewitches. Let me wonder
    what the snows forgot in you.

    I wander away awhile,
    come back strumming absent-
    minded. I'll remember to forget
    a song you hummed for me.

    Four days in you means a harvest.
    It's sleeting on Kilimanjaro
    and your feet are flat and wide.
    Can you get us home in time for chestnuts?

    The stars come out on your head, love.
    If you wink off I'll skate down
    to sleep in your white horse belly.

    Loving you in the evening
    I've come down to a different path
    where I've grown before but forgot.

    The stars come out and it's
    moonbeams on your head
    tasting every song before
    and after you're dead.

 

    III.

    Before yesterday I was sure
    you were dead.
    But the proof you had forgotten
    me made you live again.

    Dance, creamy hornet, velvet stinger!
    It is the land of sepals and honey.
    Before night falls let me touch
    your face of earth.

    Black oar, your night oil
    bestills in me what ripples
    galleyed you gestern.
    Row home to rest this buzzing
    beating sky.

    These charms you outgrew.
    Before you had forgotten me
    I sang what you saw, and sawed
    you in two every evening at six.

    When I light a lamp you will think
    what has escaped. I will dance before
    you, a naked orange mum -

    salient, unafraid.

Copyright © Juli Ann Kroll, 2000.  All Rights Reserved.