Two Poems
from time to time
from time to time
she’ll say
let’s get high
& watch the dog show
this is
what love
is
if what is is
bound to what is not
then man is god
& god is man
& so man does not existbut the women
the women
still sing with mouths
lips not voices
but sounds
in the key
of solitudethe hairs of her navel
yield pineapple & star
fruit for me to gather
& masticate
as i navigate to colonize
her southern pacificbeatific is a word
dsl is the new lsd
that looks good on her
as a word
she waivers between
beatific & inertia
because many a word
compose a picture
working toward her image
which is not a sunset
frozen in mud
as the alphabet lifts me to places higher than the sidewalk: she
concretes me.i’m a fresh poet, but she takes more showers than i.i
watch the homeless man on the bus count the uninhabited sudoku
squares in the local paper, his achromatic chuck taylors: an insipid
reminder of his own indolence.she eyes the passing cumuli, keeps
time by naming them.she says “to quit smoking is like becoming
married: whoosh. there it goes. & it’s over.”out the bus window, a
fruit stand does just that.she asks if the pomegranate, banana &
guava are rastafari.later that night, on my back, in her bath, i feel
like sonny liston & she: muhammad ali grinning over me.even
later, i navigate the beauty marks of her chest, clasping the left
nipple between my eyelashes.