Uma*



*A poem inspired by my reading of one half of Anita Desai's novel Fasting, Feasting.
------------------------

"Uma"
(for Helen Senkiw)

Closed up to the gills
  a girl roils,
               regrettably--

  with empty tray, stands
like a party doll (in pigtails)

     eyes thick,
     collapsible

like every shunted  jasmine                       

  Uma,
like every collapsible ode to
                                   sun-whips
                                      silent tides,

  deep dark Uma,
                      my
                         wounded
                                      water
                                             bird

Running as a kind of lie



"Yes, but it hurts to realize!" (Lawrence Durrell)


A cento of suns (I still find) wouldn't
  nor let alone those

forested paths strung like the foetid
  body of a lie--

Always second or third from me the
  eyes, smile

that ought rather to smooth, to know
  but don't--

In a steady scentless rain, in park
  trails

always feeding second or third from
  that which ought most

and never does, soothe a numb, in-
  consolable me

Always lying eyes & the run

Ode to Narouz*

*A poem inspired by Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet. A work remarkable if only for its masterly portrayal of the imagination's true desert heart and, in particular, of the Hosnani brothers in Mountolive.
__________________________


Whip in hand, Narouz speaks and bats
  lie split at his feet:

to a brother's glib oily bitch, a whip! and
  an old desert queen
   -true hearts-

Sand and eye's clutching vision, inter-
  twined, slink like Suras
   -in desert light!-

Linking palms of lovers also split,
  lying dead like bats
   - at his feet-

Remarried



Like every mari complaisant , perhaps
 who's all tweed and gin
   (& no more)

  -soft on sighs-

scraping slowly up the stairs,
  swollen reptilian eye
     of
       the
        new/
         old
          husband

     carrying
        her
         handbags
          to
            the
              top

"Morning prayers" (3): gum arabic

Will Petersen

She's radiant all right, mouth a dangling
  lark and is mine-nuncupatively!-

  until it isn't God! I hope not

For according to me, the petals-i.e. the
   white ones-took the eye and

did it again, and then leaving me with one,
  just might want to fly:-

the love of  one who burns pure as sky
  ( "foreshown & foretold")

Squirrels (1): "If I could write a perfect line" (for Maria)

I'd be in a blaze somewhere or just alone (reading,
                                              too sore to stand, or

 probably too clouded   to see the squirrel that's
   not once, not twice gone for a falling twig,
                                                             already)

"Where the action is..."

Ah, what a sweeter time it was, the '60s and dance shows and teens singing and goofing off on the sidewalk as if their hearts would burst for joy...I loved dancing to the Turtles in front of the ol' black and white.

I want that back for today's kids
.
Can you spot the dancer doing the 'Freddie' (a specialty of mine then)?