Pleasure Dome. Yusef Komunyakaa

I hear someone crying

      among crystal trees & confetti.

      The sack of bones in the magnolia,

      what’s more true than that?

      Before you can see

      her long pretty legs,

      look into her unlit eyes.

      A song of B-flat breath

      staggers on death row. Real

      men, voices that limp

      behind the one-way glass wall.

      I’ve seen the legless beggar

      chopped down to his four wheels.

Imagination

      There’s a deer no gun

      can bring down like a big

      woman in the grass sinks

      to her knees to pray

      in a white slouch.

      He stands at the sunlit edge

      of a snowy woods. Can you make him out?

      An owl from its hiding place

      spies on the buck.

      Quails settle like a quiet

      disturbance. The deer

      stands more perfect

      than man, like a slab

      of half-gray granite

      strong as midnight.

      Precious as lust.

      Eyes sharp & wild.

      A wolf’s scent makes him stagger

      As a hawk sails, powered by a hint

      of day. One morning this deer will fall

      when nothing or no one can nudge this man

      awake. Where eyes cannot meet,

      silence is a song, old bones

      stashed in a decayed nest

      in the ground.

Ghost Chant, et alii

      Daydream the old Indian medicine man

      who boards the Greyhound

      at midnight outside Jackson Hole

      & sits next to you,

      the fat belly of life,

      a lilacbush in May,

      the smoke that curls

      back up to eat itself.

      Daydream a mongrel dog

      who yelps at the footsteps of your sister.

      The coyote-goddess’ lonely hill

      to climb with the moon,

      a stone vase

      with a copperhead inside.

      Daydream a mountain lion

      riding air—to dismiss

      the half song

      of this machine’s forgetfulness.

      A white ceramic Ferris wheel

      surrendering sacks of grain,

      the eccentric black book

      that gnaws off your hands.

      Daydream the viper & Easter lily.

      A fifth of Ronrico

      on the poet’s night table,

      morning’s empty bottle,

      a grunt-song that spins

      itself from flesh

      at the top of a spiral staircase,

      the talking drum

      the center of water.

      Daydream a mermaid

      peering into the four windows

      of a lighthouse, the fandango

      like a rooster struggles out of golden grass

      with its head cut off.

      Faust’s old greed & sick hair,

      a gas leak

      with twenty padlocks on your one door.

      Daydream lies rot in the mouth,

      a black Mercedes-Benz

      & brass knuckles,

      an old man who has seen too much

      in a dark alley, the killer’s face

      in seven mirrors on each wall,

      hemlock in a silver chalice,

      the shadow of a grave

      beneath your slow feet.

Passions

       Coitus

      Ah, pink tip of sixth sense,

      oyster fat of lovepearl,

      dew-seed & singing leaf-tongue,

      lizard’s head of pure thought.

       Body Painting

      To step into the golden lute

      & paint one’s soul

      on the body. Bird

      goddess & slow snake

      in the flowered tree. Circle,

      lineage, womb, mouth, leaf-footed

      godanimal on a man’s chest

      who leaps into the moon

      on a woman’s belly.

       Blue-green Iridescent Flies

      Meat, excrement, a source

      of life attracts this

      message & definition

      of the ultimate us.

      They fly off

      with the weight of the world.

       Peepshow

      A new moon rises

      on an elevator over the mountain.

       String Bass

      The moon’s at the window,

      as she rocks in the arms

      of this lonely player

      like a tall Yoruba woman.

       Pinball Machines

      Encased in glass, a woman

      opens her eyes. The room floods

      with a century of bells.

      Magnetic balls & sound of metal

      seem enough to build a locomotive

      moving through the room’s wooden bones.

       Butterflies

      Incandescent anthologies

      semi-zoological alphabets of fire,

      these short lives transmigrate, topaz

      memories cling to air, release wordflesh

      from the cocoon of silk fear.