Pleasure Dome. Yusef Komunyakaa

hundred purple rooms

      in a mirror of black water.

      I must enter each,

      interrogated by a different demon.

      In the distance I can hear

      the sea coming. A woman at Laguna Beach.

      Her eyes now seashells.

      Her arms two far-off sails.

      Like a tree drags the ground on a windy day

      with yellow & red fruit too soft to eat,

      she comes toward me. Stars cluster

      her laughter like a nest of moth eyes—

      her focus on the world.

      The closer she comes, the deeper

      I work myself away into music

      that I hope can save us both.

      A man steps from a junkyard of chrome

      fenders & hubcaps,

      pulling off masks.

      At least a hundred scattered about.

      The last one: I’m him.

The Dog Act

      I’m the warm-up act.

      I punch myself in the face

      across the makeshift stage.

      Fall through imaginary trapdoors.

      Like the devil, I turn cartwheels

      & set my hair afire.

      Contradiction, the old barker

      drunk again on these lights

      & camaraderie. The white poodles,

      Leo, Camellia, St. John, & Anna,

      leap through fiery hoops

      to shake my hand.

      I make a face

      that wants to die

      inside me.

      “Step right up ladies & gentlemen,

      see the Greatest Show on Earth,

      two-headed lions, seraphim,

      unicorns, satyrs, a woman

      who saws herself in half.”

      I can buckdance till I am

      in love with the trapeze artist.

      Can I have your attention now?

      I’m crawling across the stagefloor

      like a dog with four broken legs.

      You’re supposed to jump up

      & down now, laugh & applaud.

For You, Sweetheart, I’ll Sell Plutonium Reactors

      For you, sweetheart, I’ll ride back down

      into black smoke early Sunday morning

      cutting fog, grab the moneysack

      of gold teeth. Diamond mines

      soil creep groan ancient cities, archaeological

      diggings, & yellow bulldozers turn around all night

      in blood-lit villages. Inhabitants here once gathered seashells

      that glimmered like pearls. When the smoke clears, you’ll see

      an erected throne like a mountain to scale,

      institutions built with bones, guns hidden in walls

      that swing open like big-mouthed B-52s.

      Your face in the mirror is my face. You tapdance

      on tabletops for me, while corporate bosses

      arm wrestle in back rooms for your essential downfall.

      I entice homosexuals into my basement butcher shop.

      I put my hands around another sharecropper’s throat

      for that mink coat you want from Saks Fifth,

      short-change another beggarwoman,

      steal another hit song from Sleepy

      John Estes, salt another gold mine in Cripple Creek,

      drive another motorcycle up a circular ice wall,

      face another public gunslinger like a bad chest wound,

      just to slide hands under black silk.

      Like the Ancient Mariner steering a skeleton ship

      against the moon, I’m their hired gunman

      if the price is right, take a contract on myself.

      They’ll name mountains & rivers in my honor.

      I’m a drawbridge over manholes for you, sweetheart.

      I’m paid two hundred grand

      to pick up a red telephone anytime & call up God.

      I’m making tobacco pouches out of the breasts of Indian

      maidens so we can stand in a valley & watch grass grow.

Feet Nailed to the Floor

      The Gypsy gazes into her crystal ball

      to see a rooster drop in the dust.

      One note of samba still burns

      in the skull. The white-haired orator

      has fallen asleep in his fireside chair,

      & it’s now out of my hands.

      Even your dear mama has taken the gold

      crucifix from around her neck

      & dropped it into a beggar’s tincup.

      The seal is affixed. What can I say?

      That informer, I bet his hands

      are now on your sister’s legs.

      I want to wash mine. Seven times

      today the guards have chased children

      who shout your name. You are a saint

      to them, but blood isn’t yet dripping

      in the courtyard from mango leaves.

      The hole has been dug & a blindfold

      cut from a lover’s nightgown.

The Nazi Doll

      It sits lopsided

      in a cage. Membrane.

      Vertebra. This precious, white

      ceramic doll’s brain

      twisted out of a knob of tungsten.

      It bleeds a crooked smile

      & arsenic sizzles in the air.

      Its eyes an old lie.

      Its bogus tongue, Le Diable.

      Its lampshade of memory.

      Guilt yahoos, benedictions

      in its Cro-Magnon skull

      blossom, a flurry of fireflies,

      vowels of rattlesnake beads.

      Its heart hums the song of dust

      like a sweet beehive.