Bad mannequin, says the moon
for my leather coat’s on the floor.
A man with a passport in his eyes
pulls me to him; one of us is a dream.
My soul solstice has gone black 
beehive.  From the fixed window, 
streets are too still, taxis for teardrops.  
A man with a poem in his mouth waves 
from the city’s edge.  The moon says, 
no feelings.  Phone messages are like 
breads without yeast.  Not wearing 
clothes isn’t the same as prayer, but 
why not?  In this country of my bed,
when alone, I’m the verb on shore leave, 
the compass rose pried free from all 
seasons.  Enough prose while I’m
awake.  The moon finds another food
source, leaves me alone.  A man with
a wings tattoo guides me to an earned
sleep.  He promises to not let me go.







Electric Latino



This is a city in which tears shine in 
blinding trees, where birds are verbs 
 
seeking nests, where honey is kept 
inside safes and skyscrapers sleepwalk
 
but I prefer to live in virtual pueblos.
Men offer me their minds as if they
 
know how to touch me so I’m real.
Outside, the tropics don’t dream of me
 
as snow infects my shadows. Inside,
I’ve my site, sight, and excitations
 
as an electric Latino, a naked poem
with lovers who can’t trill their R’s.





Tollings



We make love in the blue.  Then the bells.
            We forget to bury The Buried Man card.
Then the bells.  We cut the moon in half.
            Then the bells.  We dance alone on
a rooftop denying we’re on Broadway and
            yesterday.  Then the bells.  The dying
asks us to tell of how kisses still taste.
            Then the bells.  The drunk models ask
to borrow context.  Then the bells.
 
*
 
Dear Lover,
 
Not quite a love letter, more like an off-the-rack
hurricane.
            You make me crawl
on shards of hard 
moonlight and you make me brave enough
to rhyme,
to IM the man-on-the-moon:
                                                he’s mine, he’s mine.
 
I’m a chameleon’s genius bodyguard,
your personal pirate.
Far-off, hear the bells,
the struck proud of scars.
Why do we speak in sentences when we’re dressed?
What a waste of our mouths.
 
*
 
Then the bells.  Neruda heard
the sea.  Passolini heard death.
Akhmatova cried for Russia
but it still isn’t washed clean.
I read her to you so you can learn
how to be real, stay the night for
once.  Then the bells.  I read to
the emptied room, the idea of you.