I
a tall cool
beauty all legs and delicate bone structure
luxuriant
russet-glinted waves of dark brown pouring over shoulders
and before
the gleam in her brilliant hazel eyes died for lack of love
she could
have been a movie star
the boys
had buzzed around as if she were the Source of all nectar back then
her era
Golden
her mind and heart at war
a woman breaking Free and terrified
pristine atmosphere, oxygen shy
she married
her brother’s best friend
devilishly
dark and handsome
the
features of his unsung Native ancestors
cut through
the fog of her virginal awareness
quickened
something unimagined even
in those
bleak post-Victorian days when young girls bled unknowing
sure they
were about to die
generation
and its means spoken only in whispers
the
language of pain and fear
but Love! o
Love! a pure and glowing thing somehow
in an age
of Photoplay superimposed over the necessities of blood and fire
the first
night did not go well, nor many nights thereafter
he had no
time
what was
the true effect
coming of
age in those black & white days of twin beds
and Hayes
Acts and whitewash
it seems as
if childhood was a sitcom
where
Father’s life was a gyroscope of its own centrifugal force
pulling all
into spiraling selflessness around it
the
definition of nuclear family fails
when the center of gravity implodes
ashes ashes we all fall down!
like the
plague
marriages
made in après war sickened and died
blackened
and burned
children
half orphans
grandparents
aunts uncles all far away in the atomized explosion
of a mobile
society
II
the river keeps flowing
sweet juicy bodies swell on the vine
peach fuzz cheeks, firm ripe flesh
every generation is the First one
sure no one who knows anything has
ever Been here before
arrogance innocence or not so much
we see our age reflected in the eyes
of our cohort
this Hot music has never been made in all of time
we are the First
until all interventions inventions
and no control
the confidence arrogance withers
along with flesh
sliding from beneath the skin
leaving paper coating
fragile wizened sagging
whence that golden sweetness
electric juice of yesterday?
the images I see
those vanished
who will not know this world again
(ah well, there's always reincarnation but you never know)
those beads slipped off the chain
into the vast heart of darkness
jitterbug jive dancing on top of the
world
everything's new unspoiled faultless
Big Band Big Sound
riffs purloined from people so far down
why would they have anything you need?
but they have Soul
will you steal their souls
refill the tanks with stolen fields and jungles
claim their history for your own
wear their clothes their ornaments
can you pray to their god?
she dances
notes sliding sinuously into her
inherited body
her burning spirit bread
in a starving land
water in the valley of death
the scales fall from the eyes of the
year
in crimson gold profusion
Fall away Fall away
buried beneath winter's mast
like a leaf from an earlier slaughter
the hollow shell of a nut
food for worms
can she step out of eternity to touch the living breath
again?
