WAKING

Waking, it's noon.

There was snow on the piano.

There was snow on the bedsheets.

There was snow
On the bones of my ribcase.

I walked out into
The Florida July Sun.

There were shiny
Yellow gold pieces
Scattered on the grass
That Danaë lost
When she departed
With someone
On a motorcycle.

---

THERE IS CHEER IN HIS HOUSE

He pulled back the blanket
That once had a peacock embroidered
In green and gold in its center.
With scissors, tweezers, he had
Pulled out each thread, left
The blanket blank, except for
The holes where the threads had been
Formed shadows in their indentations.
This impurity disturbed him,
For he wanted an uniform,
Immaculate white.
The pulled back blanket
Uncovered lavender sheets.
She found pleasure in having
This color next to her body.
He never understood why she
Liked to be touched by other
Than white sheets. He always
Turned out the lights so he could pretend
The sheets were white.
He called for her to come to bed.
He had forgotten she had left years ago,
Left with a man wearing a lavender shirt.
It did not matter, for he could pretend
She was there, sleeping with him under white sheets.

---

SHE WAS WORKING FOR A MASTER'S DEGREE IN GERONTOLOGY

After a poetry reading in a theatre at St. Petersburg,
A student of gerontology came to me with her notebook,
Ask how does an octogenarian poet such as me have so much energy.
I told her I had read a newspaper advice column that said old men should keep busy.

I told her, as she took notes, that I had kept busy.
In the last six months
I had given six poetry readings,
Had three exhibitions of my paintings,
Went out with six different women,
Ages: seventeen, twenty-four, thirty-six, forty-four, fifty-one, and sixty-four.

She took her eyes off her notes, looked up at me and asked,
"Which one did you like best?"

I told her
That I liked the painting exhibitions the best
Because there you do not have to perform.

---

A DRUNK

A drunk pirouettes
On one foot before falling.
The sidewalk, beneath
Slurred, sad.

The falling drunk inquires,
Asked the sidewalk,
"Why are you sad,
when I'm glad."

The sidewalk, tearful, answers,
"It is my structure,
concrete, fixed, formal;
you're flesh, fuild, formless."

---

MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY: A FAKE OCEAN
IN A PLASTIC RECTANGLE WITH AN ELECTRIC CORD

It came from Paris, but it was not French;
Nor did its dark ultramarine waves
Tinted with variegated blue tones
Copy the coast near Le Havre.

Possessing a plastic trinket that faked an ocean
Must have been a Parisian fashion,
For this toy powered by electricity,
Not a moon, was in every Paris shop window.

The Slavic-Teutonic blonde I was with made the purchase,
Gave as a gift, a memo of our month together.
She said she sensed from the seashell I carried I loved the ocean.
She wanted me to have an ocean of my own.

I set the fake ocean on the TV which I never turn on
Except to see a documentary on oceanography.
In its plastic rectangle, it is a nice domestic, middle class ocean,
For it has no stingrays, octopuses, eels, or sharks.

It does not even have seahorses, jelly fish, or plankton,
But its waves slosh high or low according to electrical control.
No tuna eat anchovies here. Sips of wine will supply mermaids.
But when the electricity goes off, the ocean is flat.