My first Ghazal

Indelible Scent

We wait for the magic to happen
But it does not belong to either of us

In your car I felt a tiny spark
Penciling marks on the states I was mapping

You were wise not to kiss me at first
My body was still on fire

In your bed I am free
To let you see all of me

On my way to work the next day
I spell your name on my skin

We were so wise yesterday
Today you must push in the pin

In the bath tub I scour my skin
To remove your indelibile scent

Oh Tears

Oh, I’ve lived in the trash too long
Even in dreams it creeps up in my veins
Now let me tell you that I’m ready
Ready for anything but this
My skin scrawls with bugs
My heart is a shattered mess
I will let you clean it up if you decline to inquire
About the reason for this fire
My friends have left this hovel
Onto better things
While I dwell in the wreckage of the past
While I swing and shake in the breeze
A single tree limb supports my whole body
Threatening to break
The real hovel is in your heart
It grows dark as your lungs
It crumples me like newspaper
In your thick calloused hands
It tells everyone I came from the trash
It tells everyone to shine a great big spotlight on me
Outside of the garbage
The world is still
And I spin on my axis like a planet
Without gravity
Go ahead, tell everyone where I came from
I’ll tell them where you hid
In the folds of my flesh
Behind the roundness of my breasts
Behind the chlorinated swimming pool of my eyes
Burrowed for years
Pushing them out of my eyes
One by one
Sparkling tears
You refused to clean up

hair

My mother digs her fingers through my scalp
On the wooden porch my father built
With charred fingers and a sunburnt face
Pieces of my hair fall onto the wood grain
I run my hands through my new short hair
And hate it
I will wear this same hair cut for the next ten years
Maybe eleven
You never liked a woman with short hair
Severe was the word you had chosen
You liked your women care-free and limber
Bodies bending to suit your needs
To catch your heavy head before it hit the cement
We were teenagers too long
We were lost on a dirt road but not discontent
You breathed into my exposed neck
You pulled me into your clandestine embrace
Near a horse farm somewhere off the beaten path
I was telling you a story about the way I had sliced my finger
While slicing roast beef, a strange situation for a vegetarian
I was clever in your company
Blushed and batted my eyelashes
As you talked incessantly
I thought it was because you were nervous
But I would learn years later when we lived in a wooden apartment
Together with many books and musical instruments
That the only time when you were really paying attention
When I could look into the full moon of your face
Was when you were talking about yourself
What sort of love is this
That you have given me:
A lonely love that fails to light the electric stove
That cries with the tea kettle
That apologizes to no one

Like all Delicate things should be loved

If I could get back to you
I would
But fear traps me between its glistening teeth
I was brave before I became aware of any real danger
Didn’t know that cars crumble into scrapnel
That fires melt skin into bubbling liquid
That lightening strikes the ground like a knife from heaven
You know If I could I would find a way to push back that
Thin skin and brave the plane and the train and the ride to
The station make love to you like a bullet meets the flesh
Trapped inside your skin the way all beautiful things tend to
Burn a little at first
Anything worth it’s weight in dirt stings a little at first
I felt your stare like shadows feel the night air
I felt your lips, chapped and red against my cheek
Like records scratch the songs I love onto repeat
I knew your name better than my own once I know
I did love you the way all delicate things should be loved
Covered in rags and kept in the basement
Like babies need a strong hand
I did, cradle your soft skull
I did fear I would drop you
And I did get a lump in my throat
At the sound of your voice
Croak my name
Just once or twice is enough
I love you
If that’s okay
If not, throw it away
Really I just need some kind of confirmation
A simple affidavit
I just need your signature on the dotted line
Autograph your name on my spine
I know the way that feelings lie
The way that lovers lie
The way that all things beautiful eventually die.

Vampire in Queens

Hell is your house
Over-looking the Queens bridge
There is nothing to talk about
The refrigerator is empty except for a can of Sapporo
That some girl bought three years ago
That you left in there
Sentimental somehow
I don’t know
Haven’t had a real name
Or my own bed in five years
And I know the city is crawling with happy-endings
And none of them are mine
Even in the biblical sense
Once I did some African Dancing
With your Asian friend named, “Small Fry”
Who was petite and liked to kick up her feet
Danced like they were on fire
I couldn’t quite keep up
Took the 7—long ride back home to hell
On a non-stop train
I’m just saying that I danced hard
I gave it my all
But I never could shrug you off like the bad dream you are
I’ve got a nervous streak
Which you like
Because you think it means I am sensitive
But really I am peeling like onion skin
You called me baby, you called me honey baby
You called me “thin skin”
I need a sunset and a head full of regret
Just enough to light a fire under me
Like “Small Fry” I could fly off the handle
We were so old yesterday
But I woke up today crying like a newborn
Getting older never got any easier
Some of us want to grow up to have families
And mortgages
I just want to grow up to be a little less afraid
Of the simplest things
Paper-cuts and the little hang-nails
That bleed as I walk real slow down Delancy
Think about tea and nightingales
Think about things I imagine would make me happy
As if I could acquire this feeling through retail therapy
Hell is Queens
Hell is your New York City
Pretending to sleep so you can fuck me without having to look me in the eyes
You calling me fat on the 6 train
Sometimes we were preppy and young with hands and mouths which kiss fervently
And no real fear and you calling all the shots makes you feel less scared and slightly happy
If you can even call it that
I have a rock in the pit of my stomach
And it feels heavy when I walk
You said you knew I was bright
And so I was
bright enough to leave
The borough which sucks my blood
and makes love to me only when no one is watching.

On the "minx"-on the true-love--Fanny Brawne

During my reading of Keats, I came across the love letters between him and his belovced, Fanny Brawne. Keats died in Italy, after attempting to recover from tuberculosis which proved to be terminal. After witnessing the death of his brother from the same malady, he eventually suffered a similiar fate after a bleeding lung led to his untimely demise. We all seem to be struck by the untimely deaths of those whose art fascinates us. By age 24, Keats had written all the poems he'd ever write but fame in any magnitude arose only post-humerously. Whatcaught my attention was the clandestine relationship between Fanny and John (their engagement remained a secret because John who gave up a career in medicine to persue his full-time advocation of writing) could not support Fanny in a proper fashion. The two maintained a passionate correspondence. "At eighteen, Fanny Brawne “was small, her eyes were blue and often enhanced by blue ribbons in her brown hair; her mouth expressed determination and a sense of humour and her smile was disarming. She was not conventionally beautiful: her nose was a little too aquiline, her face too pale and thin (some called it sallow). But she knew the value of elegance; velvet hats and muslin bonnets, crêpe hats with argus feathers, straw hats embellished with grapes and tartan ribbons: Fanny noticed them all as they came from Paris. She could answer, at a moment’s notice, any question on historical costume. ... Fanny enjoyed music. ... She was an eager politician, fiery in discussion; she was a voluminous reader. ... Indeed, books were her favourite topic of conversation”.[8]"

In a letter to his brother, Keats describes the Fanny he'd soon become enamored with:

"Mrs. Brawn who took Brown's house for the summer still resides in Hampstead. She is a very nice woman and her daughter senior is I think beautiful, elegant, graceful, silly, fashionable and strange. We have a little tiff now and then—and she behaves a little better, or I must have sheered off" ; the second: "—Shall I give you Miss Brawn[e]? She is about my height—with a fine style of countenance of the lengthen'd sort—she wants sentiment in every feature—she manages to make her hair look well—her nostrills are fine—though a little painful—he[r] mouth is bad and good—he[r] Profil is better than her full-face which indeed is not full [b]ut pale and thin without showing any bone—Her shape is very graceful and so are her movements—her Arms are good her hands badish—her feet tolerable—she is not seventeen—but she is ignorant—monstrous in her behaviour flying out in all directions, calling people such names—that I was forced lately to make use of the term Minx—this is I think no[t] from any innate vice but from a penchant she has for acting stylishly. I am however tired of such style and shall decline any more of it" [13]

I decided to post a moving letter from a dying Keats, living in KItaly to his secret fiancee'. I don't know of any current pop songs that demonstrate this level of passion and devotion:


My dearest Girl,

This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else - The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you again[s]t the unpromising morning of my Life - My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my Life seems to stop there - I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving - I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love - You note came in just here - I cannot be happier away from you - 'T is richer than an Argosy of Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion - I have shudder'd at it - I shudder no more - I could be martyr'd for my Religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that - I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet - You have ravish'd me away by a Power I cannot resist: and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often "to reason against the reasons of my Love." I can do that no more - the pain would be too great - My Love is selfish - I cannot breathe without you.

Yours for ever
John Keats

Abraham

In sepia he sits beside her
Fixed eyes set on me as she sits in her floral dress
Daydreaming about a dinner, cold on the stove,
a depression era mortgage and two kids who rip holes
in the upholstery, just kids who didn’t know any better
and he stares straight ahead
Bela Lugosi eyes that cut into the twenty-first century
into new millenniums, that scream through golden parchment, burnt at the edges
That say, listen kid, I knew the depression would come again in your time
That remind me to stuff wads of cash into my mattress, not to trust banks
and bureaucracies, that tell me to drive slowly
All these things I have done mean nothing
When I know that you walked door to door selling vacuums to support your hungry family
On weekends you carried a sinking violin case to practice with the
New York Philharmonic orchestra until at 31 you could no longer hear the music
That once on an empty street you closed the car door on your son’s hand as he writhed in pain
And you walked away until a man in a gabardine suit tapped your shoulder, let you know what you’d done
The pain of the language you could no longer comprehend
The crossword puzzles that kept you company in the silence of decades
Your wife’s back pressed up against the wallpaper in a New York kitchen
Because she wasn’t obedient
a bloody lip and the silent screams you wished you could hear
to know you were still alive
You were stuck in the quiet silence for years before the big white took you
Under it’s thick embrace
And I loved you despite the rage
I can understand it now
That fear lights a fire under us whether we like it or not
I was not your baby girl for long enough
And you were scared that I’d turn out
Too Jewish in the nose
Perhaps worse yet, the shiksa I’ve become
Your eyes still stare back at me,
Your wife’s hands wrinkled by time, mind
Has forgotten most of what’s she’s ever known
But she remembers you on a beach in far rockaway
She remembers the dark eyes that held her in a Nat King Cole
Nature boy embrace---
The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved
In return
And you stare back at me
Not blankly but knowingly
My grandfather twelve years dead
Seeing me more clearly
Than I have ever seen myself
My grandfather twelve years dead
You live on in my Russian roulette stare
In the quiet prayer I whisper
through the dashboard of my car.