Wedding

1

In your wedding dress,

tight across the chest and

tinged yellower than the custard

it began as, I could be a continuation

of you in your twenties; as you

outgrew these years you

wrote them off to me, hair,

hands, hips.

The outdated photos, the dress

and your voice wavering in

and out place me in historical context

wedding on the verandah, wall

climbers in two shades of green, on

the table a flower that only blooms

once a year, glorious white.

On the ground, patterns of footsteps.

Everyone goes home tipsy.

2

In this fuzzy video you're young

again, under a deep blue velvet canopy,

you with tears, and him with the spreading

sweat stains of his white shirt.

You're 27 years old.

You exist here, inside this TV as

I've always wanted you to exist.

Whole. I look for myself, expect

to see a diapered baby or at least

a gleam in your eye --

you're young and whole.

3

This is the siren song I sing

perched on my bed, sheets the

colour of waterfall, stars like

slivered sunlight.

Beneath me are skulls, naked

and haggard, also socks, gloves,

fingernails, teeth.

I am also the sailor that dies time

and again, throws himself into

the torrents and turbulent waters

or else ties himself to the mast

and goes crazy with electric desire.

 

This song smells of decadence,

rotting fruit and death intermingled,

wine that is too sweet,

cheap perfume that still lingers

in an elevator long after its

carrier has gone.

 

Here are the details of the

latest conquest: my brown eyes,

yours that are forever changing,

a faulty heart and limbs.

 

4

1 dream of you a day after you leave

for Florida: you're on a highway that

slithers on forever, a squiggle on your

North & Central American map, charcoal-grey

and seductive with the promise of

shifting circumstance.

 

This is a premonition or a retrospective

of some sort where you don't come back

and three weeks turn into indefinite

time, something cosmic.

It's your persistent belief in Existentialism

that draws you to the South, the West,

anywhere but here, Montreal, midwinter,

frigid, raw and starless.

All I have of you is a mental picture of

the last time we were together.

You're intangible, not only metaphorically

this time, thousands of miles south-west

of me.

5

The road is long, luminous black,

slippery as squid, a trail of spilt ink

that stretches to my horizon and then to

the horizon of the six-foot-two man behind me,

and then out of sight.

6

Now she walks toward me

in all her splendour, now she backs

away and into the uneasy darkness.

Such is the nature of this woman

in my dreams.

 

SILKWORMS

 

 

At sunset, the horizon a

brilliant purple orchid, the

sky lit up goldpink

we dismiss this magic having

been caused by pollution with

fragmented smiles, glittering eyes.

This can't be cause and effect.

We are waiting for something

mystical to happen, a failing star,

the voice of God/man/monster

to drip out of the slowly darkening

sky. But in the silent anticipation

of waiting there is only misplaced

birdsong, several stars,

a satellite swimming through the

endless sky.

At midnight, the rain obliterates

all other sound, the squish of our

running shoes on the blackened

pavement. (I am twelve years old,

your rainy-day companion. I am

drenched and fluid, and you -- cold

water detachment -- dance me in circles,

in squares.

Later, outside the window, fat rain

drops collide and gather,

loud as abstraction.

You loom from the street below,

a black-paved river, a monstrosity,

goldfish and eel swimming at your feet.

In the morning my pet silkworms

have woven themselves into cocoons,

a series of peanuts fragile as china.

Love, love, you are nowhere.