Too Much Eliot
I only listen to Dinah, now.
Also, Belafonte. Optimism plus
despair is the soup of our time.
No hope here. No sea. Some
degraded trees and always
a map that wants to become
something else. I wouldn’t know
a border unless I hit an ocean.
I stand dumfounded when
earth’s lip meets the sea.
There are songs I can’t listen
to anymore. I say it’s because
of the war. Or the plague.
Easier to blame the world
falling apart than to say it’s you.
Only a rookie admits
the source of pain.
Instead, I age. I fade.
No frontiers or bridges, here.
Just endless Aprils.
Sonnet for Julia in March 2020
I get shirtless in my courtyard and nobody minds.
Breasts in the wind like hound dogs, nipples as their
flopping tongues. In this brick and concrete city,
I dream of rolling green and ancient slabs of rock
through which one can travel through time. Basically,
the plot of that softcore show, Outlander,
where the woman is a healer and bigamist.
The places I miss are the places I’ve never been: Beirut,
Scotland, the South China Sea. What is the word in physics
when events co-occur? Months ago, I joked with
a mammogram tech who said, gently, moving me
into the cold machine: Tell me if this hurts. But it didn’t
or apparently my tits like abuse. We laughed. Her name
was Julia. And outside, the city wasn’t doing well.
***
Author photo courtesy of author
