BLACK JACK GUM

We’d been collecting bottles
Me and Sean
And we were on the way
To the liquor store
Three cents a bottle
A nickel for the big ones
The wind was raising
The hair of the trees
Into beehive buns
Just like Mom wore

The liquor store
Was as dark as Aladdin’s cave
And you could hear the hum
Of the many machines
That cooled down the Cokes
The RCs the Nesbitt’s the Sarsaparilla

To the left beyond the register
Was the candy counter
To the right I don’t remember
But in the center
Smack dab in the center
Was a black rack
Covered with toys
That would go horizontal
In their cellophane bags
As the rack spun round
And round

I got my balsa airplane
To do loop de loops
Sean didn’t care
He was buzzing on RCs
And Black Jack gum

MY SKIN

Can you believe my skin,
the things it asks for?
I don’t need to tell you.
I know you have skin too.
Kisses of the unforgotten,
silence of the hours;
I do these things to my skin
to make my mind remember.
If you tell me things,
things I do not know,
things unimaginable by me
I will love you just for that.
Your rarest dreams,
your places revisited
will sink into my skin
and I will be you
as the bird is its song.
I’m so happy now.
Your life has given me these words
I missed but wasn’t looking for.
I’m so happy now
a rare new life has settled
on my skin.

A SWALLOW

With long, long pointed wings and a forked tail,
this one consumes the air and devours
the sky in bites the size the moon would take.
A tropical prism of a creature,
with the metal lines of a jet fighter,
prettily, it whistles, things get easy
when you let them, you move as ably as
the wind, you get full by eating visions.
Up and down, it climbs the out of reach air,
singing how it is ready for love.
It tosses down great gulps of thick perfume
from those urgently amorous flowers.
It endures the sudden gust and it knows
there is no way around common beauty.