Her caress
Was tossed
As if a baseball thrown
By an armless pitcher.
Her glance towards me
Was like a unplayed mandolin
On legs of a harlequin
In white silk pants,
Or like a crowed street corner
With a broken traffic light.
I try to find my lost fingers
And my lost blue colored sleeve.
The buttons were mother-of-pearl.
The air in front of me
Holds my car key,
But I have no car.
The air in front of me
Holds
A sack of useless paper money
That was my inheritance.
E MAIL TO DAMNISO LOPEZ
(THE INQUISITOR’S INTERROGATION)
During the interrogation,
I was asked no questions.
I said nothing, observed a man in gray suit,
Even his face was painted gray,
His eyelids a dark blue.
He was dancing a galliard
In the shadows of a statue
Of Galileo. I said nothing,
But my long answers
To the unasked questions
Were being recorded by a blonde secretary,
Her legs
Looked like a pale sunset
That had been speared by fancy dress ball.
Her toes
Had been anointed
By oil from an extreme unction.
I read my testimony,
Although I had not given any testimony.
The testimony stated
That I stood on a soapbox in Hyde Park
Gave speeches
That artists painted masks
On the ashes of those burned at the stake.
I had never been in Hyde Park.
I was a poet, not a painter.
The room changed into a circus.
I was sitting on the bleacher’s back row.
On the top of the circus tent
A girl glittered with sequins,
Walked upside down.
Her long blonde hair
Fell from her head, quivered.
On her wedding ring finger the diamonds
Of her engagement ring added to the glittering.
It was the engagement ring I gave her.
I was supposed to marry in two days.
It was then I began to understand
Where I had been for the last few hours.