16 September, 2008

Out of Time

As an American…
Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong decade.
By the time I came of age
Allen Ginsberg, River Phoenix, and Miles Davis
Were already dead.
I couldn’t attend a reading, write a fan letter, or see a live concert.
If I’d been born in the fifties, I could have
Been a hippie
thrown coins at the raiding police at the Stonewall Bar
taken my clothes off in the first performance of “Hair”

As a Briton…
Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong decade
I could have had breakfast with Conan Doyle, lunched with Shaw, dined with Wilde.
If I’d been born in the 1880s, I’d have
married young
kept a female lover in the countryside
shocked proper society by becoming an actress
given Dylan Thomas his first pen

As a Non-Christian…
Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong millennia
Temples to the Gods have since fallen or been turned into “culture spots”.
My belief in Zeus, Athena, Eros, and Dionysis
Would not be the quirk of a weird girl who hates monotheism.
If I’d been born before Jesus’ calendar change, I would have
Hidden around the corner to listen to Socrates’ trial
Left my offering for Aphrodite to bring me love
Been executed for masquerading as a boy to act alongside Thespis.

Never Take Notes

Dedicated to Spot and Race

I sit cross-legged on the bed
and stare down at the alabaster
marble of his flesh, tracing
a new constellation onto
his back. His bangs cover
his closed eyes like a
golden gauze curtain.

My notebook lays open, but
blank at my other side, a
third wheel in the affair. I want
to describe him in detail so that
years from now, when gray hair
overthrows brown for superiority
and my memory falls victim to
Time’s ravages, I will find that
currently unborn poem and see this
moment and him as though I were
watching a movie in my mind.

Yet I have forsaken my pen,
letting my fingertips write nonsense
across his shoulder blades.

Waiting-A Velvet Goldmine Poem

Waiting

Arthur’s bent over his
computer keyboard
like the hunchback
of the Herald.
Long fingers waltz across
the minute letters
as his words begin
their evolution into
an article.

Curt dropped into
the office to take
Arthur to dinner, only
to find him grappling
with the fierce monster:
writer’s block.
Arthur’d given him a smile
weak as watered-down
tea and Curt could see
frustration dancing with
defeat in his eyes.

Curt shrugged, promising
to wait for him,
caressed his bangs away
from his eyes and took
a seat on a corner of
his desk. Arthur began
typing, the sound a
monotonous tone of ants
marching down the sidewalk.

By the time Curt started
nodding off to the murmur
of hunger in his stomach,
his lover giggled in coffee-induced
delight as he printed out
his work.
“My muse,” he called him.