Chelsea Night

CHELSEA NIGHT

I

You, Lautrec woman,
pasteled on the tablecloth
in the cellar café
reading poems

The green absinthe light
casting shadows
on face and hair,
black snakes toothing the air
between puffs of cigarettes
and coffee sips

The stir of arsenic spoons
in cracked cups,
papers shuffled in your hand
circled by long candle faces
chiaroscuroed on the walls

Puppet strings
pasted on
a voice in motion.


II

We wandered 
down that Chelsea street

seeking a place
in the alleyways

away from
city lamps

hiding from the moon
and unshaded windows

a place where
no stars dwell

Only where
your eyes

could light
my night.


III

Standing by the window
to the city,
all the lamps burning
mirroring the sheets,
towels, bedclothes
strewn about the room

We’re framed,
dimensioned as are 
the buildings

focusing our 
past and future lives.

Is this where Dylan
broke flasks of Welsh,
bursts of glass fury,

the wild maidens
sang a chorus
to his green and easy loves?

Is this where
all the fierce poets
came like roaches
out of the walls,
patterning their rimes,
their rimeless motions
on the pillows
of this amber
Chelsea night?


IV

You ignite small
novae in the ganglia
of my mesoflesh.


IX

My snowflesh melts
          into your burning earthworks . . . 
You are fire, I ice.




X

I cannot feel
the sun anymore.

The wind does nothing
to my skin.

My feet kick stones
but only the stones are moved.

The scream of gulls
starts swimmers from the beach
but I am still.

Only the long fingers
of a Chelsea night.


XI

On the back
of old envelopes
on windowsills
and doors
on fences
on bricks in alleyways
I’ll write my love
of you.


XII

I write my poems
on the inside of my skin

Incise them on underside
of palms, of breasts, of eyes.

I am all poem
all words and metaphor.

My fingers are all quills
scratching graffiti odes of you.

I will scribe no more,
your form is poem enough for me.



XV

I did not know
why Vincent cut
his ear

went mad under
the sky of Provence.

I did not know
why he sought
to merge his brush
with his blood

his eyes
with rainbows
of the field

with sunflowers,
        sunlight,
        sun . . . 

I did not know
until I dissolved
in you.


XVII

I’m angry at the table
between us—
the forks, the cups,
the knives.

I’m furious at the clock,
the stoplights,
wires of phones,
and working hours

At the failure
of flesh to merge,
of atoms to join.

Oh, if I cannot in you
dissolve,
we are separate 
forever.




XVIII

I pick up the phone
to hear your voice,
thinking I heard
it ring

Your voice buzzing
in my brain.

But you do not call,
only the recorded sound
breaks the wired monotone
Hum-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m

You were “gone”
when I called,
when I sought 
the caresses of your tone

And now I’m deaf for you—
Oh give me back the gift of sound.


XIX

The morning eggs
       are lies
The toast is just
       a fake.

Then why does
the clock say,
“Never, never, never . . . ?”


XX

Etched into my soul
is only one Chelsea night.


XXI

Perhaps love is only
as long as a single Chelsea night.