Having a Diet Cherry Coke with You
--after Frank O’Hara’s “Having a Coke with You” and inspired by Denise Duhamel’s title “Having a Diet Coke with You.”
is even more fun than sipping a kir
in the twinkling lights of a bistro
while awaiting our grilled quail
in pomegranate molasses
atop beluga lentils—which we never
do—some thousands of miles away
from home, or ringing in the new
year—which we did once—on a dance floor
under a constellation of disco lights.
Partly because diet soda is super gross
and we both know it’s super gross but
I secretly love it sometimes and you
don’t care. You would share one with me
without complaint, in a movie theater
or on the road, and all the while mostly
I would be hoping my next choice would be
better. Partly because things get bigger fast.
Outside our galaxy, husks of broken galaxies
orbit us, forever steamrolled by our carousel
of stars. Partly because at its core, the Milky Way
is powered by its own black hole
which starves for everything, even light.
Partly because here on Earth—our astral morsel
amid a universe of hungers—there exists your art
plus more art plus your great indifference
toward a splotch of paint on your shirt.
To me, writing a love poem will always
feel like borrowing some already borrowed
thing. I don’t care because when I’m next
to you—where I am lucky often to be—
the whirling assemblages of our bodies seem
like they could indeed once have fueled the stars.
Sympathy for
this devilish agony: a worn leash
whenever I recall the revelatory
solitude confettied by falling leaves
in El Parque del Buen Retiro
on the afternoon in Madrid
when I came across the Statue
of the Fallen Angel, upon
a fountain pedestal,
his tortured face gazing
up to the ideal home, away
from which he eternally
plummets. I remember aloneness,
but was not alone, having traveled
to the city with a man who bedeviled
me for years. I can feel how much
you want me to say I love you and that’s why
I won’t he said, perhaps not right
there before Lucifer, but elsewhere
and often.
Q: Did I love the bedeviler?
A: Yes, if this is this love: allowing the vortex
to pull me toward his collapsed heart.
I was Narcissus, enthralled. My face
looked so weird. I never did learn
how not to want love, only how
not to want his. This morning I woke
from some backwater dream and blinked
away the bright decade and counting since
that Spanish fountain scene. What
a strange souvenir to keep. I never
believed I would write any love poems,
but I wrote this one, which has
revealed itself to be a belated
love poem to me. A container
for a former grief, finally,
completely released.
Ship of Fools
--after the Hieronymus Bosch painting
I think trees never die, and so never will we.
Cool cruise—are we moving? Who knows. Let’s play
a game by dangling a pancake from a string.
We can drink and sing and chomp at the thing.
Cool cruise—are we safe? Let’s play
a game, which is a kind of prayer.
We drink and sing and chomp at the thing.
Did trees grow inside this boat or was the boat
built around trees, which are a kind of prayer?
Who knows. Those cherries look scrumptious.
Did trees grow inside the boat or was the boat
built like a wish no one remembers making?
Who knows. Those cherries were scrumptious
and aren’t we content sailing away
like a wish no one remembers making?
Surely something or other keeps us afloat
and aren’t we content sailing away?
The probably dying trees make pretty masts where wind rustles.
Surely someone or other keeps us on course.
The fool on the bough sees clearly the bottom of his cup.
The probably dying leaves make thousands of terrible sails.
A couple fights permanently like discord is their feast
while the fool sees me clearly in the bottom of his cup,
not humans drowning in the water, not starved birds in the trees.
A couple fights permanently like discord is their feast
which is a kind of a game, like thoughts and prayers, dangling on a string.
humans drowning in the water, starved birds in the trees.
I think trees never die, and so never will we.
Spoonbridge & Cherry by Claes Oldenburg
Water shoots out
the cherry stem and showers
the surrounding pool. a happy
sculpture in a postcard of a city
where it seems most residents
know someone who knows
someone who knows the couple
caught doing it after-hours, in
the bevel of that big spoon.
Audacity
versus
museum security.
And then? I never heard
the end. The two
were either arrested
or they fled, irreproachable,
all afterglow. Must I know?
Aren’t private moments
infinitely deposited
into the safe of any single night?
One kind of honesty is choosing
whichever version feels most true
and in so doing reveal a truth about
the retellers, about me and you.
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