THE GOAT
- after Edward Albee
I’m in love with a goat, the actor confesses to the actress with just enough artifice to keep us sane and sitting down. I may be the only one who wonders if the fur would be wiry or soft, if a tail is something I could get used to like a love handle or a birthmark, if those rectangular brown eyes have subtleties I’ve never considered before. A baa or a bark, I’m not sure what to listen for, but I imagine the breath ragged and sweet like lightly trampled grass, and a trembling that jitters through the entire body in a maze of hums.
There’s a trick I keep failing at: love, lust and longing thrown into the air like apples, a juggler’s feat of focus and blur, a balance constantly changing. Smashed fruit, empty hands, the very air an aftershock, how theatrical. I love her fingers, but not her toes. I lust for the way he cocks one shoulder. Longing for a piece of this, a prick of that, molecules shape-shifting into all sorts of impossibles, one toss at a time.
But how can you love a goat without leaving everything else behind? The first whiskery kiss a total commitment. No pretending it didn’t happen, that barnyard stink. The actor trips across the stage and, lo and behold, there’s a meadow, buttercups shining like floodlights. A perfect day to go too far, to let the inner satyr out, to strip down to blue sky. I feel so alone, he shouts at the back rows as if we were a wall slowly caving in. Oh, how I long to be found by the one who is losing ground with every foolhardy step. The lust that knows no bounds. I love the goat in you, I say, climbing on stage, being seen for the very first time. |
EMBOUCHURE
Her embouchure, lips around the word
itself, a horn, a French horn, slightly
elegant and absurd, the combination
giving him delicious shivers. The shock
of I love you, a complete stranger suddenly
seizing his throat. Those lips, that mouth,
shaping his sense of self. Darling! New
name, new him, flung from the clay
of her tongue, lying there beside her,
each rib listed in the book of... Love!
At last he is exclaimed, sung, the object
of her most passionate poems, the ones
that have disposed of Daddy and are
on their own, glorious, lips soft and
swollen, spilling breath across the naked page.
A whistle, a sigh, never dreamt he could be
so easily condensed, four letters, the future
a simple bliss of repetition, finding himself
again and again, in the billowing of her cheeks,
the gleaming of her teeth, the glistening spray
of how well he’s reprised. No wonder he’s
gone silent, giddy as a deaf boy on a carousel.
All he wants to do is savour, sip, and surrender
the beam of his lips to a kiss. This is how
it is, for now, forever, whichever comes first:
living for that call, that music, waking up
and waiting to be described: My sweet, my mouthful.
A slip of the tongue, perhaps, but one
that he swallows along with the dark secrets, the
mutters, the daily dose of advice and praise,
his heart growing twice its size, exquisitely
windy, a bloody symphony of balloons.
OOZING
The man in the moon gives one
of those wry romantic grins,
but you're sneezing.
You collapse on the bed,
washcloth spread across your face,
a Cleopatra wilt.
No amount of Miles Davis
will budge you tonight, your body
belongs to the common cold.
Day and night, the dark
forces of biology dog me. And now
you're oozing right before my eyes.
The cat on my lap sweet and fuzzy,
rippling with bacteria
as surely as the damp patches
down my basement walls, the yeasts
in my slippers, the microbes
on my fresh filet of sole.
The Doukhobors had it wrong
when they praised the inner light.
Wiser, the neurotics who sing
every pore as a tiny abyss.
I creep closer to you in bed.
No virus ever looked lovelier.
Just a kiss, a subtle bite, the moon
going green as graveyard grass,
diseases, with a squish,
colliding.
AFTER WATCHING MIAMI VICE
I'd expected the ballsy gleam of guns,
the gruesome head wound wide enough for
two fingers, the couple of car chases
involving bridges and Little Havana back streets.
I'd even counted on slightly shallow,
a break from all the Middle East intensities.
But soulless was a surprise, Sonny and Rico
drilling grates in the darkness,
what bits of light there were swirling like blood
down a drain, a sleek, slippery emptiness.
Leaving the theatre, blinks strobing across
the parking lot, the world drags dismal,
asphalt soft with too much flame, traffic
a jumble of air-conditioned tombs.
Is it any wonder I feel far away from you,
one of us still stranded in Miami?
The real crime had nothing to do with drugs
and delicate blue lines, but with the desolation
of cool, those casual cityscapes, the Gulf of
Mexico reduced to a shadowy wake.
Sure, the bad guys paid, stacks of sins,
but no-one found happiness at the bottom
of a stash bag, no-one devised a way
to fix the sun's piss-poor rays, to reinvent
the day as something finer than an August dog.
There's a saltiness in the southern Ontario air,
and a sense that this seventh day has more to do
with resignation than rest. I take you home,
one street handing me on to the next,
a pattern of wishes on their way
to pure ennui. Sonny/Rico, nasty
little blank stares. I might as well
be riding in the trunk, dead and
folded meanly in two, someone you
used to love before this dark betrayal,
this temporary vice of forgetting how to care.
rISE UP
Dumped on Easter Sunday, as mean
as irony can get. A friend e-mails
a cartoon of a crucified bunny,
a grimace turning its whiskers
frayed and sweaty. How far is it
from faith to ridicule?
Am I there yet, riding this bronzed turkey
into mashed potato hell, all
the butteriness making me feel slick,
deboned? If ever there was a day
when I needed someone in control,
this is it. Call it heartbreak, call it
hide the egg. Chocolate dark enough
to hide the bloodstains.
Once upon a parable, I had a special one
whose mission was to say sweet things
and help me not to feel dead. Rise up,
outdo the daffodils, he'd say, rolling
my fears away. But then earlier today
devotion switched to a dark cliché.
He reneged, strayed, crossed his eyes.
His last kiss still ricocheting
in my ear. And now I can't even pray
for wondering whether Christ had
wimpy moments, if dying for all mankind
would hurt more or less.
Once the grace has been begged
and the feast scoured, it's just me
and the ache. Two thousand years
of thinking about miracles.
If the resurrection angel were to creep in
and rescue me, I'd probably try to eat her,
gold foil sparking against my teeth. Is it more
honest to be alone or is this yet another
wailing stone, another pissed-off pose?
My heart is sinking
cartoon-like in my featherless chest. |
