RED MUSE POEMS  

At Hemingway's House

Shadows. Winsome. Shy.
Hemingway would put you in a novel.
You would be one of the lost generation
drinking absinthe riding a train to 
Madrid to meet Hem for a tryst;
he'd tell you, "hon, you're going to get
put in one of my books, the redhead with beauty
and style." 

But you are in a Pynchon novel chasing Arab gun-
runners through southwest Texas thinking they possess
the keys to happiness. Hemingway is jealous.
He boxes Pynchon in a make-shift ring on the lawn
and takes him down with a furious exchange.

"I'm a poet now Muse, I'm tired of telling the same stories
over and over. I am a poet because I cut out two-thirds of
my bullshit, just for you. A prose guy doens't write for women,
he writes for money. A poet writes for a woman."

 You are the muse of moment.
Moments when magical palmtrees sprout from thin air
and a breeze through open windows carries you to the southern seas/
            no one cares//no, they care.

Hemingway fishes in the lagoon of sleepless afternoons
While you are a pulpy red  with the dolphins
"You are a word I have lost to a poem. You are a poem
I have lost to a dream. You are a dream I have lost to a sea."