RED MUSE POEMS  

Some unattainable fire in the distant rages
between useless armies fed on the memories of youth.
Baths left unattended
Cold water with bits of tears and wine
Scented flowers like garish orange planets
that have invaded our little space.

Some bird on the branch that never flies
its eyes peeled for its devourers; a hint
of unforgiveness in the cold air, stiff, and
filled with the barking dogs who have found
their prize. They are avaricious for their prize.

Some loveliness led out into an empty room
where foolish poets roam waiting for the key.
He sits naked in a chair, with bedraggled sadness
falling through him; an unattainable distance.

A paradise in his mind; the hint of rats in his room.
A splendid erection of buildings conjured in a moment
A terrible song that has long died in his ear.
So, he says, he will not have her. She was, no doubt,
            a Dona de Conception who had bathed

in his memory for one summer. She had blissfully died
in the early 1800's with visions of all who had had
            her, so softly and discreetly in the fold
of golden hills. A Dona de Conception. A bath. A window
with sad eyes looking out toward the water. A moon that
sits languid in a sky of red carnelians. A deceitful taste
of some unidentified liquor purchased at a cheap store
            run by the discredited sons of terrorists. 

A vast ocean of unapproachable desire never once unbuttoned.
A clear lake of infinite want kept wordless and dry.
Not even a kiss for the midnight ride of a heart that
has lovely holes in it, where the laughter blows through.

She was not even a touch, not even a look.