Название: Pleasure Dome
Автор: Yusef Komunyakaa
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Поэзия
Серия: Wesleyan Poetry Series
isbn: 9780819574725
isbn:
by his darksome old clothes.
He won’t be standing by that tree.
I haven’t salted the tail
of the sparrow.
Erase its song from this page.
I haven’t seen the moon
fall open at the golden edge of our sleep.
I haven’t been there
like the tumor in each of us.
There’s no death that can
hold us together like twin brothers
coming home to bury their mother.
I never said there’s a book inside
every tree. I never said I know how
the legless beggar feels when
the memory of his toes itch.
If I did, drunkenness
was then my god & naked dancer.
I take it back.
I’m not a suicidal mooncalf;
you don’t have to take my shoelaces.
If you must quote me, remember
I said that love heals from inside.
Copacetic
False Leads
Hey! Mister Bloodhound Boss,
I hear you’re looking for Slick Sam
the Freight Train Hopper.
They tell me he’s a crack shot.
He can shoot a cigarette out of a man’s mouth
thirty paces of an owl’s call.
This morning I glimpsed red
against that treeline.
Aïe, aïe, mo gagnin toi.
Wise not to let night catch you out there.
You can get so close to a man
you can taste his breath.
They say Slick Sam’s a mind reader:
he knows what you gonna do
before you think it.
He can lead you into quicksand
under a veil of swamp gas.
Now you know me, Uncle T,
I wouldn’t tell you no lie.
Slick Sam knows these piney woods
& he’s at home here in cottonmouth country.
Mister, your life could be worth
less than a hole in a plug nickel.
I bet old Slick Sam knows
about bloodhounds & black pepper,
how to put a bobcat into a crocus sack.
Soliloquy: Man Talking to a Mirror
Working night shift
panhandling Larimer Square
ain’t been easy.
A pair of black brogans
can make a man
limp badly.
Lawd, this flophouse
has a hangover—
you just can’t
love hard knowledge
this way, Buddy Boy.
Big shouldered,
you’re still a born pushover,
a tree climber
in the devil’s skull.
You hide behind panes
of unwashed light,
grazing with stubborn goats.
Mister Big Shot,
once you dredged down
years towards China
but didn’t find
a pot of gold—
chopped down a forest of doors
& told deadly machines
where to go.
Now you’re counting taverns,
dumbfounded
by a hunk of oily keys
to foul weather.
Tangled in the bell ropes
of each new day,
scribbling on the bottom line
of someone else’s dream,
loitering
in public courtyards
telling statues where to fall.
The Way the Cards Fall
Why did you stay away
so long? I’ve buried another
husband, since I last saw you
holding to the horizon.
I hear where you now live
it snows year-round.
The pear & apple trees
have even missed you—
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