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{the dear john letters (for j.f. & j.a.)} lisa gordon …when you turned away I, unable to invite and renew kisses, heard the note of my failure. John Asfour I Love is a mirror that hides no flaws. John Amen Do you remember when I was the holy of your audience squatting for hours on end in the motley crowd babies crying, lovely women swooning & me keeping an eye on your stutter reveal – do you remember it was me had you whole, welcomed & diced? I am the potted plant you decided was excess, the girl in tight jeans & roomy sweater toppled, a thought you barely had time for giving credence to, small room lost in the panoramic scheme of things. Do you remember asking me why & what for on the eve of realizing I was everything I said I was – even more so? Dear John it’s 3 in the morning, I see I’ve drawn the blind, under my eyelids there’s all these lost souls remembering love is serve & volley. You’re not here, you’re never here – keeps me honest, asymmetrical, hollering. That’s it – that’s the light penetrating the pall of the room… II What is it about beauty that lands me in the throat of grief? John Amen Dear John I’ve fallen out of my own orbit & the sky has skinned itself, clouds at war with love preening like a picture in a locket, humming posture & sedentary hope – dear John able is as able does, hope gives torrents of favour, life allows. Was that beauty I embraced or only a story of fever pulsing? Dear John all your footwork coming to a head & me inscribing blessings after the fact. We could tell each other it’s all right knowing it isn’t – land & fall short of recovery – touché. It’s much less about turning away than facing up. Dear John I’m on the brink of inevitability, this is where all the finest themes hone their raw skills. Now that you’re a rose in my teeth wilting, calm evacuation of my burning building – now I’m all that too, & friable… III Do not leave me in this wilderness! Or, if you do, pay me to stay behind. John Ashbery How high the house that John built stands – can’t reach every poignant detail, posters of Hiroshima on the walls, bowl of origami cranes by the window, faint light of the antique radio playing Roy Orbison – can’t reach but not for lack of trying as I count out the ways we do & don’t belong here, the ghostly flicker of cheap tea candles handsomely tattooing a chair, an arm, a mood – how deep in the cellar Reason hides trying on chaotic jocular for size, air trapped in its own throb, psyche cadaver rolled up in a Persian rug, our first words exchanged rattling the radiator, make-shift sleeping space cold & snow-blind, sure ground, shifting ground, tumblers – how Folly, the fiddler, keeps sarcastic time in the moment I’ve realized no stable leaving exists. Dear John something of a scandal has swept up unrepentant residual flak , released it in the form of cool ash onto the front lawn, sown seeds of nostalgia, thought better of that, screamed bloody murder yet remained unheard – dear John the tirades of our ephemeral hopes gone on a bender don’t bleed the way they used to, something I appreciate remembering how you had neither coinage nor humility enough to take the ineffable to gutsy heart… IV Feeder The body's discomfiture, bodies of moonlit beggars, sex in all its strangeness: Everything conspires to hide the mess of inner living, raze the skyscraper of inching desire. John Ashbery Tinderbox of virtues buried beneath the leafless willow – explosion to follow, the invisible voluminous with dry core, small ally of a salted heart, a windy compulsion, dreams stilled by onslaught of tired saying, wide love on the lam again. This morning I reveal what I am to what I'm not, make the necessary introductions, offer to translate the fine print of misapprehension, discover yet again the obvious – there is no translation for wired hope, dead star, frippery: touché. At the new birdfeeder first bird arrives, at least the first I`ve seen, a tiny blithe of a creature hovering for seeds, a mini pause of intention I drink in along with coffee & lost concentration on dog-eared book in hand. I think of waking you, of watching you sleep, of making love all day long as though we're twenty again, wet behind the ears, sinuous as vivacious mood swings, our bodies speaking in the tongues of neither god nor devil arriving – think how the day will be all arms & legs & the little pulse in departed bird`s breast off to sing his mating song, & the glimmer in your fine open gaze rivering our shared slippage, live albatross, joined hands on the cusp of springtime feral… V The brain is a messenger with blood on his hands. John Amen Dear John flicking stones over river left to right, a hand glider sampling palpable direction & how it’s come to this, looking to others for balance – dear John in plasticity pushing for commitment: well maybe tethering baloonish breath to mysteries & dead ringers is long on sticking, short on arrival – maybe dear John is bereft of a synonym that could lead to keeping comfortable beat? I make of how I speak of you a cozy igloo, only on the upside of signals like corrections go baffled forward. I tell a mess of homage to gods I don’t witness for hoping generic wrath keeps to unloaded highways – dear John this & everything more – mannerisms, homilies, health – handcuffed anomalies? I’m tracking a deer to the edge of the campground, holding my morning cup of dark coffee close to the chest whispering. You once again allot like dust like harmlessness like treason – dear John am I sideways or stung? The next cull de sac is where I see you running on empty, stepping flat-footed between the gap & the gape that’s been us slipping haywire – been the black thumb in the pudding, puddle of marked… |
