Tasha Klein - "Wild Inlets"

In a room so long in need of light

(spiderwebs in all four corners)

you tell me about Joey Ramone

and abrubtly light your

orange neon butane lighter

this frightens the sighing

spirits clinging to your ankles

you twist their necks with

your pasty white fingers

I believe you purify them

everynight in the flame of

your lighter

dear angel,

you only listen

when you consider it

part of a right triangle

yet its part of a hole

really --

nothing owed

nothing owned

just a minus sign

beside a zero

One day I let the weather describe my sadness,

since then I've seen the shape of my heart

in clear raindrops, the clean joy

of water, the dark blue devotion of sky.

You always said it is a strange world we live

in, while turning over a blueberry pancake,

like a wise old lady, no longer thrilled.

Still, I count the days since I last saw you,

days where raindrops are lost to the wind.

The heart is a difficult thing to control

Just watch as it chooses that certain one

without asking for permission and I couldn't

stop it any more then I could the moon from

moving across the leaves of the roses in my garden.

Tonite I slip through the channel

to the wild inlets on the other side,

tonite I dream of you.

3

Sometimes we think we are seeing with

two closed eyes but the heart cells have

an eye for each thing they need to see.

And mine sees you following me with grace

and a shimmering silver soul, you, who

love like the sun, you, who keep a temple

filled with poems, golden, shinning, blooming,

calling to be plucked, pressed into memory

for the days when the sun, blind drunk and

crazed as any moon, faints dead away.

Last winter I held on

to words to keep from

floating too far away,

my hands too cold to speak,

my heart kept under a pillow.

And what are the colors of

the years that await me? And

what is death --

A thin alley or a big river?

Before you

I was a

plain vase

a dull box -

Now you fill

me with a

slender whisper

and into my

white, frosted heart

you etch color.

6

I used to kiss without love

cold, white, porcelain

Now I hardly dare breathe

under the day's dirty sole.

I sit, anxious -

the rough

bark of truth,

always a tree trunk

behind my back.

Nerves, naked

run a fingernail down

a blade of metal grass

and crave

the warmth of a cocktail.

About all this

I will write -

And much later

with jaw clenched

someone else will read and

think they understand.



x

search for a hand

tough yet tender,

a tongue for my navel

to plant the seed of

spontaneous inspiration

piano songs

each note

an hors d'oeuvre,

in a way

the silverware

shines sinister,

can the table

hold our

sweet weight?

are your eyes

c r a z y?

x

8
Today all warmth melted upwards

into dark plum clouds

you tore apart my heart,

like a piece of paper --

the rip, a

soft-throated theme of

evening birds and every

wind's lonely whisper.



9

The same nightmares,

same addictions to addictions,

same waiting to blend into one

shape into a solution,

made with love?

We are a poorly pressed engraving

not etched deep enough

Late at night we feel a

sweet burn and smell

the fragrance of age

do you remember how my

thighs embraced you?

No, I think not, for you

were the sea entering Athens

I woke you with

the heat of my body --

with me you were able

to breathe smoke instead of air.





10

cantalope burns

in a French poem

spirals of smoke turn into clouds

strung together like a string of

soft OOOOOssss

shower burns sleep's fantasy

outside on Pine Street

stained mattresses

complain to the trees

as they wait on the curb

for the garbage man and

his whirring motor hydraulic ram

and the flower garden lies

on the fringe of Holy Jnana

inside my lipstick screams:

PLUM! PLUM! PLUM!