Writers, Artists, and Poets of Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry

For Jonathon

I.

From out of nowhere the stars
And stars for miles burn their time
In an allegiance of desire,
A gift of longing

That is constantly being born.
Music alone remains, a guitar
Stringing the moments
Into some kind of semblance.

What can I do for you,
The only son of a deserter who gave me
Goosebumps and vertigo by moving too fast.
How often you wished on stars

That were already dead.
With all of your effort you will not burn
Like those stars, shining years later
In the atmosphere falsely,

The beggars crawling from their shelter
To count on you.
Perhaps one day the lovers you left dry
Will come to moisten your black mouth

With fruit and rain,
To finally conclude the red
Initiation of your kiss.
For you there will be no shortness of breath.

For you there will be no singular suffering,
Only the tide receding permanently,
The brown and purple of nostalgia
Tainting the strange and familiar.

You will not be like those others
Eating their hearts out for religion or love.
Your hounds, damp with nature,
Will prove loyal. All of them.

II.

The future is everything.
I'll give you divinations.
Overwhelmed on some gold November night,
You will enter a chapel for warmth

And hear Ave Maria sung from the balcony
By an intoxicated, melancholy man.
You will laugh, sing a few lines,
Wipe a solitary tear from your eye.

It will not be your beloved who discovers
The constellation of beauty marks on your body,
But a nameless whore
You met at the fruit stand on the corner.

The past is everything.
I'll give you recollections.
Back when the sidewalk cement on Main Street
In your hometown had yet to dry,

When you were still a humble boy
You carved your name with a stick
And left one handprint.
This was your only immortality.

Years later the recurring scene
From that Plutonian summer of our reunion
Is one lone sunflower towering
By the kitchen sink and falling

With the glass over and over.
Picking it up each time I felt small,
Like Alice when she obeyed the note
That made her shrink.

I continued that way,
Unable to reverse alienation
As another raw season
Healed over the last.

III.

In the hour of confrontation and cleansing ,
Your skin was soft as the feathers
On the breast of a newborn bird,
As the down of a dead dandelion

Children make wishes on.
Your hand reached mine in a gesture
Of understanding. Shapeless and cool
My palm felt against yours,

My tears staining the ivory of your sleeve.
Your hand reached mine,
The hand of the failed lover.
From beyond the walls

I heard a pigeon with two hearts,
A restless dog in the orange groves
Where the fruit leaned gently,
Polished by the moon.

I heard the old Spanish woman sing softly
On the front steps,
The tapping of a warped screen door.
I heard all the questions your silence was hatching.

I hardly moved from the edge of the bed
Before daybreak came.
South forever.
The cawing of immaculate black crows.

How you slept soundly on and on
Into the dark courtyards and rising gray pillars
Of the next evening
Without once changing position.

In this I understood
The sum of your inheritance,
How the mornings were ashen
When we awoke already settled

Like the frozen figures of Pompeii,
Unharmonious and overcome
(Meanwhile the sisters warning me again
Of shadows and tragic adventure,

Mockingly in one ear).
What a comfort they were.
Why this burning then?
My meditations were simple, my confessions candid.

I was soft in the negotiations.
I did not censor the obscene.
I made music out of you.
I made poetry from you.

IV.

The passage of time witnessed
The skull evolving, the warm-blooded
Creatures blooming and growing extinct.
The human touch proved to be a dangerous act.

I am knee-deep in the history of things,
Contemplating the conclusion, the nature
Of farewells and chance meetings.
From out of nowhere the stars

And stars for miles burn their time
In an allegiance of desire.
Here we go.
South forever.