My Ship Is Coming In*

555

Your expenses are extravagant
how is it you afford the night?
you mock the heart a thousand times
dancing with voluptuous vampires
on the edge of a silver tear

Like some beautiful princess
you visit the regions of heaven
and leap for love,
finally
leaving the universe
with only a perfect, painted smile

Hell is a place inhabited
by gloved clowns, practicing terrific religions
where mortuary nuns speak in fiery tongues
and loud foolish fashion comes dressed as modesty
there, you turn pleasure into silence
and disappear into the purple evening.
for AK


556

I was
a butcher boy who ceased
to be until
the kiss where
life revealed its true cost
When all this time I thought it free
was I wrong in dreaming?
Again I take all my fakes to you,
those costume diamonds
and amiable machines
and life-size apostle-prostitutes
and return them
to the world

Suddenly old I realized
that all along I belonged
to pleasure, I belonged
to the world


* For John Walker 1943-2011