Picking Out the One (1)
Picking Out the One (2)
Here’s the same photographer. And here’s the humor,
subverting influence, as wrong as these maybe,
in picking out a target, about the prayers and billets-doux
and native heat. The words in rose-grey envelopes,
and their locations on the tongue, shading the dove-drawn
watermarks, would not themselves have led the teams
among the sites, convicting a man for dreams, for this
ad-libbed street-corner enterprise, a man imagining
his own warmth -- old enough, he thinks, to die,
or rush the hearts of company -- imagining his warmth,
repeating in the straights or at the elbows,
the musks as is come out from under furniture, playing
the range behind the further range and uniforms.
If only the door below -- if only a neighbor’s brakes
he tells himself --if only a finger musing
all the nerve to tell -- He could believe in anything!
In the doors below, blown wide by gusts, in an hour
maybe, and an inheritance so used, believe that the snows
were mostly in the wines and lobby gossip,
or in the eyes that watched and locked-in on the dance-floors,
expecting the ghosts would reappear, refusing
memberships, refusing a Sunday anywhere, expecting
the home-made bass and tin-lidded percussion
/ the fantastic ushers urging all their likes across. And
for seconds, it seems, the images come cheap. And
aches in the bruised joints. And latencies -- ascribed --
the stretch of local interests /urging the land
as lives condense to give-aways. Just so, he thinks,
the hometeam's over-matched -- dowsing stars
or seeking out themselves on surfaces. Just so he thinks,
a large man weeping like a kid for open arms,
skimming the magazines and zeroing ads for the enhancers,
urging his heart to leap and see about itself. Their
voices will sound like winds to him, or sound like voices
in some hyper-audience -- even as winds
seem emptying, intent in their ways with him, a man
depending on a wish, weeping for open arms,
consenting to place and esoteric forms of benefits,
because the steps down, the forms of pleasure
and consent, must strike the heart as dangerous,
insisting in him an inessential comeliness,
against the flood-lit limbs the winds
made hazards of, the sounds an orchestra
takes up, such sounds as Mars-light
worked its will on them.
Imagine a cellist at his age. Imagine
the last piano,
the sweetly traveled and season-courted sums.
He sips his own materials,
an absence borne with more than simple interest,
with nothing to gain
from minds made up on mutinies, or so
he likes to tell himself,
hoping to be observed and changed again by sense,
and attractive after all,
savoring his own to-do, a business
like himself,
defying the dream-wooed gesturings.
A man survives
for all he’s understood of audience,
an expensive groceries,
survives the music after all,
and all the more
appealing, inviting
the kids
to think a man was
something
once.
If only the bowed strings, the swifts and jays
repeating
wagers to their liking, causing
the light to pitch,
if only the shapes on frosted glass
or moving about the house,
the colors of leathers stitched to leather-colored
backing,
would strike the heart as neutral,
leading the gaze into
/and home, from every
changing state,
he might believe
the dancing
then.
He might believe in souls, arriving out of smoke,
in coastal vehicles,
reminding him now of scores,
assuming
the steps to be the morning’s post or travelers,
picking
out the one, commanding a man
with options
and subzero paradigms, considering
his partnership
in all their smothering exercise. He
lifts
a moistened finger / a leafy stick
to test the wind.
And so the music left, the lingo
of campaigns,
the shoes made animate, play
their parts
in dreams -- and in
the rose-barred
rendezvous.
And in the smiles to come, the towel, like one more bout
with prophecy, wrapped
greyly at the wrist, the grey wrist
sweating and pointing cause,
a scripted minor character, adventuring
himself, to see some quarrel
over with, but confused by the furscents,
and by the rose
above the hearth, by his own
gloved hand,
held up above the chord, no less
convicted by the scripts,
and aching just to lift one bead
in the old places, when
they were picking out the one --
smoothing their pockets
drawn from all the added weight,
and owing acquired tastes
to him, after so many
suppers out, and to him
this palate
taken to school by
street-fare.
Over 700 of Robert Lietz’s poems have appeared in more than one hundred journals in the U.S. and Canada, in Sweden and U.K, including Agni Review, Antioch Review, Carolina Quarterly, Epoch, The Georgia Review, Mid-American Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review, The Ontario Review, Poetry, and Shenandoah. Seven collections of his poems have been published, including Running in Place (L’Epervier Press,). At Park and East Division ( L’Epervier Press,) The Lindbergh Half-century (L’Epervier Press,) The Inheritance (Sandhills Press,) and Storm Service (Basfal Books). Basfal also published After Business in the West: New and Selected Poems.
