Pleasure Dome - Yusef Komunyakaa Wesleyan Poetry Series

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fall apart

      in our hands, the whole year

      stripped down to a penny’s

      seed grain, huddled under

      last night’s dogstar.

      Places like Portales & Amarillo,

      the only road out of town coughs

      blood & dust. Tied to the ground

      with songs, we sit along roadsides

      like grass waiting for blades.

      We clutch beads & pray our children grow

      blind, stitching closed black pockets

      while the stone-gatherers close in.

      Property lines & night-blooming cereus

      rush up to us, corrugated roofs

      remembering the sky in rearview mirrors.

      We leave voices buried under a sycamore,

      ashes in a vase feeding its roots.

      Following crops & shooting stars,

      birds whirl south before a rainstorm

      scrubs the stone floor

      of the Panhandle. Each day is now

      a yellow tractor rusting under a tin shed

      where we feel our clothes grow thinner.

      I take it back.

      The crow doesn’t have red wings.

      They’re pages of dust.

      The woman in the dark room

      takes the barrel of a .357 magnum

      out of her mouth, reclines

      on your bed, a Helena Rubinstein smile.

      I’m sorry, you won’t know your father

      by his darksome old clothes.

      He won’t be standing by that tree.

      I haven’t salted the tail

      of the sparrow.

      Erase its song from this page.

      I haven’t seen the moon

      fall open at the golden edge of our sleep.

      I haven’t been there

      like the tumor in each of us.

      There’s no death that can

      hold us together like twin brothers

      coming home to bury their mother.

      I never said there’s a book inside

      every tree. I never said I know how

      the legless beggar feels when

      the memory of his toes itch.

      If I did, drunkenness

      was then my god & naked dancer.

      I take it back.

      I’m not a suicidal mooncalf;

      you don’t have to take my shoelaces.

      If you must quote me, remember

      I said that love heals from inside.

       Copacetic

      Hey! Mister Bloodhound Boss,

      I hear you’re looking for Slick Sam

      the Freight Train Hopper.

      They tell me he’s a crack shot.

      He can shoot a cigarette out of a man’s mouth

      thirty paces of an owl’s call.

      This morning I glimpsed red

      against that treeline.

      Aïe, aïe, mo gagnin toi.

      Wise not to let night catch you out there.

      You can get so close to a man

      you can taste his breath.

      They say Slick Sam’s a mind reader:

      he knows what you gonna do

      before you think it.

      He can lead you into quicksand

      under a veil of swamp gas.

      Now you know me, Uncle T,

      I wouldn’t tell you no lie.

      Slick Sam knows these piney woods

      & he’s at home here in cottonmouth country.

      Mister, your life could be worth

      less than a hole in a plug nickel.

      I bet old Slick Sam knows

      about bloodhounds & black pepper,

      how to put a bobcat into a crocus sack.

      Working night shift

      panhandling Larimer Square

      ain’t been easy.

      A pair of black brogans

      can make a man

      limp badly.

      Lawd, this flophouse

      has a hangover—

      you just can’t

      love hard knowledge

      this way, Buddy Boy.

      Big shouldered,

      you’re still a born pushover,

      a tree climber

      in the devil’s skull.

      You hide behind panes

      of unwashed light,

      grazing with stubborn goats.

      Mister Big Shot,

      once you dredged down

      years towards China

      but didn’t find

      a pot of gold—

      chopped down a forest of doors

      & told deadly machines

      where to go.

      Now you’re counting taverns,

      dumbfounded

      by a hunk of oily keys

      to foul weather.

      Tangled in the bell ropes

      of each new day,

      scribbling on the bottom line

      of someone else’s dream,

      loitering

      in public courtyards

      telling statues where to fall.

      Why did you stay away

      so long? I’ve buried another

      husband, since I last saw you

      holding to the horizon.

      I

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