The Queen
 The Queen rides a bicycle down Main Street
Waves a gloved hand to hotdog chewing crowds
She looks like the tall blonde alto in choir
Head held high, back unnaturally straight
I notice I am only eight or nine
But armed. I dash out and race up to her
She stops. I see her face, pull the trigger
And wait for the explosion. There's none.

There's nothing left to do but run away
Pursued by the police and three furies
--I think now that she may be my mother--
The wonder is that I have no clue why
The wonder is that I've won the footrace
The wonder is she's dead and I am here

Machinery of Desire
Something recoils from this desire that makes
us one, no you to hear, no I to tell
I'll be only words beginning with L
like life love and all that, lion haunted lakes,
the lizard on the walk, at least a name
If not the lion, then the lion's roar
I'll be the river, the rain, where before
the R and L and we two were the same.

Let desire bloom in limbs to work and play,
the body's full machinery of delight;
let there be mouths to murmur in the night;
let there be ears to hear what tongues may say;
let there be you and I: may this
desire create a pair of lips to kiss.

Dining by Water
Breakfast at Pend Oreille, lake mist rising
dims distant mountains, stirs memories in
me: dinner two nights back in Yellowstone
lakeside, quiet water, a bold deer stand-
ing near--Sunday brunch in San Diego
surfers, sun bathers outside the window--
geese gathering at the door of a small
town river restaurant and bar--formal
nights on cruise ships, empty oceans on view--
long years of dining by water with you

Sonnet
I wish your words of love were only lies
that I had been a fool to have believed
for then it would be easy to despise
the liar and the easily deceived.
Or if what we had shared were only lust
it would be easier to live apart--
there must be tons of lovers I could trust
to take my body and not break my heart.

But this is love, and real, and was so when
you fled from me for fear that it was so.
And what I feel is love as it was then
within the wounded heart that watched you go.
I would not risk my heart with you again
but cannot find the heart to tell you no.

If Again
If one day we ache this way again, we
may recall of this only the pain we
felt at the inevitable ending
Let it be so--love lives in forgetting
when it comes that we've known these joys before--
we go on by denying what we know

Be My Duchess
When George got his jet, I wasn't jealous
I could say you can't count company planes
But I had to have my Lear none the less
Like now I need your naked body close.

They claim you "play the course" in golf--no way!
Kill this wimpy bullshit--I play to win
Long hard drives--my style in life, don't ask why.
It is with this intensity I woo

You get me going like no golf game does,
Make my motor race like my Mercedes.
My lust for ladies already laid dies
My need to make you takes my nights and days.

I've picked your picture's place upon my wall
For when you give in, as I'm sure you will

ATLAS
That Hera-hated trickster was long gone
For years the burden had been his again
His shoulders ached--but who would take it off?
He saw no Titan strong and dumb enough
His knees gave way--he sprawled upon the ground
The world would fall, his guilty conscience groaned
But somehow it kept spinning on its own

[Last posted 10/13/97.
See also Racine Decasyllabics and Notes in Passing ]