Audience

Oh, the gray palazzo, veined
in crepuscular vines, still bossing
the Genoa cliff around, yet

weak as we’ll be from history,
when we stole in.
The cold tugging at me, inside

the sleeping bag, through the tile,
a gravity of dying.
You were my muse back then. You

who never ate a pomegranate,
never pitched a car sideways in the dirt,
never read Lorca.

The genesis of gods must begin like this:
both your hands gripping the marble
of the window ledge, so you could add a lover,

enormous moon filling you so, in front, hips
ham-smacking hips behind (what tented tribes
must hear each night), radiating a fibrous glory

of steam, sweat in static heat, huffing
quick, rough clouds into the porcelainic light.
What we must have looked like!

Yesterday, I announced all this
to a coffeehouse, then sat down.
I must have left something out.

How I dropped epiphanies for paychecks,
tired so of doubt, and in all good sense,
no longer take full measure of the sun,

how I am not sad, in the imprecise discipline
of family life, I am not one thing or another,
and despite a wife-and-children’s fears,

there’s no memory that owns me,
how I can’t be derailed by this, how
I neither stay nor run away. Yes,

I recall my wreck of hands, holes in every view,
horizon upon horizon, after your divine taking
on a bartender’s smoking Moto Guzzi.

Another time, I announced this, too,
but I think they want me suicidal, unmoved
at a joy flawed by all that happened.

So, next time, “Save me,”
I announced. All I did was live--
spent now of adventure,

my poetry of pleading--
“Save me.” Voice, so devoid of lullabye,
augurs silence. They stood. Applauded.