Dream Song
Two rows of metallic buttons
Adorn double-breasted uniforms
2 sailors crept into my bed while I slept
And I dreamt of their jackets, snug
Against their chests,
We posed for a portrait
Of our dreamsome threesome.
No need to mention the actual word — pleasure,
Says the picture to the poem. I’ve been dying
All day long to tell you my dream song:
The ocean a tinfoil glint
The tinfoil an ocean glint
The glint a tinfoil ocean.
* * * * *
Born Again
Stoned on orgasms, held in a web
spun over my head by my right hand
while lying on the lower bunk
in summer’s Pas de Calais. Day off.
Protestants who worried over Catholic souls,
we sold bibles door to door.
From our team leader with secrets
I felt the graze of her gaze on my legs,
I grew lean, played guitar and drew portraits,
inhaled the scent of roses ascending trellises —
I was Wilde/Whitman/Walden/Voltaire
rambling in honeysuckle air.
At 19, I saw God in the sheen of oak floors,
sun-baked stone walls, saw God in their faces,
and just by thinking or feeling I could be inside
their mouths, their minds, their dining rooms,
singing praises, singing songs. Could transform
myself into anything: a bird, a spider, a pew.