OBSESSION

You were obsessed
with everything Charlotte
whether Charlotte Mew
who caught you
sneaking out with your aunt
to the Isle of Lesbos
or your library boss
in Charlotte, North Carolina
or that diner that served
only grits for two bits
you married Charlotte
after a raunchy divorce
had six girls named
Charlotte or Carlotta
or such variant of course.

TOM

You let me ride
on your opera Bernini
road bike
all the way to Frisco
not missing a note
of La Scala arias
like "Norma"
you also loved
"The Ecstasy of St. Teresa"
as if you were built
by sculpture
in the Kultur of the Sixties
with no undies to wash
in the Missouri
only denim you took
to the guru of the Ganges
now you are free
offing the surfer
who lost his sunglasses
in the Pacific
by wrestling muscularity
after a Denver visit
though you find it hard
to breathe out your poetry
with a foot loose Rockies high
note in your saxophone case
now drawing in paper mache
to a Beat poet's portrait
of bathing on waters
in bubbles of fascimile words
by an appearance with Hocking.

DREAMING OF BURMA

Woke up in Paris
Burma is on stage
with the lady and tiger
next to the lion of Judah
whose visage has aged
in a shaggy mane
the waters approach you
with a once exiled Zion's fire
in your lines and veins
there was only one Burma
though so many understudies
in your century and ours
pressing on the firmament
of your dressing room
where so many desired you
to deflower your fragrance
in the perfumed drop curtains
you receive
no embarrassed applause
in a chance dream meeting
undercover of a Paris Match
with Sarah Bernhardt
which covers your empathy
as the medium swings
its affectations heart
catching up to the stage
for your cause is to act
above the pendulum
of your lover's part.

FIRBANK'S LAST DAY
(1886-1926)

Let's savor a laugh
from a complicated
novel's paragraph
as you approach
the last day
you lost a button
on the couch
yet bare felicity
in an unending
human comity.

JOSEPHINE BAKER DAY
(1906-1975)

Awake her
she sleeps in Paris

like Venus
with an emperor's glass

breaking next to her
not to embarrass

or harass Josephine Baker
in her golden goblet dreams.

REXROTH'S RULE
(1905- 1982)

Daddy of beats
hiding us in peace

brother,blowing horns
from your gravestone

yet signalling in a baton
the jazz thing

over a New York minute
of expectant crystal eyes

out of reassembled
floating sky words

by the kitchen closet
when quarter notes

got you more than a coffee
hot bagel and cream cheese

nothing in uniform
cannot communicate

the void for no masters
in your anarchic state

away from the animal skins
of Hegel, Engels, Marx

in the materialism of papers
relocated in Berlin

found after Archangel's
blood of snows

is cleaned up by the broom
sticks of history's paradoxes

and you, K. Rexroth
all our bound to hear you

at the Blackhawk
your music in each moment

and movement
for freedom.

ART CATALOG

Extra dosed on Picasso's
blue period.

into a rushed atmosphere
in line for hours

techniques and pictures
in portfolios are missing

when the museum is quiet
and all etchings quit

their walls
of almond eyes

and knowing the partial,
official and artificial flowers

are not in a reality
for the out of sink tapestry

all ephemeral tours
are canceled for Warhol

Redon and Olitski
are misfiled

all fabulations, categories
not calculated,undercut

colors are unbalanced
object d'art undercut

images untraced
in action paintings.