The hiss of dark, the music of concrete, the smell of horns
rise in a breeze to the rooftop of a Tegucigalpa
hotel. Oh, and I should mention the melancholy.
I’m smoking to get the taste out.
The lives of the dead are only the beginning.

I saw a woman late at night walk alone, heard her heels
tap the secret even the rock street buckled and cracked and broke
windows and tilted signs.
This was not a natural disaster but the natural way
things are after laughter from the pool hall dies.

The clump of boys had gone, the shutters closed, girls on the stoop
dissolved into night, and even the pimp who backhanded her across the face
slammed his car door and drove away.
She stood alone on the curb, with a hand raised to her cheek.
Oh, and have I mentioned the melancholy?

She waited a long time still as a rock or a rabbit,
and then she dropped her hand from her face and walked around the corner and leaned
against the wall and from here I saw the bare
tops of her titties as she talked to someone
I couldn’t see. Just so you to get the picture.

I’m on a rooftop four
stories up leaning on the brick wall smoking a cigar and drinking
rum from a plastic cup. Rebar sticking out of the wall and out of the roof and the low
clothes lines make walking and drinking even harder so I lean
my elbows on the concrete and lean out over the city like a dumb king

with my friends also drinking and smoking and wobbling over this wild city
on the night—oh, and have I mentioned?—on the night
before we are to fly away again which is when we hear the tap-tap of her high heels.
We look down, lean over to see
her start to walk down the middle of the street,

tight pink tank top and blond hair on brown skin shoulders and more leg—
she has no pants on,
only a thong and her round buttocks are bare flanks like a magnificent horse
she’s riding toward the corner of the broken street or the next corner or the next
where she’ll stand to flag a cab—more

leg and hip and bare bottom than anybody
has ever seen in the history of the world.
Catching the cab won’t be hard
or maybe it will if they know her and know she never pays
except with skin, skin to the night and city like a dare

or a gasp—nothing will be nothing, blessed be nothing,
dust, death, but not tonight for her—
her bare legs and high, bare saying hey! hey! like the call of ravens with each
scrape of her heel and each quiver of her high, bare—each
step says life, says take me but be warned for I’m brave and bad and soon

I’ll be gone—each quiver of her high, bare—
gone. And then she was—did I mention?—around
the corner and even the sound—have I mentioned?—gone
and all of us blinked sex and felt it, hey—the melancholy?—felt
her high bare gone hollow like a shadow of only

phantom floozy courage passing, her high bare
unguarded womb and me without a thought.
Whose mind can get that big anyway? Something has to break
when a woman walks wearing no pants late at night down a city—
did I mention?—a city street wearing no pants.

We saw her from the rooftop of a Tegucigalpa hotel.
We slid back our drinks and blinked our bent selves back from the wall.
We leaned toward the stairs and our safe beds
and oh, sure, yes, listen—did I mention yet
(her steps, her steps, I will, I will)
—the morning?

Rain

A flash on the ridge lengthens shadows, dims the wire
of ravens, and you retreat again tonight.

Madness drives us to bury seeds in what solitude
and night reveal—or perhaps it’s only vigor.

Born in longing, words come to life in whispers,
the first truth I know.

What more could I want? Rivets?
Those, too.

Trembling and vertiginous, our little genius
explodes. Sparks fall and I seek shelter where I can—

naked on the wing, a hero in wet socks—
but I’m flattering myself again.

It’s raining stars, love, I’ll say, and maybe you’ll hear me.
Maybe I’ll feel you near.

————————————————————————–

Caveman

Cold feet on stone from bed to bathroom
I stand peeing like a horse and assess
my capacities. Never an eager fighter
but fierce enough and good in groups.
I mean I’m not the strongest or the best
hunter, but know who is. The air
from an open window tightens my gaze
past stars and by the time I walk
the dark hall naked back to bed, I’m roaming
endless country with bands of men, drunk
on sky, fire, food, and the women
eyeing us warily. My sleeping wife
turtles her head from blankets and says, What?
Heavy on the mattress, my body loves
the silk of her skin but I’m old
and have been talking to myself.
She moves closer and I float in gratitude.
Here’s where I’m happy as I’ve ever been,
this moment before the prick of irony
and my own falling laughter that comes
with it. As far as caveman days go,
I say, full heart, out loud in the dark,
I think I’ll be all right.

———————————————————————–

Alfonse

In the cobbled alley
behind the what’s-
the-name-of-it building,
you know the place.
with the arches, she’ll open
her purse, fly you
to New York, Paris
if she likes you.
The world is sad,
she said, and so am I.

Wind blows and purple
jacaranda petals fall.
Hey, I was down
and out in Monterrey,
now here. You’re the richest
gal in town, I said,
tip like Frank Sinatra!
Fifteen in some cultures
is marrying age but
what did I know?
I wanted money,
I wanted love, blackbirds
at dusk, a gold tooth
I could pull and sell.
All that trouble
just to mess around
in bed, walk the Champs
de Mars, sit on benches,
wait for what might happen
and what might not.

Alfonse, I think
she thought my name was,
although she never asked.

Shadow and sunshine are equally shy
across the faces of the young French lovers
on the bench in the plaza near the Callejón de Besos.
The wind cools the sweat on their brows but raises
some uncomfortable questions: like where did they go—
those warm moist smells that held them close? Even their breath
floats away with the shouts of children and clusters
of red balloons.

Her nostrils below absurdly large sunglasses flare
as they did last night, when fully-submerged in her,
he lifted her off the bed and — clinging to his neck
and waist as he carried her onto the balcony and down—
she came again and again with each step
down the stairs and across the beach until the sea climbed her legs
to her chest and neck — and the two of them floated
apart like jellyfish.

He’s sprawled on the plaza bench like a crucified Christ,
arms spread, legs straight and ankles crossed,
eyes closed and face to the fickle sun. The ground rumbles
beneath the cobbles. He wonders what she remembers, if
she remembers, and where they are now. He wonders
about a cigarette and where the tunnels go. She looks past
the cluster of shops to the sky so blue it wants to assume her—
is that the word? Or it already has — and she’s hanging up there
like that passing cloud, pretty and strange, impaled
on the steeple.

Breakfast? he says, and looks at her.

With lovers, even young French lovers,
there are no questions but meaningless ones, and all
the answers are meaningless as well.
A stray lock blows across the swell of her lips, across a face
that betrays in stillness everything irrepressible
and equivocal in her desire. Soon men
might jump from planes and steer parachutes for the plaza, bombs
explode and a truck roar past trailing smoke,
but in their perfect state of unknowing, his and hers,
of never knowing, there’s only this
that matters —
when she turns her face to his.

We like everything
to go according to plan
and when it doesn’t—
we hope that somehow everything’s
connected to a bigger plan
because if it’s not—
and we’re left standing on the plains at nightfall
in a big wind with hands in our pockets—
aren’t we fools again?

We know sometimes
it’s the same Great Notion
that hoists magnificent stones and builds a great pyramid
as destroys a city and makes ashes of children—
but that doesn’t help.

The fatigue, dear me—
as we lie in our beds at night
protecting ourselves from a painful past
and groping for what—
we don’t even know what—
we lost back there.

What do we need to do
to be happy? To be grateful for what is
and to dream of better?

Stare at the ceiling and listen
to the lunatic bird in the yard,
feel, in the stillness that follows,
furry despair, his unblinking eyes
on our skin that changes as we sleep, strangely,
to a vast stretch of beach lined with palm trees,
a sky, a boat, a sea so clear the stone that drops from our fingers
falls forever into emptiness.

Then, because we can—
because somewhere past where we can see
we hear a dog bark, the drip
of a faucet or the song of a man selling avocados—
we lean toward shore
put on our traveling hats
tilted just so
to give us that jungle cool.
That’s right, we step out—

Doesn’t the light delight?
Last night, uncountable cruelties—
but today?

——————————————————————————–

All I Need Today

The sunlight on the rock makes the birds sing
about something that happened before we were born
and far away — or maybe their singing brings the sun
and their song is about something here today.
I could argue either way.

And passionately!
I live in the middle of endless circles of dogs
barking out past the colored houses on the hill
to the ragged edges of the continent. Do dogs bark at sea?
Across ice caps? The mysteries go on and on
in search of shade, like a mad dog walking loops
in hot sand. We’re donkeys lifting our hammer heads to watch.

Two girls descend the alley in matching red, words
tumbling softly from their mouths, making
bubbles on the cobbles. Some mornings emptiness
feels just right. The girls hold hands; the bubbles are soap.
Bells ring and ring on Guadalupe — two boys going wild
in the belfry — which besides coffee and a bowl of fruit,
may be all I need today.

—————————————————————————–

In Teguz

She asks if the streets
are lined with bodies
and laughs. A few
but I step over them
on my way for coffee.
Does anybody care?
Mothers, mostly,
but they grieved
long ago. It’s windy.
A front with mist
makes everything clean.
By evening, the bodies
will be gone, and so will I.

Someday I want to be an old gringo who didn’t die young
crawling the tracks counting ties with his nose outside San Miguel, falling
off a pickup barreling into Vera Cruz, shot against the sea wall
in Mazatlan, staked to the ground in the Sierra Madre or pummeled
to death outside a Cuernavaca bar on the night of the Day of the Dead.

Someday all by myself on a bench in the high shade eating
cheese croissants from Starbucks, I’ll remember the heavy-haloed
heat in a tent on a crowded beach with a hundred-peso whore, tender
as a fawn, the pretty mouths of women I never knew
whispering past mariachis loud as trucks. I’ll remember

standing tiptoe ready to die with the one I loved,
surf to our chins, lifting and falling under screaming stars,
the salt on our lips melting icecaps–
how we wanted to change the world, how we did,
or thought we did, and that was enough.

Someday I’ll be an old gringo on a bench wearing the suit
I bought for my mother’s funeral six months before she died
listening to the song of an invisible man piling up the high stone walls
bigger than any mortal voice could possibly be. They say
to know the gods, you have to die, but have they ever watched

the girls pass by? Ever seen in their faces the others, long gone—
their eyes blinking around corners, peeking past lampposts,
staring out windows–or felt in the sway of their hips
every child that’ll ever be born already inside them?
The plaza gets crowded fast. Look how the roof

breaks open to dust and starlight, feel the ache of doves
and the lean of the earth toward dawn. Watch morning
slant onto the sidewalk where women gather–
are there any dreams as vivid as the color of their skirts?
as the sun through shards on the old white wall, red

bougainvillea through broken glass and green
hummingbirds tasting the flowers? The sun, the sun again!
The rain, the rain again! Her face, her face again! A word,
the same word again! Don’t ask what’s become of the young
in their graves. The answer’s in the old songs they never knew.

The answer’s in the cluster of men in the shade whose language
turns stone to blood, damp as dew. It’s in the hole where we fell
in the dark and saw light. Once on an empty bay
I spent a long night waiting for a woman who never came. The waves
held the moon, the sand a dead shark the size of my arm.

I lay down on her mattress that smelled of saddles
and felt the sea rise through the glassless window of her shack.
I don’t remember waking, I don’t believe I ever have.

This way, you say, through those doors
over the line, our papers stamped—
that must mean something. When in doubt,
breathe, take your seat with the rest
of the hunters and thieves.

The people here are different—
not just their hats—they know nothing
of the ashes behind us, the sad
world we’ve invented or how far we have
left to go. It’s warmer—blue around the bend.
Volcanoes bind the bay on the other side—
another place we’ve never been. I should
have kissed you more, made a home
safe from tigers.

Maybe this time, you say. The breeze
is fair — pelicans soar and fall
and float like boats. It’s afternoon
on an endless day. Across the sand,
waves of heat turn light to dream, and I—
for a step or two — believe you.