One Night Out

I have third generation lips that suck up
the really salty ocean, spit out the blood
of Germans and Poles. These national borders
course methodically, blue and red, through
my white body, through my bowels, bladder,
and lungs, and wedged at the top, speared
on the sharp tip of my spine, I have an airy,
lofty space to fill. Inside that space I have
a hateful pride, these lions that roam from
gate to gate. They lick their chops for me,
leave their traces in the dirt but never show
themselves in truth. Wherever I go, the pride
follows, confines my days, even in motion,
to the veal-calf-strangle-pen when no one
throws a keen or wanting eye my way,
when none of you here, nameless but
in this dark bar, this withering crowd,
bestows on me or envisions in me any part
of yourself. We found each other here
and we all reek of fleshy shell, sound out
to theme tunes of grand delusions. We
separately crossed the crowded doorway,
stand apart at the bar with this familiar
buzz of hope she or he will be here this night,
The One, or maybe they'll appear between
here and home. But my own best apparitions
last only an instant, slip again through
my numb fingers. For years, twenty four
before, one hundred, ten thousand, I've
missed the quick plum blossoms, cherry.
I've slept through the northern lights. Still
I have risen again, day in and day out, risen
and set out to warm the stubborn cold seats
and stone tables of my own deserted
parthenons inside, my coliseums. But the tincture
bottle of my historical essence is really dry.
My family tree has been sawed into
insignificant figurines that line my walls
and hindsight, just as the shadows of you
around me fade into yesterday's envelope.
And each night is this one night, standing at
the window, the open, lonesome window
high up inside every crowd.

(1991)