USA

In Dreams She is Permitted
to Return to a Room

Sometimes my life attends me
riding up in the glass box
air pinched chairs few
a hair hook reels us up

the room says there there

hand making a face out of coins and tears
hips make one hip there
there

the air is a still
ravaged
still
secret-heavy like the plans of earth

outside s forge
and forgery
ugliness in the machines

O hoist
us again gin
sweating
of clear grain

Inventory at Dusk

One dark blue hospital gown
whose necklace of snaps shone
like a tiny constellation.
One vase of pussywillows
and another of long-stemmed swabs’
soft buds aswarm in contemplation.
Slumberous music, cello
(although he played piano). So,
one well-intended notion.
The small T.V. turned off
so there’s a frame around the dark.
Plenteous devotions.
So at first I was not needed.
I knelt under the sky blue sky
of the lips, and traced the final motion
where the hand had curled
like a fern re-furled
to its first consecration.
What could I say to you, loose soul,
my confidant, new orphan,
shy of brash contrition?
The window stayed closed.
It wanted that, the soul.
Still stubborn about asking for directions.
I stroked its ether hair.
It stroked--the air.
And I sang. Not to my companion,

who is what singing is.
I sang to my father’s not-knowing,
(the soul was already going)
I sang for his wild mouth.
I sang instead of truth.
I sang for a place to lean on.
And opened the window then.
A little. I did. But first I combed his hair
like going over the ocean.

"Inventory at Dusk," has appeared previously in Poetry London

The Yellow House Checks Out an Art Book and Gives Tour Number One

O.K. Kandinsky arranges the neurons into temporarily breathing humhums. The glint is right now being so that the eyebrow of earth sharp dance with pretty chasm that ski. If you try to exit before the ski is done, the house-thing in there houses your eye awhile while a eye your houses there in thing-house the exit to try to if. Kandinsky sure CanDoSky. Belly why yes he can. O.K. Keep it hanging. Now here is hisstory.

Once he had a horse too like I do and everybody got on it and they all turned blue. Then there were just four of them and nobody was riding only blue and wanting money. So since the horse was free to go he came on over here and as you’ll see sometime soon he has been doing a little painting of his own. Which the woman doesn’t like. A primitive says she. But she should know about outsider now being pretty funky her self some her—

well. Well, anyway, today we CanDoSky. Tomorrow we might be where we cannot do sky and so today were is here and loving Candosky. We are allowing our wholentire rouged smear thing coming out of our heart to dosky. You think it matters if it has a heart? What heart is is candosky. First you get rid extra else in some other paintings then you can just dosky. Me I have some stairs above the attic. Candosky friend Clay he put some ladders and some climbing up blocks in his. But you don’t have to have. See, you can justdosky. Heart is the whole colorshape of Can. Universe is Do. Sky you pick your own. Now, O.K., you can turn other lights.

Remember old distance man we saw dying in his brain first? Well he died. Doing almost all sky all time deep toward the end. And old woman kept him loving doing least halfsky. But now must say it is her belly turn soon so soon so I and some other big book will be back.

"The Yellow House Checks out an Art Book and Gives Tour Number One" has appeared previously in Field

Below the Cellar of the Yellow House There is Another Set of Stairs

You are not a drill or a mole or at a film.

Not that meteor destined for earth’s tomb.

Your thighs bear no message from the yellow pollen surface.

Hell is somewhere else and you’ve already been to the womb.

You will need these stairs.

You are not blind cave-fish, not deep,

translucent crab, not scuttle, not squirm.

Not time enough in your life to adapt.

And you are not just mind, not just a bunch of words.

You will need these stairs.

So here’s your coat of sprightly arms,

and here’s your staff, a little worn.

And you will need this mantle, as earth needs its mantle

to cool itself as inner and outer are re-formed.

And you will need these stairs.

You can have this mask, this set

of masks, soft on the face-side.

And here is a bun in the shape of a storm,

according to your hunger and your sighs.

You will need these stairs.

Did we mention how the landings are ivory

as horses’ teeth if you get down that far?

How, willingly, not wavering,

with their long velvet jaws ajar...

So you must take these stairs,

jagged as your heart. Because the Other vanished.

Because it is the nature of sweet hovering to elapse.

And stay in you, small wind, rough pearl. The silver sound

of blood-borne starts, collapsed.

You will need these stairs.

This poem  "Below the Cellar of the Yellow House There is ANother Set of Stairs," has appeared previously inin Born Magazine: www.bornmagazine.com

© All Copyright, Robin Behn.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.