now5

    5_trope
       memories


    masty

       subs
   to 5


    comment
    on the 5ives


            5_T
         musts

 
In Bed Pondering the Nature of Love and Fame

today more

wheat
haylight

isn't it wonderful
thinking about me?

*

one day
pearl

she's all light
more

wonderful
isn't she?

*

lovers can be good and beautiful
parked on a hill watching

the mist coagulate above ocean
I stopped on that thought

pondering history and imagination
looking a gift horse in the mouth

what a wonderful smile!

January 25, 1998



Dim Sum

peanuts, pork, shrimp, tea
jazz talk on my tongue & thinking
about which way I'm not going
at making it happen

want to smoke a peace pipe
and send up a signal in a cloud that
the 90's are no big deal

and when you turn
what that could possibly mean
to face Wednesday or an auspicious Saturday

bring the soy sauce
red hot sweet & sour sauce
auspicious like the stars

but I'm fogged in so I just guess beyond that

sticky web there must be galaxies
being born

Orion's belt sparkling so hard

someone somewhere
can't help but fix their eyes
on his dark crotch

silence rips at my head

I take migraine medicine

back to imagining what if we could
order more

Dim Sum
in the heart of the Russian Diaspora

Richmond District, SF

how poets look strange on T.V.
"Opera" Winfrey, Martha Graham, Dan Rather

are not poets

(one unifying thought might help)

when this pretty Chinese woman
brings the bill $17, we leave a twenty
then shake hands on the good fortune

of our auspicious meeting
a couple hours later
I'm hungry for a peanut butter & jelly sandwich



Legend: January 31, 1999

Talk to me in any language
I'll stop talking
Make meaning clearer

More naked and I become
more practiced in my dance
along the nerve

It's raining
now everywhere around
dousing all the flames at sea


 

three

poems

michael.
rothenberg