I want October fires,

warmer climes than these bare feet tangled in my hairs,

the crawling of lice into my foreign bed.

I want postscript women from Hardy’s Wessex

building smoke pyres,

signaling lovers

escaping burning haybeds upstairs Scottish lamp,

clutching red checkered shirts and trailing cerulean bandannas.

I want prismatic goldgreen brown Casterbridge scenes,

painted by Bathshebas and Eustasias.

I want to break bread with Diggory Venn the Reddleman,

ride in his coach and horses,

the constant Venn who is eternally noble,

fatally humbled in love.

I want more of those hopeless passions,

pastures swallowed up in October Fires,

Julie Christies who only gaze straight ahead not at me,

no more of those afterhours ladies

taunting horny woolen scarves

hearts tugging on my arm

stumbling down these freezing

gay flashing village streets,

distracted by perplexing visions of who to pick up on tonight.

October fires shoot pointblank through my infancy

when I am lost like this,

carried on by desperate male tides

when I feel vague enough to attract any frozen serenity,

cap pulled low over my eyes-

some Poet’s eyes who scarred the desertflower of my virginity maiden.

I want some truth-

tell me lies, Goddammit!

want paradoxes only in words

words do not penetrate rivers…

nor islands…

for those inhabiting this Island

have never watched these surrounding waters.

I want to enlist in some school

where toothless students wearing sunglasses and earmuffs

stay busy fingering daisies cut from each other’s notebooks.

I want to return to my own house someday

though it does yet not exist,

paint with fire torch and oils

type out Poems

soak an alto reed into some golden-brown cognac,

at then sit still to breathe the silence

to smell the blackness.

I want to be sick of compromising

sharing taxi rides in rented cars,

dodging foreign doormen

who peer over hockshopped watches down 9^thstreet,

expecting the next Rock Hudson to visit

their Israeli artist tenants.

I want a black cat

grey cat

see some mountains

outside these Eastcoast jiveass pleasure harbors.

I want some choices this time

permission to experience loss

not compelled by visions

jealousy

or sick senses of humor.

I want to shoplift bulletproof vests

colors of maple leaves

unzippered,

want to thaw out my piano sunk in Mississippi River mud,

the will of tears

the rite of passage,

want to destroy the night

eliminate whatever whoever gets close to me,

learn of signals other than phone numbers.

I want to dam up these rivers of words

misbehave myself at all night movies

24 hour drugstores,

invite mothers and daughters out for Chinese food.

I want to marry a Louisiana waitress

leave $50 tips for café breakfast receptionists deepsouth,

at once driving off,

masked and invisible.

I want to invade Port Authority bathrooms

after drinking cowboy coffee at Bickfords,

sleep in a bed of Central Park leaves

occasionally waking to only downshift dreams,

experiments of others' lives,

deaths.

And please let me have the first dance just once,

leave in the dark dancehall morning

arm and arm with the dishwasher,

please let me have the choice to want more,

or not care to want,

to step off the curb

and shake the snow from these feathers,

at last well saturated by all those colors

from far warmer climes.

NYC, 1983