Four Poems
Safe Word, The Day, Sketch, & Endowed Chair
Safe Word
If no one’s safe, there’s pleasure in the sand.
The fog obscures the stars, which might align.
I start to think I’ve lost the upper hand.
And yet I can’t obey, I try command:
Come closer. Get away. Be mine.
If no one’s safe, there’s pleasure in the sand.
I promise when the summer fires are fanned,
I’ll pin you down, cut you like a line.
I start to think I’ve lost the upper hand,
or not. If every emphasis is grand,
every fissure taken as a sign—
if no one’s safe—there’s pleasure in the sand.
We break apart, our obsolescence planned.
An expiration date is good design,
I start to think. Have I lost the upper hand?
By now there’s little left to understand.
What’s mine is yours; what’s yours, to undermine.
No one’s safe. There’s pleasure in the sand.
I start to think I have the upper hand.
The Day
The constipated leak.
The predatory line.
The ordinary bleat:
Everything is fine.
I pay the gray away.
I grapple for a pun.
I worry that I peaked
in 1991:
the men, the Entenmann’s,
the blaring of a sax.
Anemic as a safe
derivative of sex.
I had a special friend.
He waxed his stache and cock.
He died before his time—
his time, a measured knock.
Life is judged by deeds,
but words will stir the plot,
rampant as inflection,
gripping as a slot.
Life is inches thick!
It’s more than I can say.
A binder clip can hold
this utter dossier.
The day is white as flight
that ferries the elite.
The rats are technocrats,
and love is obsolete.
Sketch
The Doodler, San Francisco, 1974
“Inside the Question Mark,
he fills my straw with coke.
He circles like a shark.
He titillates like smoke.
We go to Ocean Beach,
delineate the shore.
The fog a figure of speech.
Each wave a carnivore.
He rarely lies with men—
insists on this admission.
He’s torn and born again
but offers his submission.
He whines about his wife.
I sketch him with a knife.”
Endowed Chair
I’m coming to appreciate
the mockery, in retrospect.
The vested ways to venerate
my falling off from the elect.
The forward march? A sideways glance:
I gave the classics up for lost.
My wink a twink, the chance to dance.
My ballad, salad weakly tossed.
I scrawl a talk, and stall for time.
I spin the gin, and never tire.
I crow about my Guggenheim
from eighty-one! I won’t retire.
If no one’s safe, there’s pleasure in the sand.
The fog obscures the stars, which might align.
I start to think I’ve lost the upper hand.
And yet I can’t obey, I try command:
Come closer. Get away. Be mine.
If no one’s safe, there’s pleasure in the sand.
I promise when the summer fires are fanned,
I’ll pin you down, cut you like a line.
I start to think I’ve lost the upper hand,
or not. If every emphasis is grand,
every fissure taken as a sign—
if no one’s safe—there’s pleasure in the sand.
We break apart, our obsolescence planned.
An expiration date is good design,
I start to think. Have I lost the upper hand?
By now there’s little left to understand.
What’s mine is yours; what’s yours, to undermine.
No one’s safe. There’s pleasure in the sand.
I start to think I have the upper hand.
The Day
The constipated leak.
The predatory line.
The ordinary bleat:
Everything is fine.
I pay the gray away.
I grapple for a pun.
I worry that I peaked
in 1991:
the men, the Entenmann’s,
the blaring of a sax.
Anemic as a safe
derivative of sex.
I had a special friend.
He waxed his stache and cock.
He died before his time—
his time, a measured knock.
Life is judged by deeds,
but words will stir the plot,
rampant as inflection,
gripping as a slot.
Life is inches thick!
It’s more than I can say.
A binder clip can hold
this utter dossier.
The day is white as flight
that ferries the elite.
The rats are technocrats,
and love is obsolete.
Sketch
The Doodler, San Francisco, 1974
“Inside the Question Mark,
he fills my straw with coke.
He circles like a shark.
He titillates like smoke.
We go to Ocean Beach,
delineate the shore.
The fog a figure of speech.
Each wave a carnivore.
He rarely lies with men—
insists on this admission.
He’s torn and born again
but offers his submission.
He whines about his wife.
I sketch him with a knife.”
Endowed Chair
I’m coming to appreciate
the mockery, in retrospect.
The vested ways to venerate
my falling off from the elect.
The forward march? A sideways glance:
I gave the classics up for lost.
My wink a twink, the chance to dance.
My ballad, salad weakly tossed.
I scrawl a talk, and stall for time.
I spin the gin, and never tire.
I crow about my Guggenheim
from eighty-one! I won’t retire.
