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In You
(October 21-November 18)
Copyright 2005 Bill White
In you
Rests a city fractured in glassy timpani
skies
Pulled across faces airy with time
Blurred in the petrified etch of bone
Unstretched, loose, thinly divined and found
In you
This city that was my city
Now facaded by mesmeric elves
Pounding sandworms into primer holes
Peering through badly textured gelatins
Looking for hard nails that can be found
only
In you
This place where the children play inside
Corpses dried to dust before they died
False butterflies crawling out of jinxed
cocoons
Into the fluttering open hand of a child
in the child
In you
A dish of butter
A dish of mayonnaise
An artichoke heart divided
A city divided against its own city
A river divided against your flesh
A river divided against my bone
Mysterious grasses between the bread
Browning the nests of birds and crashing
them
Into you
This open mouth, this broken beak,
These buildings warped and smiling through
plastered arms,
Mud layers slapped around windows where
kangaroo ghosts
Watch baby birds feeding
In you
Sediment is scraped from the city's eyes
And we see ourselves still hatching
Through shell upon shell upon shell upon
shell upon shell upon shell
Of tree circles slashed across your belly
in birth strokes of hot paint
Pressing compass points of numbered fingers
against the wall,
Aside the wall, into the wall
A circular shiver of touch
Opening
In you
Children, lost in candied forests
Where stale gingerbread breaks the witch's
teeth,
Feed on the caramelized windows of slivered
houses
In the rotten wrappings of a city restored
In you
The city restored
The ashes recovered
The avenues reborn
The air the air of the air before
Off inlets
In you
Projection booth lights of third avenue
movie houses fill jazz clubs
and art supply stores with "Une Parisienne,"
"Curse of the Faceless Man,"
and the rhino safari of hatari hunters pairing
off like gaffers and
costume designers in rented trailers on
location in Africa, France, and Mexico
In you
Attendants return from their jobs in elevators
to padlocked gaming
rooms where padlocked actors perform dreadful
re-enactments of "A Christmas
Carol" to audiences glimpsing Jim Morrison's
shredded snake
prostate through a curtain of
27 years in which I dwelt undestinated
Without you
While the helpless fell in love with the
dead
And the haircuts fell in love with the haircuts
And the lipgloss fell in love with the lipgloss
But the mothers never fell in love with
the fathers
And the brides never fell in love with the
grooms
But now the pawnbrokers have returned to
first avenue
And I fall in love
With you.
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