Before even falcons at the top of the stairs sipping coffee

Or maybe when I or I remember her hips her thighs

Okay, it can’t be forgotten, her water table and her smoking jacket

Dragging out behind her and the keys and someone is playing the piano.

In a flooded room or when I see an angel

The air is doubtful and frequently

Your plane is circling almost out of fuel and a brown crocodile

Is breathing heavily into my soup

The cabbie refuses to post his license. Instead he’s cut out a snowflake

And mounted it behind his ear.

One song rose red out of the radio, abbreviating

Or cutting into the air conditioning. Presently

And I can’t make out what he’s saying. If this man

And if we if he & I were chained together if we locked eyes

And if the traffic & the weather drown out the rest of him sadly

I still bend over to see those young girls’ underthings

Under the periodic table. At once you awoke from your coma and determined

To paint the room again. Wide and well thought-out

An unsigned postcard my hairdresser blots out the sunrise

Or with a glass of ginger ale a young Italian woman frowns and turns her gaze away.

All your luggage arrives on fire

And the plane with no pilot lands on the bog.

Her ghost is strangled in splendor her scarf the whiskers

Of leopards fit into the body of a tree.

****

Embarrassed by rose water the rooster or the door opens on gold in the bookie’s office

There’s the paperweight as it should be

And stepping out with all the smokers and in his eye there’s no secret to the flames:

It’s a diamond moving across the Dardanelles

One thing or the room is entirely empty

Or is there room for a couch a chair or

All the eyes of the conspirators seek the sides of Everest

And when the phone rings once they all respond with a brass band

Who’s in the rain if not joyously or daring performers of fireball submission

Of simply the fire kiss

Won’t you couldn’t you simply revoke the test scores of the angels

And swim from here on their pleas to the petting zoo?

****

I suppose if what you’re telling me is that she can’t or she has a slow traipse

There in the cupola the dome and her fingers are broken

That I stared at the backs of her thighs that on Tuesday I was in the pond with the ducks

That she was with them or the queen of the komodo dragon

Her car has very few miles on it. Someone asked me before leaving me

If it was her and if seven if she’d burned at the stake with a vampire

And no she was a senator. She walked in the exit door and might have torn her skirt only

Sir I left to go shopping and for us forgot us

****

Only on the vine the cat allows and if you have never been able to buy your way into the game

Oh there were for you grey geese my love, asleep or very

Or in the counting rooms they make a cake mix and though I lay my hair down on the runway asleep

Leaving or as you walk down the staircase

The cab driver returns your call and your phone hums and a plane takes off one emergency lands

Or are detectives will they strong-arm you forever

This month this mouth buys into every hand producing another cold tooth

And Lassie rolls over and dies, finally

****

Before the crotch of the moon raiders before I was among the railroads or before the ducks were themselves devils

Or before and before I broke into the tower in search of alchemy

And before we slept in peace or before we slept in peace and the doorbell rang out It was your

Before the District Attorney’s mysterious love affair with the tomb

Your epicurically nautical half-court game and the Tao of your three-point shot

Crushed the wicked with an auto mechanic’s grip

Otherwise the desert remained was already dry or no angels ever deserted you

And constantly your constant jumpshot mostly rained down the most