Post-Candelabra

Hell, no!
Had a dream,
Post-Liberace
Bio pic on HBO.

Lucky me, all the cute boys
And girls are in mandatory physiotherapy,
A kind of high-school dance at the
Imaginary annex, in Vegas.
(They somehow fly us in,
From New England.)

We mix and mill around
After repairs to somehow shattered,
Mummy-bandaged legs and feet.
No medics are visible. Only silvery
Escalators, gold columns and
Champagne-filled flutes.

Magenta, velvet-cushioned study halls where
Everyone hobbles on cruel crutches,
And will heal (if they study
Hard enough).

(Matt D (as Scott T) is never
In study or class, must've disappeared
Into Principal Lee's suite,
On a pass.)

I wear little, reach for Rob Lowe,
His greasy mask face framed
In his wig-like, center-parted Monkee
Cut. Narrow eyes glazed, stare blank,
He wraps and clutches my naked
Arm like a vine, grips my spine
As we go tango, furiously.

In a dreamy
Shedding of wraps,
We choose partners.
We lose partners.
Some of us rotate more
Easily than others.
Some never yield and
Are suspended like swings or
Tinsel from each other's limbs.
(Liberace so loved Christmas
That his tree was taller
Than the Eiffel Tower.)

Our combinations are not 
Real tango steps but kin to
Rock waves and shimmies,
Or blinks of daring, blaring
Tribal gyrations ...
No talking, please.
No one speaks here.
We only permit
Piano and singing.

I feel my heart crave
And crave, and
It is not slutty.

My mother, too dourly,
(Like Debbie Reynolds,
In her rubber Mother Liberace nose,
Tapping her foot at the "sidelines")
And her mother, double dourly, think
They know my heart. Whispering or
Mute, these dames disapprove,
Mourn the loss of what they
Thought was my destiny.

(They tsk and whisper,
Say Liberace's a
Terrible ham.) (Not
(In fact present, I
Still wear them like
Itchy winter coats that
Can never be unbuttoned,
Even in the blistering,
Frying Vegas heat.)

Lee Liberace, sly shaman and sham,
(Of the flying fingers, base backstabbing,
Redundant diamond rings, capricious facelifts) is our host,
but ever invisible, gossamer
As a chorus girl's ghost.

Here We Have May

Rain burst just as I folded into bed.
With no intro, a fury could've drowned us,
Fell like fists of ice. Wildness,
Crazed drumming all around
For maybe ten minutes.

The sky collapsed, clearly.
Quiet, a pause, a second burst.
Very furious, like the first.

Sheltered tomato and zucchini wait to be
Settled in sunny ground, hoping not to
Be battered or drown.

In two shades of pink,
Two peony plantings just today popped
Into fullest bloom.

Was digging salad bits into compost in greying light,
Shoveling an unkindness to industrious, gleaming worms.
One eye on a failing gardenia that may end here soon;
Amaryllis in energetic come back.

"So happy," says the French-speaking Cameroonian prince,
If a person is pleased with his work. "They were so
Happy. She was so happy."

A burst of rain is not a tornado, we say, at the open front door.
Thoughts of Oklahoma, rows of flattened, shattered homes
Shadowing upright rows of untouched homes.

In darkness, nearly light, I hear this house
Breathing, the tap of laptop keys and
Interweaving honey curls of birdsong,
Above and beyond all.

Here we have May,
Nearly Memorial Day,
Nearly summer.