send only smiles

send only smiles

(letter to pomona)

 

send only smiles

a small plaid happiness

plain packages with crisp numbers

lone yellow flower reaching

from morning in the frame of

fettered starling

and early eager bees

wink to let me know you are making it

your thimble of magic

fingernail full

clandestine super agent

taut as a mandela eye

a blue ant on mauve tile

inferred

 

remember me

i say

in a buoyant slang

an ocean clap

then the attendant tunnel vowels

droning up the coast

never turn our old corners

or rev your cadillac

never curse a red light

never drink and hear the brakes whince

come here saintly off the holy avenues

park the wide beautiful deville

settle high onto your shocks

 

or gallop lot to lot

handle a shapely sistuh

sharpen her ear with your tongue

refute a lie

hand up

eyes closed

and not remember me

 

say the best blue things

morning greetings

tall as beautiful brothas

earnest possibility

an 11 am brewing jazz

shrill clean skin

a noon of easy men

 

who have you seen?

quickwork dave with his  perm?

mr. moore whose hello

is a semi precious stone?

tootoo selling watches at ranch market

or my beautiful  judith,

still angry about her watch tower magazines?

tell her i love her

and always will

 

the world is endless

frescos of a turbaned malcolm

i want to show you

an iridescent dusk in nambia

pipe lines in god’s alaska

a chilean child’s ripe cheek

a rauckus ugandan band

 

have you been back to ganesha?

have you seen patrick’s sister who does yoruban dance?

how about our new karen?

 

make it simple

discriminate

a meridian

untaxable starched and white

tell me you will be there

a dutiful sentinel

i am always coming home

eye by eye

goodbye by good bye

 

i am what i am

a singer and a stranger

an expatriate lover

non-catholic roman in jeans

say you hold steady at home

say nothing will take you away

let it be a screen knocked upon

have your hello ready

let it be love and your parent’s cigarettes

a festival i can slip into

a tournament of kisses

new years in a hot crowded basement

a booth at tommys #12 seven brothas deep

and let me come

let me come

oh, let me come

and sleep