Erotic Fame
Building, building paradise in the structure of the moment, women like flames in a bent and obstructing candelabra, seasons like those of flesh and night painted like a thriving motion between that which is actual verses the fantasy of the moon, anarchical voices resound in the pureness of sex, born but once to the thorough rituals of pain and climax, she the winter bird held so softly in my arms like a treasured stone, real as the anxious music of the sea, treated with the film of yesterday, sung against the wind; logical stigma with earth and water, she shall find her way back again, from the terrestrial mountain to the house without a name, speaking with breasts and eyes open, lips like marshmallows, hands sweat and legs swivel, she the passionate caretaker of my thoughts, hungry as sex in the mouth of wanton home, the swift outcry of the wind visitation o foreplay, eyes on the bed, foreboding irony of she get upon velvet squares, of her purse the silken shoulder of night, of her body the hunger of a thousand mirrors, of her mind the dirty fixation of three minutes, of the shy earth caped in rivers of black polyester, of her thighs wrapped in the warmth of a purring silence, yes this is the moment of my first real change, she the anger of a tumultuous relationship comes to me to solve her problem and the bituminous flame burns off its vestiges of clothing, stands naked before the eyes of God, shouts perfect into the night `I love you', and wraps its arms around the creature comforts of life, without a price, only a single poem of such wonder that no fame could produce this rareness, no eye witness its formalities.
Reprinted by kind permission of the Regents of the University of California,
Bancroft Library, Berkeley. Gift of Diane Walker Murray