Bobby on Bloomsday

He can't read Ulysses when attending Finnegans Wake.
He has every good intention to absorb rivery wordache
not even Secretary Sam Beckett could easily unriddle.
Bobby’s too old to bear the weight of Stephen's spells,
too young to give Leopold Bloom the benefit of doubt,
who desires that Molly stay faithful so they may harvest
June 14 in eternity's quick flow of their Liffey passion
whose blood streams as long as a body's flesh and bone.

Is it work to open the book to puzzle history’s nightmare 
I would wake from? I walk along the lovely-bodied shore
where Gerty MacDowell sports her parasol as I undress
this lass for Nighttown where my darling Molly resides,
or so reads her soul's diary, even when home in her bed,
her passions swelling to burst open long-dammed flesh.
When I lived on Forty-fifth Street one year I slept alone,
I dreamed she lay with me and was my love, mine own.

Stars jape at stars. Mock my fury. Who's tied to Earth?
See crescendo roll off horizon's level, spray old wounds.
Drenched. Endured. As sky leaves a sun-print of clouds.
I would read a section to learn where history turns myth,
walk the demonic streets under a moon's florescent light
until daybreak. And I wrote, Nothing avails a lad too shy
in the midst of working women. May I warm your coffee?
And when I get up to go: If you like, I'll stop by tonight. 

No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. I need work. Dawn rises
with rain's fall. Seattle's no Paris; still, I could grow wise
where madronas weep, if I learned to breathe patiently
here, not in Dublin or Trieste. Sleep sinks below the sea,
the book left upside down, still open on my boyish chest.
I dream her voice continues. She's not old, no one's lost,
but we age inside. When I wake and read what I wrote,
I pour my seed over rock and sand. That much I waste.

(2 February 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander