He does little other than travel now,
in his head.
Nights he can’t sleep in Tres Estrellas
swaying on curves.
These dreams are better than none.
When he wakes,
though,
he doesn’t remember dreaming.
The stars come out
to go back in.
. . . de Oro? Why the Cortes pitch
so long after,
is Espana that deeply embedded
in Mexico Indio?
Go back to sleep, you are
dreaming now.
You’re here, not Mexico City.
The girls in Hotel Ibero
are dead, too old, or married by now.
He’s too old.
That’s the dream he doesn’t have to
follow. All he need do is wake.
(12 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Monday, March 11, 2013
Bobby's "History While You Wait"
All my stories begin with Ike.
I never grew up after that.
Kennedy got shot.
King got shot.
Vietnam got out of hand,
Johnson quit.
Kennedy’s younger brother
got shot.
Minnesota’s Gene McCarthy
lost to Hubert Humphrey.
Nobody ever started in Seattle.
Harry Bridges, union man,
was the Queen City’s big name.
Nixon yielded to Ford
who yielded to Carter,
who was/is a good man but
Hollywood threw him out
and eight years ensued
for this asshole Reagan.
Daddy Bush lost to Clinton,
whom many love to this day,
but the Reagan acolytes
finished him off and Bush
Junior spent vast reserves
on his buddies and new wars.
Eighteen years after Chile,
a new September 11 . . .
Bobby remembers Berlin
with Cathleen.
Rebecca was dead, Paula
was over, only Cathleen
remained. Melindra
went on working, Cristina
stayed in hip-high hose.
Paula served him papers.
He was with Henrietta
in La Jolla when the call
from Cathleen came.
He recalls Checkpoint Charlie.
Cathleen took her savvy
to bed: you don’t fuck
for money and forget it.
(11 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Vy krasivy
it’s all fucked up
the round the world
the sixty-nine
the works
it’s all fucking, dude
it only feels good
I could see the night
come barreling down
to dawn,
she slept in my lap
and one hand caressed
her hair
when the body goes
desire does not
the middle of a day’s
not like three o’clock
in the morning
time is no worry
I looked up the way
to say You are beautiful
in your language,
Your eyes are tides
pulling me to shore
to kiss your salty lips
(10 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
the round the world
the sixty-nine
the works
it’s all fucking, dude
it only feels good
I could see the night
come barreling down
to dawn,
she slept in my lap
and one hand caressed
her hair
when the body goes
desire does not
the middle of a day’s
not like three o’clock
in the morning
time is no worry
I looked up the way
to say You are beautiful
in your language,
Your eyes are tides
pulling me to shore
to kiss your salty lips
(10 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Rock
She sends home what reaches her.
He doesn’t know her meaning.
He asks, she must be referring
to the madman who plays Christ
in a movie all the Christians see
because the priest recommends
they go then gather in conversation.
Is he the one Jennifer Lopez loves?
That is how the question emerged,
answer ready, which means shut up
until I can read your mind, he tells
himself to follow his own advice.
He does: When every ten years
he goes mad, falling off one end
of the cliff where he has lived
since twenty-one, and he’s only
thirty, he crawls back up slowly
as you must when without pitons.
She was twenty-one that year,
she knew more, she put her mind
to work overtime, he was hers
that year, she saved his mind,
then saw him lose it once more
and who can bear such agony,
a retch of error, the dawn failing
without light and no preparation
for sunrise, the madness nowhere
but in him, how they come together
and marry, forty years pass,
she doesn’t remember until photos
reach her: of the year after her
and the urge that led him south,
the woman who drove him mad
originally become his savior.
You sent yourself home, stayed.
No one will ever be remembered
for aping Artaud, or Van Gogh
without the razor at one ear,
or whom, who knows? Her scar
is from the attack Rose suffered
walking herself home one night,
white girl with music in her veins.
She fought them off, raped.
Bobby knew them, old friends:
Dave told him he hated white guys,
his widowed mother hated them,
now Rose would know what he knew.
She had all the songs down.
He played them, she sang them.
It was the apogee of the rock era.
Don’t throw rocks at my house,
motherfucker, Dave liked to say
to whomever in the audience
started up about the black pianist
playing for the white woman.
I’ll keep writing songs about you.
Then he followed Rose down the hill
downtown, Jackson Street Café,
not serving food now, only the music
a man and woman out here make.
(9 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
He doesn’t know her meaning.
He asks, she must be referring
to the madman who plays Christ
in a movie all the Christians see
because the priest recommends
they go then gather in conversation.
Is he the one Jennifer Lopez loves?
That is how the question emerged,
answer ready, which means shut up
until I can read your mind, he tells
himself to follow his own advice.
He does: When every ten years
he goes mad, falling off one end
of the cliff where he has lived
since twenty-one, and he’s only
thirty, he crawls back up slowly
as you must when without pitons.
She was twenty-one that year,
she knew more, she put her mind
to work overtime, he was hers
that year, she saved his mind,
then saw him lose it once more
and who can bear such agony,
a retch of error, the dawn failing
without light and no preparation
for sunrise, the madness nowhere
but in him, how they come together
and marry, forty years pass,
she doesn’t remember until photos
reach her: of the year after her
and the urge that led him south,
the woman who drove him mad
originally become his savior.
You sent yourself home, stayed.
No one will ever be remembered
for aping Artaud, or Van Gogh
without the razor at one ear,
or whom, who knows? Her scar
is from the attack Rose suffered
walking herself home one night,
white girl with music in her veins.
She fought them off, raped.
Bobby knew them, old friends:
Dave told him he hated white guys,
his widowed mother hated them,
now Rose would know what he knew.
She had all the songs down.
He played them, she sang them.
It was the apogee of the rock era.
Don’t throw rocks at my house,
motherfucker, Dave liked to say
to whomever in the audience
started up about the black pianist
playing for the white woman.
I’ll keep writing songs about you.
Then he followed Rose down the hill
downtown, Jackson Street Café,
not serving food now, only the music
a man and woman out here make.
(9 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
On South
You write me off.
I walk off, go away.
This is the way
we end. It is May,
the first day,
the last. You wave,
I wave back,
I walk up the hill
for no reason
save the climb.
I imagine Sisyphus
happy, like Camus.
I am feeling sorry
for myself.
I am feeling hate
for what I’ve done.
I’m not the only one
getting away
on the next bus.
I’m with the redhead
in a dream you heard
in midmorning.
Tres Estrellas de Oro.
Mazatlan,
Mexico City,
San Angel, Mina
y Buenavista.
She fucked lovely.
She feared Cubans.
I could not help her
understand men
who chose guns
over hunger.
She used the bidet,
I went downstairs
where the whores
waited for johns
to come to
the Ibero. The clerk
smiles. He knows
gringos fight
more than they fuck.
He has the rooms,
he smiles again,
I go back. Her hair,
pale red, glistens.
We fuck now as though
there were reason.
(9 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Friday, March 8, 2013
Cathleen
Cathleen is in town, she missed him she says.
A thoroughbred, she feeds on him, his cock
in her mouth, his tongue around her anus
searching for entry, this is how love is
with them. Bobby always rises alive
to the weather, sun, rain, wind, the salt air,
ready to sport on the town, seeking rest
where none was before she returned today.
He was dreaming when she brought him alive.
How was Paris? Rome, I came here from Rome.
Did you get an audience with the Pope?
She takes him to their favorite café,
off Fairview, where nobody dined but them,
she held her windbreaker over her head
down the street of potholes to the houseboat.
She fed the cat while he sank into work.
He wrote, they made love, they were young, the rain
attended their mutual skin walking
the boardwalk swaying over the water,
at night the waves swelled, you could hear them wash
against you, and then you saw it was her,
the black hair brushing his belly, her head
between his legs as though that’s where she lived.
The café is not the same. The city
stays beautiful, she prefers sun to rain–
these are her sentiments, Paris or Rome
are too far away to want to live there.
He takes her to the Congress, she sips beer,
he smokes, she asks him not to, he walks out,
flips the cigarette into the gutter,
the trace of a smile when she sees he’s back,
she wants to stay, she wants to hear him sing,
he already played clarinet back then.
It wasn’t long, he reminds her, I wrote,
played my horn just enough to wet the reed,
then asked if you wanted to hear me read
what I had on paper, you always did,
I looked for the voice to fit what I called,
what I learned was, tone. I thought it was song.
I tried to be true, no need to sing words.
(8 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
A thoroughbred, she feeds on him, his cock
in her mouth, his tongue around her anus
searching for entry, this is how love is
with them. Bobby always rises alive
to the weather, sun, rain, wind, the salt air,
ready to sport on the town, seeking rest
where none was before she returned today.
He was dreaming when she brought him alive.
How was Paris? Rome, I came here from Rome.
Did you get an audience with the Pope?
She takes him to their favorite café,
off Fairview, where nobody dined but them,
she held her windbreaker over her head
down the street of potholes to the houseboat.
She fed the cat while he sank into work.
He wrote, they made love, they were young, the rain
attended their mutual skin walking
the boardwalk swaying over the water,
at night the waves swelled, you could hear them wash
against you, and then you saw it was her,
the black hair brushing his belly, her head
between his legs as though that’s where she lived.
The café is not the same. The city
stays beautiful, she prefers sun to rain–
these are her sentiments, Paris or Rome
are too far away to want to live there.
He takes her to the Congress, she sips beer,
he smokes, she asks him not to, he walks out,
flips the cigarette into the gutter,
the trace of a smile when she sees he’s back,
she wants to stay, she wants to hear him sing,
he already played clarinet back then.
It wasn’t long, he reminds her, I wrote,
played my horn just enough to wet the reed,
then asked if you wanted to hear me read
what I had on paper, you always did,
I looked for the voice to fit what I called,
what I learned was, tone. I thought it was song.
I tried to be true, no need to sing words.
(8 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Dolores
I think of you now in that bar in Tijuana
sitting the stool smoking a cigarette
cadging a drink from me in trade for talk
about the way you are spending your life.
Your creamy blonde hair spills not quite
to your shoulders, your breasts a little
smaller than mejicanos require of tits.
Your price is so-many cents after dollars.
Why do I need to know how a woman
rents her body, for how much, where the room
is above. Climb the stairs and out of sight
she would undress leaning your body back
on the bed, attending to what she thinks
you need. How could I know I was hungry,
I believed pulque was all I required.
Men around us warn me she is no good.
Perhaps time passes more enjoyably
if you hear her out from the beginning,
mother with growing children she works for;
I who have no children and will never.
(8 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
sitting the stool smoking a cigarette
cadging a drink from me in trade for talk
about the way you are spending your life.
Your creamy blonde hair spills not quite
to your shoulders, your breasts a little
smaller than mejicanos require of tits.
Your price is so-many cents after dollars.
Why do I need to know how a woman
rents her body, for how much, where the room
is above. Climb the stairs and out of sight
she would undress leaning your body back
on the bed, attending to what she thinks
you need. How could I know I was hungry,
I believed pulque was all I required.
Men around us warn me she is no good.
Perhaps time passes more enjoyably
if you hear her out from the beginning,
mother with growing children she works for;
I who have no children and will never.
(8 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
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