Fascicle [10]

ten

He was a randy boy, pursuer of women,
but he lost his touch becoming a man,
reckless lover of the impossible.

He’s grown to love what’s only possible,
her. He thinks the music she plays must know
the declension of stars, of planets now.

She rises to be with the years she has
salvaged. She is younger than then, the lass
who loves a lad who could be her father,

he's that far gone. He would be her lover,
nothing less, yet he knows that’s not enough.
Time’s left to sing, to weep, and learn to laugh.

So he says. She gives all she has to let
him live. Once she has blossomed, he exits
stage right because he entered from stage left.

(7 September 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander

Fascicle [9]

nine

Throw love to the winds and feel it come back.
There is no sound like the breath of love’s words.

I have had luck and I have had no luck.
I have gone up against and spurned the sword.

When I say I love you I settle for
choosing between your back or your front door,

not the way in or out but the way through
your house to the back bay window and bed.

We watched the storm from there. Come here, you said.
What does the mind but not the body know?

(6 September 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander

Fascicle [8]

eight

Los intelectuales son rebeldes, pero no revolucionarios.
Black stone on white stone, a Thursday with rain falling.
The poet dying of a broken heart he took on in Spain:
Lorca, Hernandez dead, Machado across the Pyrenees.
After his Russia, Vallejo home in Paris, returning
in time, the two beloved on either side of his deathbed.

(5 September 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander

Fascicle [7]

seven

Gone to the cove, in the cave no one knew was here.
I spare the sky my gaze. I was born here.

The waves add music to horizon.
Crawl through to enter the ocean.

I’ll go back now where you pretend to be waiting.
Who could ever be content living without singing?

(4 September 2013)

copyright by Floyce Alexander

Fascicle [6]

six

Back of you lies youth, ahead the briars surround

A man’s free to marry her once he flees his tomb

From day’s first end to cloudy impasse under stars


You walk in, shadows fall, water rises, you swim

Lake Pontchartrain, you make it with her on the shore

Where once were auctions, flesh sold now by the pound

(3 September 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander

Fascicle [5]

five

some begin before dawn and end at noon, others begin in full light and end at midnight
my private lair went everywhere learning what could be done by doing what I could do
women taught me more than I could learn,  I laboring in men’s fields to lie with women
I too need your succor, you need mine more, what is there to do and how can it be done
in my aging I have come to a place where I cannot go on without words taking me there
at dawn or in bright day I am who I still am at noon, and no one else after any midnight

(2 September 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander

Fascicle [4]

four

Go back near the high grass by the River
Mill behind 131 Summer Street,
where the table and bench are still. Then roar
the words as they enter you from the air.
You're drunk on Prokofiev’s Nevsky score,
strolling Tchoupitoulas,* far from Amherst.
__________________
* New Orleans street, title of an unfinished fiction

(1 September 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander