metonymy4u

                        Sonatine

I could put my whole life in a notebook thinking
that a date would settle me in my own home, and
to forget all the other lovers who refused to see and did
not understand how socially inappropriate Ravel had
been borrowing wagers from the future against
more harmonies no one else wanted.

But I’m a poem’s own single nightmare.

And words gather round my pen looking
for redemption in how stupidly I garner countless herds of them,
combing for a grain of platinum in the land of silver–
something that will not tarnish.

The jungle strips one’s manhood in a single scream.

Is it a howler monkey or a seductive wish? Now even
sounds unnerve me and I think I want to know more
and more about little and less. For example why there’s
always never enough for Western Man—a species
of naming forever in search of Platonisms

and Superbowls. Why not hold

a child in my arms, her smell against my neck,
a rush of summer

on the infant’s new voice.