In Tangiers

Woolen sweaters, ticklish and warm, are
clinging to your chest
like covetousness.
Covert lines of sinuous filmy
memory wriggle through your fingers
because nothing is
the same.

O, try as you might, you are
caught up in space, dispossession and
acidic disposition.
Strong and deep is the burden
and the gift
and residual figures of
womanly curvature reside in
minutes and seconds, because
"music is art in time."

Your rusted ligaments still pound
furiously and they are the method
to a literary gladness,
voices shake and whisper in syncopation
as your feature comes to a close.

And what ribbons! What bows we've carved
out of the arms of beginners and enders and what
arrows with which to
melt her heart
and glide with a sigh into her
limpid limbic
nodes.

There are scars
and there are stars,
there's the sea
and there's Tangiers somewhere.
There's Berkeley somewhere else
and there's a place for
you
and I
to speak with knowledge
about the writing of songs.

And we are in a room and
lightly sipping so we can still drive home
and highly anticipating the next few years
with our ribald language while
hoping we don't go bald.

It seems so goddamn far away,
and it seems so hellbent on eluding us,
for the moment we can just talk about it.

But I know that when I am happy, I am with you
and I am fitfully fighting fisticuffs from
every single direction
and you are wrestling the inspiration out
of dutiful life.