When I Don't Know What to Call This, and: Infinitives of Exile, and: Secret Life

    Flowers I can't namebloom in a pink profusion    namelessly complete—

if I say petal, what else have I done

    but make each one oneand the same by giving them    one name? Flowering,

the tree itself has said it all already,

    more eloquently,the way our days together—    moment by moment—

once said themselves as perfectly as one

    could ever wish timeto be said. That time now gone    without our having

discovered what to term this time apart—

    minutes prolificas leaf after greeny leaf—    I must come to trust

these days will say themselves as certainly

    as petal or stem,and that on some unknown one    soon, we'll find ourselves

daydreaming in the fallen ring of them.

INFINITIVES OF EXILE

To feel the toilet seat's cool ass-kiss, tearThrough gauzy sheets of single-ply, and wipeOnly to overfill this stranger's toiletAnd scramble for the plunger while the waterBrims past the porcelain lip and pours acrossThe floor you now discover is unevenUntil it seeps beneath the bathroom doorAnd down the hall; to court insomniaIn beds too hard or soft, too short or narrow,In bedrooms lacking locks or decent lightingIn houses where your sexual ambitionsAre sure to wilt like poorly potted fernsParched in a dirt as dry as the forgottenMeatloaf your hostess meted out with shySmiles of apology; or to cavortIn boxer shorts around the empty house(At last the owners, in a show of trust,Have gone to try some local theater),To yodel through the kitchen while performingYour most emphatic pelvic thrusts of joy,The wildest hip gyrations in your secretYet quite distinctly large Gyrepetoire,Until you see your hosts, who left their keysIn plain sight on a living room end table,Staring at you—no, more precisely, staringWith unadulterated awestruck horrorDown at your crotch, where you discover, first,Your boxer-button has unfastened, leavingAn ample aperture for, second, oneEnormously embarrassing erection …

To find your mild discomforts or your majorHumiliations honed or ground to nothingBy the grit-stippled edge of gratitude,The gratitude you owe and know you owe,Given your exile, to those who take you in,Is to remember even in your body You are a guest, at times a tawdry one:How many weekends have you soaked your liverIn single-malt conviviality,How often do you boot up your machineAnd double-click on a solitary lifeClosely resembling low-grade catatonia?Not the best guest behavior, you'd admit,And one more reason you can't stay forever.And if foreshadowing suggests a timeYour exile will require you leave your body,Well, you already knew that; worse than thisWill be your exile from your life, that storyYou tell yourself in misremembered fragmentsAnd flattering light—others will prove the authorsAfter you've gone, and they'll remember youAs they see fit. Perhaps your tale will take onMythic proportions—though, more likely, nothingWill make your story's probable distortionsMore than the humdrum ones—but rest assuredWhatever happens, you will only beA visitor to that life, someone who signed,In ink that glistened then without a traceOf fading on the crisp, unyellowed pages,A guestbook in a slant, old-timey hand.

SECRET LIFE

Kind souls pretend they can't imagine howYou hide one in the basement all those yearsWithout the neighbors knowing, and they vowThey couldn't, it just couldn't, till their couldn'ts    Achieve their own strange little cadence—Not here, not us. Just the thought makes us queasy.Oh, friends. Not everything's as it appears.        I did it. It was easy.

First, you inculcate silence as the keyTo its survival, but you must obeyThat law yourself: an offhand pleasantryAbout the costs of living, peaks in crime,    Or why you think a panic roomBelongs...