I wrote a series of poems I call portraits
about friends of mine.
Some of them are partly imaginary I have to say.
I don't know that much about the people I know.
I set myself two formal tasks in them if I may put it that way.
They're all about failures.
And so I thought it would be kind of symbolic of that
if I had something--
something about each of them was missing.
For instance, the first one is called Portrait with Short Hair
and what's missing there is some of the hair you see.
And also I wanted to get in a reference in each of them
to Mexico or almost to Mexico for no particular reason.
I've never been to Mexico.
I'd like to go but I never have.
Anyway, those two things keep appearing I think
and I'll read four of them out of a set of five.
The last one is about myself and I'd rather not read that
and show what's missing.
[LAUGHTER]
Portrait with short hair.
The days, the days, and the scissors
you cut your hair with oh how dull.
Time to change the needle.
Put on another record, no something Baroque and think
of the good times.
Think of lakes and rivers.
It's hot, let in some air.
Let the smell of leftovers be one
with the perfume of cooling asphalt leaves
and the nights are wonderful.
You alone, alone with the slums, the flower pots, the stars.
Think of the sea.
Unzip just as though someone were around to be made love to
or anyway to pose for.
The mysteries of sex.
Someday you'll wake up back on that Christmas morning
in Mexico still a virgin.
Portrait with flashlight.
This took place in New Mexico years ago.
My friend was an usher in a movie house.
What lonely aisles you prowled in search of the forbidden,
blinking your usher's torch, firefly of the balconies.
And when you found it, love, it was
to pure French horns soaring above the plains
of Saturday's westerns.
The defiant eyes, laughing into the sudden beam.
The soft Mexican curses, the stains, the crushed corsages.
Off, off with the bright buttons poor spy, there's no disguise.
Your Anglo hearts as dark as theirs was
and it speaks with the same broken accent.
Girls read it in your eyes and ask for your autograph.
And you give them poems, poems with hair slicked back
smelling of Bay rum sweat and hot buttered popcorn,
furtive illuminations.
Portrait with tequila.
I assume everybody here knows how tequila is manufactured.
Portrait with tequila.
Pull down the shades, your Black boyfriend is coming.
He's not like you he wants to live in the suburbs.
You want to paint.
It's your hand does your dreaming
for you, the same hand braceleted with scars
that smooth down cats, sheets, men.
Under it, your body is turning into landscape metamorphosis
of the moon.
The stars, what did the stars say.
Caution in money matters, in romance, oh prodigal.
The White convertible circles the block again.
The neighbors are asleep, the insects, the wind.
It's late.
But then he's married and this is still Texas.
Night is a giant cactus blooming at your window.
Potent, aromatic, the liquors you press from it.
Portrait with one eye.
Now this one's all true.
A friend of mine hearing--
it took place some years ago.
But a friend of mine during the revolution
was brewing in Nicaragua bought a bus
ticket to Mexico City, which is all that he could afford.
But thought he could make it on from there.
All right.
But the bus unfortunately had a stopover in Kansas City.
He went around to one bar, another,
and ended up in the charity ward of the hospital
with one eye missing.
He had been beaten up and robbed of everything.
And when the Kansas City Star reporter
came around to interview him--
First, he had already told the police this but the story
appeared in the Kansas City Star.
When asked what his occupation was he
said lyric poet and this story appeared in the Star.
I've never seen that identification made before.
Also, there's a--
I only hear from him now when he calls me long distance
and the call is always collect there's a reference to that
there.
Portrait with one eye.
They robbed you of your ticket to the revolution oh
and then they stomped you good.
But nothing stops you.
You have identified yourself to the police
as quote, "lyric poet" what else with fractured jaw.
Orpheus and perishable liar, your life's a poem.
Still, broken eye, arms and all, jazz, jails, the complete
works.
And one blue silver line beyond the Antilles
vanishing, all fragments.
You who could scream across the square in Cuernavaca
at a friend you hadn't seen for years the one word bitch
and turn away, that's style.
[LAUGHTER]
Or this, your other voice, this whisper
along the wires at night like a dry wind, like conscience
always collect.