I'd like to read something more lyrical now perhaps too.
This is a poem that I wrote a long time ago,
in which is my favorite poem to read aloud,
because it's like singing a song for me.
It's called "Blue Monday," and it was an attempt
to write a blues, a poem in which
a woman spoke of her blues.
The traditional ill of having lost the man she loves.
And the device for doing this was simply
to use over and over again, the imagery of blue things.
Blue Monday, blue of the heaps of beads
poured into her breasts, and clacking together
in her elbows.
Blue of the silk that covers Lily Town at night.
Blue of her teeth that bite cold toast,
and shudder on the streets.
Blue of the dried flower petals with gold stamens,
hanging like tongues over the fence of her dress.
At the opera, opals clasped under her lips.
And the moon breaking over her head, a gush of blood red
lizards.
Blue Monday, Monday at 3 o'clock and Monday at 5:00.
Monday at 7:30 and Monday at 10 o'clock.
Monday passed under the rippling California fountain.
Monday alone, a shark in the cold blue waters.
You are a dead, wound round like a paisley shawl.
I cannot shake you out of the sheets.
Your name is still wedged in every corner of the sofa.
Monday is the first of the week, and I think of you all week.
I beg Monday not to come, so that I will not
think of you all week.
You paint my body blue.
On the balcony and the soft muddy
night, you paint me with bat wings
and the crystal, the crystal, the crystal, the crystal.
In your arm, cuts away the night.
Folds back ebony whale skin.
And my face, the blue of new rifles.
And my neck, the blue of Egypt.
And my breast, the blue of sand.
And my arms, best blue and my stomach, arsenic.
There is electricity dripping from me like cream.
There is love dripping from me I cannot use,
like a acacia or jacaranda.
Fallen blue and gold flowers crushed into the street.
Love passed me in a blue business suit and fedora.
His glass cane hollow, and filled the sharks and whales.
He wore black patented leather shoes and had a mustache.
His hair was so black, it was almost blue.
Love, I said.
I beg your pardon, he said.
Mr. love, I said.
I beg your pardon, he said.
So I saw there was no use bothering him
on the street, love passed me on the street in a blue business
suit.
He was a banker, I could tell.
So blue trains rush by in my sleep.
Blue herons fly overhead.
Blue paint cracks in my arteries,
and sends titanium floating into my bones.
Blue liquid pours down my poisoned throat,
and blue veins rip open my breast.
Blue daggers tip and are juggled on my palms.
Blue death lives in my fingernails.
If I could sing one last song with water
bubbling through my lips, I would
sing with my throat torn open.
The blue jugular spouting that black shadow pulse.
And on my lips, I would balance volcanic rock emptied out
of my veins.
At last, my children strained out of my body.
At last, my blood solidified and tumbling into the ocean.
It is blue.