Consider April from My Balcony

I

The seagulls sound like

Doors opening over the sea

When I paint my chest

Like the Easter egg designed

In womb  I felt the pulse

Of church bells echo           

            In the sewers and bones

Of the city

II

My balcony overlooks

Jesuit house defaced walls

And lonely golden window

Lamps  I saw portals of priests

And sisters using tea with their

            Hands bleached and

Free from callous

I checked my sense of the

Order   the march   the pace 

The quantity of ants

            Filing into the sea—

The catalyst suicides of childish

Novas the depth of storage for

Indifferent ill memories

III

            I sketched for the tea party

The public sex I’ve seen in streets

The beards burned in fires of

Money and condoms the small

Mountains of pleasure and success

The carcasses of flattened gulls

            Fallen from the heavens

  

            My friends sleep inside,

A warm rat king of

College exhaustion dissolving at

Last  and I on the balcony

            listen to the church bells

ring and turn

The remaining gulls with keys—

Consider April from my balcony

IV

This evening I use the Bible as the

Instruction booklet of the chords

Of giants gritting teeth beats the

Booms of St. Ignatius kicking

His boot against empty air

            Tried to build this door—

This door I cursive for frame

I take the wind three sheets

Covering lovers drawn out on

Haight and Ashbury to you

Allen to you and the salt from

Your eyes that turned your beard

From brunette to blonde when you

Dreamed of hot air balloons

Deflating above

            Greenwich night skies

V

            Every nail and board

Into this door

Made with the bread of pain

And the codes behind my eyes

Coursing from my blueprint of

            Veins and bones these

Fingers drawing the sketches

Of a gate for all to walk naked

Thru

At the foot will scurry

white pelts of rabbits against

The bare balls of the ankles

I am unsure if they will think of

Allen Hardy Jesus or me

            If they think of me

The way of the cypress tree

Let one thousand fields of lilac

And poppy candy

            In which the mystics are buried

Spread like acid on film

The mystics in their sleep

Will hear my footsteps

They will smell my sweat

And they will feel the pressure

Of my word like the finger

Clenched

VI

The door

            To building the door

That will open to all—

            The pallid angels with cigarettes

Hanging from their lips and a

Cancer spreading their wings.

            The annals of children waiting

Awake for the toothfairy who is

Left hung on the cypress tree

In the field of infinity

I keep building this door

For all to pass under

To see the sunlight behind

To see ahead

the moon

            dropped

In the great star like an Irish car bomb

           

            The howls of the sinking

moon will be mistaken for the final

hissing of dying time

The dogs of romanticism chained

To fashionable pegs

Lurch and froth and choke

Trying to reach me before

I finish this door

VII

My death is not inscribed in the

Book of Instruction

So if I shall die

If I shall fall before this door is made—

            I take the wood from the cypress

            I make the nails from icicles of our blood

            I find the glass in the delicate filaments of poetry

            I read the blueprints found in the body

           

            I build in the wall of saving grace

Finish the door

If I can not

Finish the door

So all may walk

So all may use the key given at life

Head held high to the portal of ecstasy

Before the flesh deteriorates and

The hinges are taken away