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Yusef
Komunyakaa
Poems
CHASTITY BELT
Invisible catches & secret
hooks, bone
Within bone & trick locks.
If a man needs this to hold
Love in place, the master of keys
Will always bite his nails
To the quick. Tooled leather,
Laced mail & jeweled bronze.
Before his departure over a body
Of tremulant water, he turns
The key in the lock as they kiss.
Like something alive, it sways
Beneath his armor from a gold
chain
Around his neck, to the rhythm
Of galloping hooves. Two days
Later, with a dagger in his belly,
Thick fingers tear the key from his throat.
* * * *
*
BODY OF A WOMAN (Cadavere
di Donna)
Here you are, still
Reposed behind glass
Like a work of art.
Yes,
Body of precious
aloneness,
There are times I
desire you
In a lover's arms.
Sometimes
I want you making
fierce love,
With moans like
thought-bubbles
Of pleasure forever in
Pompeii's
Lava & ash. Yet,
other nights,
As Miles Davis plays
ballads
In the background, like
tonight,
There's only irony: I
see
You're gazing out
toward
The House of the Faun,
Waiting for someone.
* * * *
*
THE LURE
The batfish hides there
At the bottom of
desire.
A fleshy, wormlike lure
Dangles freely,
luminescent
As a French tickler or
line
From a love song
personified.
Without eyes or guts,
the male
Grows into the female,
a Jonah
Inside a scaled-down
Moby Dick.
She's bewitched among
sea hair
& kelp, filled with
forbearance
& a silent singing
bitten in half,
In a holy world of
mouths
Speaking watery
reprieves
In needful hush, down
where
His first breath was an open wound.
* * * *
*
HYDRAULICS
When a young man
dedicates his life
To hydraulics, he can
grow into a godhead
Overnight. Because ram,
pile, lift, jack,
& pressure gauge
own this man's tongue,
Hercules goes on a long
vacation.
Hera's magic finds him
on Saturday
Nights when he's
drinking rum & Coke,
But Amazons on
Hollywood & Vine remember
Hippolyta. He's broken
many guitars
Over the heads of
bouncers. Mountains
Tremble, buildings cave
in, & water
Begins to drift uphill.
Apollo
Arm wrestles his shadow
in a dream,
As he describes the
forests of Cerynitia,
& next day the
lions at the city zoo
Cover their eyes with heavy paws.
* * * *
*
PAN
Elizabeth, I must say,
Pan wasn't raising Cain
among the reeds.
He had taken off his
mask,
& was lying there,
puffing ganja,
Blowing Rasta smoke
rings
& nibbling on a
golden mango,
When he glimpsed three
naiads
Prancing beside the
lily pond.
He rolled over &
watched two ants
Struggle up a Sisyphean
incline
With a moth. Silenus's
brother
& father, scapegoat
& earthly god,
He felt divided. The
nymphs frolicked
As he played love &
panic on his flute
Till Arcady drifted out
of his head,
& then a whisper opened all the buds.
* * * *
*
THE CONGO
SNAKE
Feet of petty chances,
you
Came out on the other
side
Of love & mercy. No
one
Cares if you rise from
the lower world
Or not, as something to
grind up
For cat food, &
even the hunger
Of gods can't wish you
away.
In your cave of
primordial mud,
Window through slow
water,
We pray only ghosts
& goblins
Look at
you. The untouchables
Tattoo
your image on the soles
Of their
feet. The monkey
God
swears you don't exist,
& in
the house of good tidings
The
devil is blessed before you.
* * *
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