Al Young

DREAM TAKE: 22

Someold Mexico Lisbon set
rainyat night & shimmery.
I alone flop around in midnight,
see everything from angel angle.

New moonless couples mourn by
arm in arm & all hands
after evenings of being quiet,
for soon whatever's to happen's "

happened already, always has.
I smileout over the situation
to keep their tears to myself,
tired of time & so much in need of

this mirage of lovers parading.
Safe, I can sense that I'm soon to
awake with no possible camera
to record what I just saw asleep

APRIL BLUE

It's time the clock got thrown out the window
& the difference between waking & sleeping
be left undeclared, unassumed.
It's the
heart's turn to do a few spins in its fluid.
It's time the birds that play in the street
(that you had to slow down for this morning)
flew into your machine & introduced themselves.

It's time you silenced the radio, the stereo,
the TV, the tea kettle, the kettle drum &

flew to where the inner ear beckons, where
closed eyes have always tingled to take you,
to the end of space if necessary, to the place
the horizon's always promised, to a glowing
spirit world where you'd as soon eat as not,
as soon drink as not, as soon make love as not,
as soon be water as air, as soon be moon as sun.

It's time you made yourself beautiful again,
spreading like color in every direction,
rising & rising to every occasion.
Summer
may be coming in, maybe not, this painful year.

Spring is the thing that your window frames now. to

It's time you soaked in the new light & laughed.

GROUPIE

Evening isnt so much a play land as it is
a rumpus room, a place where harmony
isnt always complementary & where
spaces between palmtrees of the heart
arent always so spread out.
By3 A.M.
there's love in her hose for the sailor
of saxophones or guitars& she'll try& take
the whole night into her skilled mouth
as tho that were the lover she really wanted
to rub against when all the time true love
inhabits her own fingernails& unshaven body.

You love her for the mental whore she is,
the clothed sun in Libra, the horny sister
who with her loose hair flying can get
no better attention for the time being

INTIMACY

Right up under our noses, roses
arrive at middleage, cancer blooms
and the sea is awash with answers.

Right here where light is brightest,
we sleep deepest; ignorant dreamers
with the appetites of napping apes.

Right this way to the mystery of life!
Follow your nose, follow the sun or
follow the dreaming sea, but follow!

CHEMISTRY

What connects me to this moon
is legendary, and what connects
the moon to me is as
momentary as the night is
long before it burns away like
that fire in the eyes of lovers
when, spent, they turn
from one another and fall against
the dark sidesof their pillows
to let their blood color cool.

You too know well the nature of
our chemistry: 65% oxygen,
18% carbon, 10%hydrogen,
3% nitrogen, a touch of calcium,
phosphorous and other elements.
But largely (by 70%) we're water:
2 parts hydrogen to 1part oxygen,
and mostlywe're still all we

9 parts fear chained to 1 part joy.
Is this why we're given to drowning
ourselves in pools of tears,
long on sorrow and shallow on laughter;
drowning ourselves in sugar and salt
as it were, as we are, as the treasured
substance of a former fish's life
can never be technically measured?

This chemistry we swim and skim
is what connects all light with me
olympically, for real life
science will forever be proving
this radiant suspension to be love
in but one of its bubbling mutations.

©2000-2007 by Al Young