Works Presented

there r so many things		in the irrepressible youth
gerald waz shy		he grunted
charles' death		1 fine particular sunday morning

Note: (000, YYMMDD) = the approximate Yahoo Message Board entry number and date.
Spelling, punctuation, grammar, and line phrasing are as originally posted by the author.

there r so many things here on the floor shoes poems books why do u come over here if u will not help me clean?

u read the poems 2 me "what did u mean by this?" & "that’s a crazy image" i tell u that poetry iz about initial feel more about sound that actual words in many instances "bullshit!" u say

u r always smiling at me sitting there on my bed in my shirt and socks u leave plates for me and cups and take my sweaters home

u say "i want a poem just about me! when u gonna do that?"

u say "write a poem about my ass!" i look up from what I am doing u fall on the bed laughing u roll in the covers u say "come over here"

i say "no" u r quiet 4 a while watching the news & humming then "romus" i ignore the first "romus" i look at you u r smiling hanging off the bed backwards u stick your tongue out & laugh loud

i say "i am writing this poem if u don’t mind?" u r quiet again

i hear u asleep stretching in2 dreams in the incense on my small place the afternoon is waning more gray than blue now more orange than bright clear city i see shadows gathering in the corners i hear the traffic outside birds making the last call before they r replaced with stars

the open window iz cool there iz a palm outside it reminds me of everywhere i have never been i see a plane’s light high in the smokey mauve blue like a sentry for stars awaiting the all clear signal

u turn in your sleep u r beautiful craziness always a hint in the curve of yo mouth yo hair all around u

last year i did not know u now i bear your voice against silence on the long stretches home or when the bus clatters with people & children

many times in the evenings before u have 2 go when we have spent all afternoon blurring sex & memory i feel like i am a tourist or i am at least a stranger new here stopping through waiting 4 the next city & the next exquisite sorrow

Romus © Copyright, 1999

slow jazz will take us throughout this city block by velvet block all alleys bottom in coolness all laughter bright windowpanes looking out on night this journey with its scheduled sounds a familiar stroll across wide avenues will present the faces in truth this truth resilient present and stoic az bricks vibrattoing under cadilac hoods iz either al jarreau in exquisite expatriate joy or it is antonio carlos jobim in residual infinite blue sorry we r so eazy tonight amazing! in the streaming silver we wear the shadows we lay flat against the languid backbeat we romance delirium & whirl against the lights we flash like beautiful faces in the cacophony of churning crowds we imprint mauve & move in the exhale of blue stars

here iz my hand filled with polished coins laughter & magic mix in r breath i unhinge at the dreams we extend in2 midnight like listened 4 music we turn copper corners & disappear then flash across the periphery of the moon’s vision jazz cauldrons around us like incense we r beautiful we r jealous of no one

against the wide night set tall & shimmering 4 only us in the photographs that catch us in brief seconds between breath & running we r a million actions against a panorama of shades of darkening blues & night electricity freezes me at every corner we r always so late so late with such little time

all this piano & youth gold stifled in the corners glowing red in expectant possibility i see us in the windows running along the downtown trains waving 2 anyone at all we r a sharp hand clap & a rim shot i see us singing az we press in2 the shimmering vermillion of the midnight height everything scatters like high hats discarding sound i see us Katherine dunhaming with the strange smoke said shadows everything jumps & yells like staccato bass & i watching u live with me az we fly over the tall city we r a whistle & a wink & a trumpet scream the universe reflecting itself in the illusion of water & me falling slowly in the private autumn of yo kiss

& i between the park & the shore & the closed shops pushed back yo hat & we met kiss 2 kiss melting like thought like language losing distance like quiet translucent fires like the brevity of a lone keen cigarette lit just outside the failing light of the marquee

Romus © Copyright, 1999

gerald was shy a closed hand in a beckoning world a little whirl in a sky of tornadoes a baton twirl amid the ferris wheels a hill before the procession of mountains a spill in the roar of a tumbling river an autumn chill against an endless siberia gerald waz not a talker but sang endlessly & that rang across the sand & sea of himself he hummed in the alleys running sticks along the fences he wore harmonies like hiz ribs balancing hiz head & the things the neat songs said the red they illustrated the bed they softened in2 sleep the deep steep valleys their winding colors fed oh, the stones in perfect voice the asphalt dutifully holding notes the trash drums & cars & people the trees floating & at night rumors of jazz in the bars what waz wonderful what stayed & what waz played waz gerald’s choice the rull & roar against the chiming phones then the lone coffee pot screaming from a neighbor’s stove the loud young men that drove mr. morrison 2 madness the monody bloating on tuesday gray the explosions of tiny miracles resplendid in the afternoon greetings but gerald waz silent among the callers who yelped songs who constructed wrong notes & the auditorium shivered who awed the awnings in2 absolute abstraction whose audaciousness & ambiguity gonged & shook the whole evening oh, the bevy of songs 2 sing & simmer & soon soar what sullen sin & sarcasm above the tin of the basket at the grocery store gerald swore by music he bore the composer’s lore & really heard the heavenly hymnals hallelujah & the marching bands rant & roar he would watch the bass drums thundering announcing various victories booming sound so tall az if time tore then there waz more the whole notes in babies’ eyes the sopranos shimmering in the sky the elevating tenors the bass vibrattoing the ground flooding the feelings like a fog or an indulgent earthquake come ‘round oh, sound upon perfect sound cry upon tumultuous cry theme songs & shadows following spies gerald sat by the tree the summer concert tuned its noises he watched the milling in music the monotone tubas the piccolo revelry violins sneezing at horsehair occasional thunder from an errant tympani bass clarinet & cellos in wet eroticism gerald sat listening calling his senses to get every sound he let the late afternoon abound he set his toes 2 tapping & when the violins swirled in2 the 1rst selection he almost left the ground

but that day among the many days come & went that spent their prodigious charm then sent evening in full décor through the city streets that day in the palm of golden music where language is heightened & cathedral bells bent baroque barcarole that bellowed bobby blue bland blue across the brazen & busy avenue gerald knew every clue every rise of an aria every short shoe tap timing the temerity of a city denying the tenuous tra la la & creating old things anew the music blew through him tiling hiz bones in many hues & gerald stood by that tree on that day & az the polite people swayed az the elegant maples dreamed of may & that orchestra beautifully played gerald began to sing so loud that the crowd left their gentile arabesques & let the lemonade loiter & gerald rose 2 forte bracing hiz arms 2 carry him there eyes closed sinews tight ringing in the air singing across the elderly trees with all hiz might

what a sight gerald waz shirt open at he edge of the warm night singing those words & gaining height emphasizing diction 2 be polite it waz beautiful replete with diamonds & shimmering things it waz gorgeous simple a pleasure az getting mail 2 hear gerald sing it had wings & thousands of miles of unimpeded daylit air it was like putting water in hiz hair & watching hiz youth bloom clear az greenhouse roses it likened 2 declaring summer here at last or recalling kisses on the eyes in the mauve memories of a traveling man’s past or maybe beginning a journey & hoisting the sail up the mast & catching first wind with a whole wonderful world to wander gerald cast hiz voice in2 that sunset under those incipient stars swelling in the new season swarming like bees in the late atmosphere ink gathering in the eves inverting trees in children’s eyes swooning sound in symphonies succulent az secrets in the soothsayer's cheek eazy as sparks floating in2 african skies laying across new darkness like luminescent flies

Romus © Copyright, 2000

he grunted & stood still the eye watching me focused & listening the hog eye 800 lbs breathless in the mud az fences waiting 2 run rural roads i threw the feed in it overflowed the troughs he ate i filled the water hatches & leaning on the fence watched him 4 a while

the next day i returned he was reluctant to move in the dusty corner snout puffing dust eye watching me finally convinced by the pour of the food he came slowly i reached & scratched hiz ear he felt it then in the food he ate, his vigor returning like an instinct developed in poverty like this is all he could do & be pure i went to get the water hose seeing him from the side hiz testicles were gone hacked off, blood on his hams & hoofs no one had told me they had come during the day assessing room in the freezer bantering about the smoking & curing of meat i saw their footprints circling the pen saw the cigarette buds flicked near old tires they would be back in a few days when he was free of testosterone when his rebellion spun unattached & withered in the drowning blood

two days later he was still there the slow eye watching puffing in the dust he knew he knew i opened the gate bade him leave threw rocks cursed him he stayed frightened by me now hiz weight hiz mouth the coming night shadows consuming the pasture

"go & die" i yelled "let them come oblivious 2 yr little life let them come smoking cigarettes & cursing their wives let them come absent of incense in a liturgy of hymns let them come with their infirmities wearing their ancient wars" he stayed puffing in the dust powerless he knew i think he knew that the blue wall of night would extend 4ever & that maybe in hiz pen with hiz roots & mud the stars don’t actually move & that the ghost of hiz tomorrow sits moaning beside the road that leads to the prison where men r butchered & that hogs were made 4 butchering & that instinct does not exist beyond that truth in men or in hogs & that i waz just the caretaker just a boy with my concerns something lofty az the moon that belongs 2 no one but seems to be staring only at you

Romus © Copyright, 2000

charles’ death should have been international news should have been a pebble in a rich man’s shoe should have been a channel & a chariot dedicated 2 decay & decadence should have been a whence of pain in the president’s step a stammer in hiz address a talk lacking proper language a stalemated interstate an irregular stutter in neon a button the meticulous 4get charles’ death should have been a loss of breath in the collective city a hem at half mass on sistuh so & so’s dress a dull ache in the hustler’s chest the tiny truth preachers profess it should have been a little mess the custodians leave in defiance of the oblivious world should have been an understated caress from the patient waitress or the first step of a southerner heading west charles death should have been a reflective moment in the lives of the careless should have been wilshire blvd. with all its traffic lights red or a bandana around the homeless man’s head should have been the 1rst thing the neighbors said this morning before their coffee & grievances before they read the newspaper should have been a cold spot in their beds or the article of clothing the stripper refused 2 shed charles’ death should have been an engine refusing 2 go or the violent night some folks will never know or asthmatic rivers unable to flow wetlands abandoned & low or tugboats in still water letting ships stand refusing them tow dark track houses all quiet in a row los angeles traffic heating at dusk should have been something very slow moving across the horizon or a carnival closing the show & the first fall of black snow in the last winter of r urban memories

Romus © Copyright, 2000

sundays oh, sundays in tuscaloosa this man iz lean at 84 elegant exact az architecture moving slow across bright clean sunday mornings wonderful quiet reverent sunday mornings he walks the pageantry among the women who r beyond the earlier rush who r easy in the light sunday morning greetings who toe touch tap tap & puff perfume & powder az they mingle along the sidewalks he goes among their fine hats & gloves & eyelashes & pounds of pearls the morning rises & swirls he iz 84 an opulent musk 84 a magnificent sincere 84 a christian austere 84 a smile 4 only u 84 the lawns glisten the roses sing the rain shined streets run the small town in rare mirrors the bushes full of crystals the trees hanging stained glass & poems

we watch him go among the adolescents felt hat old tie by the warm summer houses black chin clean hands loose from the ritual of giving & praying & handling the winters in alabama mornings that came hungry 2 hiz door & sometimes childless we watch him mark the morning we see the smile move across hiz face like unwrapping a gift 2 find an ancestor’s linen

the little children gather summerclad in their finest smiles fresh az apples shined for market beautiful az the promise of poetry they hold to him losing their fear in hiz shadow he touches their heads & bade them come follow alabama hums in her early discourse pines shapenote in the backwoods air he looks our way 4 a second smiles tips hiz hat the small children following his coattails look not recognizing us then they wave little bells in the silver air they hurry behind him curls & lace & little shaved heads this iz the photograph the image we will export around the world him heading away from us in2 memory in2 that sunday morning dream with hiz reincarnations in tow

Romus © Copyright, 2000