Multo.com :: Visual Magic

Translations for a Lover

Mother of Pearl: Can you tell me
Where the wind swallows the sky
And how it learned to kiss before
Touching the skin?
Beneath the moon, round ghost
Floating across the sky, nothing
Nods or bobs in the poppy fields.

Red, orange, black heart,
Begging for the breeze to dance with.

You, lover, wet with rain
Your tears taste like poppy milk
Lover, in my room: will you drag me, crying
Down to the opium den?

My heart, tossed petals on sea winds
In your palm, crushed into juice.

Did you dry me out? Smoke me?
Watch me linger in the air?

Love tastes like vinegar
Bad rice wine and sea water.

Sobbing, beg me to hold you
Kicking, the smell of reeds on fire
Orange to red to black
I wounded your godshead

Lover, your moon is waxen, dirty
A hole in the sky
We fight like dragons

Act like lanterns
Swaying on poles
Reflecting black silk water

Smoke clears
Lover, naked you stand
Life has beaten you
With a pipe and a needle.

Fish cannot swim
In bloody water
Here, I will prove it; this one is dead
Feed it to the wind.

Rip off your bandages of red flags
Carry sand, smile often
Remember dead,
You have dead, don’t you?

My makeup washes off
Into white puddles
And black tears
They taste nothing like pearls
Do they? A body shudders.

Time created over again
In the hands of old women.

The oyster: sand, grains, pearls
Then opened
Shucked and shriveling.

Lover, squeeze lemon into
The raw wound
And suck back the
Pink meat.

Raw, gritty, I taste like
Our first nights
I keep your flavors in
My shell.

Is this how the sky was
Conceived?

November 2/98