The Mermaid Takes Issue with the Fable

I came in the tavern totally naked, that's true.
And those drunk men inside: began to spit.
I was from the sea and I knew a thing, or two.
Yes, yes, a mermaid, but I had not lost my way.
The insults bounced off my gleaming scales.
Obscenities reflected in my tawny breasts.
Oh, I know tears, but on this we agree: I did not weep tears.
I know clothes, and I did not have clothes.
They blackened me with burnt corks and cigarette stubs
and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor, yes.
I did not speak because they would not have listened.
My eyes were the colour of close hatred.
My arms made of white diamonds.
My lips moved, a whisper, in light of the anemone
darts, white threads centered and caught by each gaping mouth.
Entering the sea I was rinsed
clear like an empty mug of beer.
And without looking I swam,
swam towards fullness, swam towards life.

An Eye on New Zealand's Bird

A virtue, yes, not quite
the fifth ranking
angel, yet close;

its velocity a wave,
reflects, bends back.
I seek beauty

through journeys
by air or water, corridor
and duct. A day's

travel brings the elapse
of radar, its echoes
from unknown origin.

I risk collation in parallel
passages, and note
elements in piano keys:

chords, pitch, tone. I hazard
to expose symbol
and node. What's worse,

and more effective?
The rip of a seaplane,
or the white-breasted
water hen, rare and flightless.

The Tulip Thief, Mi Amor

At first it was an ember; its glow I nursed
like a welt after the open wound you left
in the row. Anger, yes, but what is anger
if not passion? Sparks, if not chemistry?
A lab of mulch, calyx, and bitterroot. Your
neat snips--kitchen shears?--selective: not
the first in the row, yet the second and today
the third. My pretty girls, my charming
darlings. Oh, the hours I conjured their hue
of red--for cheerful and its stain of glamour.
Tulip, native of Asia, sister of Geisha--
petals demure, dainty and closed
each evening. I've contemplated a linger
in the eaves with a shotgun. A friend suggests
a garden hose. And like a misunderstood lover,
I harbored plans--one with a black alder
and epoxy--discarded for mercy. Your ache
for beauty much like my own dogma. I know
the gasp of a red petal on the asphyxiated
heart--how it jumps! Perhaps, your wife
has packed and paid for a ticket to the gas
station where the attendant grows iris--
so violet--clearly, a man who knows
how to tend. You saw my tulips and thought
to dazzle her back with scarlet; it's the true nature
of violet, pure. I like to think my tulips save
your marriage--you're off to Niagara Falls
for a wet second honeymoon and surprise
baby. This, I understand. Sometimes we need
reckless acts to see each other again.