Experiment 12
[six untitled poems by Kaylene Andrews]
Last night in my bed
I desired you.
In the dark
Your warmth was power.
Like a flower to sun
I sought you and then
I saw you through the arch
and the garden behind you.
-and I hid my head-
Why was I afraid
I looked again soon and loved you and waited
but you had come and gone.
In the dark
My bed is cold.
Kaylene Andrews
Music Man
and all there is of him
plays to the smoky crowdblur-
heads over tables-white rafts washed up there
from the scurrying eddies of the city night
Grey music man
with the pink fat fingers
on the long-horn sax goldshine keys
head bobbing to sad beat, hip beat
sob beat throb beat beat beat
jumping to the jive-mad dive-mad jumpsad crowd.
Bald marrionette man
feed -the crowd-the-blues-man
hoo-waa-hoo-oo man
blow it right through, then
slow, slow, slower man.
Kaylene Andrew
See the garden
See the garden and the children and the gate
See the children
See the children playing in the gloom
in the gloom's black-purple are the blondehaired children
and the sun gone down
and the sun gone long down
No mother calls
no mother calls them in and the empty house is dark.
Kaylene Andrews
An old man
On the rise
Silhouetted
Old age looks older against the sky-
Why?
The sky is infinite,-clean?
Men are small
Old men are smaller.
Helpless
Hopeless
Old age is despair.
Even his stubby whiskers are clear
Against the sky.
Kaylene Andrews
On the way
I saw a kingfisher
bright
on a wire.
That night a storm howled
and trees fell
across telephone wires
while I lay drunk and cozy.
On the way back
there was the dead bird
by the side of the road
It wasn't the same one I suppose
but it seemed to be my fault.
Kaylene Andrew
The wary cat
looked at me
I saw it but it looked at me
Kaylene Andrew