Bulging pockets seduced by a dance of dice
where winking widows let mascara bleed
down stiff lapels beside a crutch that bites
the hand that rocks a cradle’s claire de lune,
chandeliers turned low as draughts of ghosts
rummage through a home that’s up for sale—
a radio on the sill unable to revive “Come Sail
Away” for all those baby boomers who dice
up prom-night stories welling up with ghosts
of infidelities, even assholes bleeding
for some old fifties tune like “Blue Moon”
banged on a toy piano whose rusty notes bite
chromatic chords, all of us hungry for a bite
of whatever we can get—sailor boys for sale
down by the pier pinned beneath a full moon
where they squat as if to shit dead men’s dice
rattling on rotten boards as musicians bleed
their instruments (how else summon ghosts
of the past?—Hart Crane dancing with the ghost
of Lowell last seen sailing a moonlit bight
where Bishop noticed “stains like dried blood
where ironwork had rusted”—Ouro Prêto for sale
the year she flew back North, wings de-iced
as she ducked behind winter’s suicide moon
with earphones in her ears, the cries of loons
the closest she could get to Lota’s ghost
still hovering over their abandoned paradise)
oh poesis poesis and all those megabytes
of memory lost inside some hard drive sold
down by the pier while our cursors bleed
into hypertext—chat-room boy toys with blood
on their hands renewed by dawn, the pale moon
but a hint of those crimson tides we sail
each night while that virus comes and goes
towards ghostly hands now waving goodbye—
too soon to tell whether old loves live or die.