Again I find us in dreams feeling light

for Clay

Clay Debevoise, poet, photographer, artist: Clay's first studio was Feeling Light.

I have taken to holding myself up to your light
and staring through the blood, bone and nerve
pressing my eyes to the ocean of our life
reflecting a red sun skipping stones
off my organs of love, faith and fear.

I will return to you again and again.

We spent the days in inked cartoon panels
drinking coffee and looking out past Edward
in the plate glass window at the five o’clock shadow
of the unshaven city; his cigarette tattoos
a genie on the hollow forearm holding his cup
in silhouette: a profile portrait black
as bat shadow night projected on the screen
of dust, dreams and mahogany veneer.

I will return to you again and again.

Impossibly modern in seventy five, waving
the present good bye from the past, Buck Rogers' brother
drifts out of focus, twisting a rag in the glass.

I will return to you again and again

riding Trigger with Dale Evans in chaps.
Freedom is no more a choice we can make
where nothing can hurt you: fear death by chipfat,
pliers, buy-one-get-one-free, heroin,
television, mountain scenery. Last night
I carried your baby from DF to el Paso del Norte
with women perdidas on ochre roads behind
stake-back trucks, and the border was a dam
with engines and broken aluminium doors. We made it
to LA and stayed with my brother who let us wash.
In the morning he gave me a cell phone in credit and a name.

I will return to you again and again.

You are an extended picaresque
taking in downbeat cellar bars
where the full-on noise assault of the last act
of Saturday night plays out at noon on Sunday
somewhere downstairs throbbing under a full
veggie breakfast boys and girls spill
out like pints of Guinness, white froth
faces on cool black leather bodies:
off to hook piercings and haul their dreams to your light.

I will return to you again and again.

And, a San Francisco fifth-floor, one-room walk-up
flat two years away from the wake-up call
feeling light technology on metal
sheet prints, every penny spent on screens,
cigarettes and at the weekends, baby
food: the hard won fight for custody.
I cannot raise you normal in this place,
I cannot raise you normal in this place,
you sang a lullabye for your daughters

I will return to you again and again

I cannot raise you normal in this place,
I cannot raise you normal in this place,
and when we played the Art of Dying you heard
the angels crying in the corner where paraffin dripped.
You kindled my interest in the image of light and shade
but your appaloosa future runs wild.

I will return to you again and again.

George Roberts
10/11/2006