richard hell

KISS

Yellow and grey, the checkered cloth, each
square its sculpture rising
hampered sunlight topiary of a tree-strewn
slope: the trees can move and their leaves
touch your throat. I lift my arms
and, lying on my back, I levitate
with the laws of nature, thoughtlessly, the checkered ground
like a handkerchief lifted from its corners to enclose me... and
the vivid taste of citrus radiates its own absorption
from that spot upon the tongue
in ladder upon ladder
from whence I wave to you
hectically, abandoned, without a thought but to make you glad
way up there in the sky, with your hair and turned-away
head in the foreground, looking
at me as if I were your child, for
which I'm grateful, deck after deck
of cards sprung free
down around your feet
and arms and knees and shoulders, all of which
we can see, except our faces because our eyes are in them


THE TROUBLE

If this were everything I wanted it to be
It still wouldn't be what I want it to be.