History


If you could get inside me I would finally
know how I feel, I mean, you would know.

A lady with teased blonde hair reads
the Socialist Worker, mouthing the words.

On the phone you sound like a voice
in my head, I want you a royal gesture.

A purse pushes brutally against my arm,
I must fight for the end of each line.

I would finally know how I feel, meaning
you would know, and knowing open to my

knowing, as every word is known, letter
after letter, standing bare, gesturing.

No letter hides. You're inescapable.
Your voice on the phone hides your face.

With a mad arcane tumble of letters, however,
I reveal your beauty, your vowels shown.

Know letters hide. They slide in rubber bands
and rustle in dayless mock forests.

A train with tracks clear will stand still
on a red signal, brave as a pickled herring.

Know that I will, by moving forward,
change your light to green, oh brown eyes.

Know that your knowledge of my knowing
will let me know to go. Don't tell me. I know.

Action is a four letter word, or could be
right now, from a distance. The axe falls

and something unheard of happens, but you know
and I know. Our smiles circle it.

Rite. Is it? Can you accept what you know,
knowing you cannot know it? Can you, too, cry

in awe that God works such glory in you
despite you don't believe Him? Can we gasp

together when words insist we are not?
Our language of gasps, will it ask our questions?

The electricity of eyes on a crosstown train,
leaping North South, minds sizzling alongside

like sparkling hamburgers that never influence
each other, though they all taste the same.

Ask the fast food chef. How long to cook five?
How long to cook one? Five minutes. Five minutes.

Falling in love is a noun, deeply buried now.
How dare I unearth it for you? What fool

would I be, standing, barely gesturing,
spelling l, o, v, e, with my sad sticklike body

in an empty place, but for lines,
like Red Square. You know what that means.

The man who jumps, saying you will jump,
goes directly to the no place to be alone

and only then is he allowed to look around.
If you're there, it is no credit to my song.

With all its missing letters and words, it slips
right past you, left standing with your leap.

What butterfly follows the net? Break out
your John Hancock. The next couplet is in your hand.


Donald Zirilli
2/6/2001