Poet Island Press

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Two Poems from Barry Tagrin's work in progress: The Bluest Dog

POSTED 2007-11-28 IN POEMS

PHUKET DANCER

              (December 27th, 2005)

You are at work tonight, my darling.
I know you are full of hope, dreaming
that money will come your way.
I see you’ve dressed up in that outfit I gave you.
The one that covers over your shyness,
and the fear you have about your body after the baby.
It will be more difficult you tell me
that you are less now than what the men want.
At twenty, past your prime
and the innocence they love to eat out of you.
It’s true you will seek to perform in the dimmer,
more romantic light. Turn the lamps down,
and work more at quickness,
when in the past you were a princess of time,
giving more than you must.
Even to the bad ones, who you thought
your richness could alter.
Like me you believed there had to be some goodness
somewhere in the process.
Your child now, little Tam, is home with your mother.
Your father, you say, was killed in the big wave.
I’m sorry, my gifts are all I have left.
Probably I too am damaged by this world of the body
and the commerce of affection.
Nevertheless, you were surprised that as my time
was running out, I was wasting it
getting to know you.
When perhaps I could have asked for more,
I asked for less.
We come together, just because we are so far apart.
This evening, the sky is back, and the sea is calm.
The sand along the lonely beach glistens anew.
Good bye and good luck.
When you have an all night guy now,
you take care best you can,
body and soul.
And keep your heart just as it is.

ZEN MOMENTS

             (Japan, 1989)

The misshapen trees in the graveyard,
the great shade darkening the stones.
I could see across the way to our apartment,
rising high, the stairwells trapped
in the gloom of the halls.
I felt then a man of no value,
the beauty in me quarantined by desire.
I knew you were waiting,
but I feared the truth of love and its force.
There was in the nature of my world
a sinister repetition of the self.
The demon uniformity of being alive.
I , and all of me,
but a vein of silk in a lonely fabric.
I never wanted to fight you.
Never wanted to harm the red portals
of our imaginary shrine.
Thus, I returned home,
up the neon stairway bearing my hidden moon.
The last of the Japan rain
drawing fresh patterns along the glass.

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