Maatstaf. Jaargang 33

[p. 16]

Jacob Lowland
Five Sonnets

Spring Flood

The river spills across the levee and
creeps up the lane, the yard, then laps the stone
steps to the front porch. On the porch, alone,
you stand and watch it climb. You raise a hand

and call out, almost chanting, ‘I command
you, waters, cease!’ Standing in the front room
watching you watch the waters, I think of doom
and what can come of houses built on sand.

You turn around. Your face is flushed. Your fist
clutches your crotch. You see me standing there
and gesture with your hand: Come on outside.

You open up your jeans, two tugs, a twist,
your bared cock arcs a white stream through the air.
Slowly the waters settle and subside.

[p. 17]

Manhattan Visitor

The tombstone makers two doors down the street
are sawing markers out of chunks of marble.
Upstairs a couple quarrels, to the garbled
musicings of two radios in heat.

Beyond the wall the printing presses grumble.
A streetcar rumbles past. An airplane drones
low overhead. Still half asleep, you moan,
turn over on your side, glance up, and mumble:

‘How good to hear the sounds of Amsterdam.’
You crumple up the sheet and pitch it back,
uncovering your soaring morning hardop.

‘It's all so peaceful here - as if I am
out on my daddy's farm.’ And then a thwack
as Kurt starts beating carpets in the garden.

Amphibian

I'm riding through a landscape in a train.
It looks Japan. See, there's a tiny bridge.
And that's a Shinto temple. Then a ridge,
and Fujiyama rises in the rain.

This is a place I'm sure I've never been
except in books, in prints. A samurai
rides past with page on horseback, shouts Banzai
at me, now horseback too. And then a town.

Walking, I turn a corner. There's a group
of Yanks in uniform: marines on duty.
It's Scarface on a bier, with sixteen henchmen.

Though when I look again they are a troupe
of Grade b actors, and he's Sleeping Beauty.
I kiss him, and he turns into a Frenchman.

[p. 18]

End of Christopher

Hanging above the rim of Jersey like
a ball of fire: the sun. You stand and stare
at it, the aura of your Afro hair
aflame with blazing light. You climb your bike

and ride up West Street, till you are a speck
of movement, then it's gone. I buy a beer
(the Ramrod's empty), look out at the pier
that's gone too, where we used to go to fuck.

It wasn't you, of course: some Uptown Black
come down to taste the joys of ghetto Gaysville.
But still: that Afro, and that soft-shoe shuffle

he did (you did). Nothing anyone says will
convince me that you're never coming back.
I see your grave. I hear the drum's slow ruffle.

Taking Steps

A new spring, and a New Sound at the disco.
You take to it as ducks reportedly
take to water. It's not the sound for me.
I've either got to split or run the risk of

drowning the noise in drunkenness. ‘A whiskey.’
Now why did I do that? Next thing I'll be
buying a piñna. Or a daquiri.
Turn queen. Move off to Polk Street San Francisco.

A long hand reaches towards me. Mister Death.
Gotta get out of here. But where are you?
Not on the dancefloor. Ditto at the bar.

I check the johns, the backroom. There's a blue
wraith like a skeleton. And there you are
fast-fucking it. There's whiskey on its breath.