If I had known
love more as
an object and less
as the thinly-
disguised subject
of my life would I
not accept only the
work I set myself
and be a free face
gently gliding out
onto Southern Avenue
I can hear the birds
loudly protesting
the sun going down
the sky all tourmaline
and tragic
your eyes two garnets
in the darkness turning
to undress me.
I think my heart
got buried
in your couch
while I slept
it must have slipped
out small and pink
stone someone
gave me I kept
it in my pocket
vaguely oyster
shaped veined
and stained little
axe head
slippery and
hard call me
if you find it
or just let
it rest.
Nothing rhapsodic
at this late flowers
but why do we recall
so little when we
get back here
where it’s clear
we occupy at least
two beautiful spaces
one with and one
without time or reason
how is the one
more or less imagined
by the other would
take us farther
down the Ister
than a Friday’s
meant to stray
but then you’d find
a way to do it
anyway.
The clear sky
shouts we haven’t
that much time to
move our minds
if we expect
the precipitous
to overcome the
inane in bed
or on the street
where we go to
dream or cuddle
following the honey
you call sweat
the sweet labor
of being licked
and held but
in one vision I
saw you destitute
living in crazy land
down the street
from our first place
I had already been
dead some years
wearing my blue
jacket but weeping
when I saw you.
Aren’t I always
calling myself
out I mean
when was this
mistaken ident-
ification going
to end this
concern for
myself I must
be there
to witness
your recall
of the accident
which couldn’t
possibly have
gone down
as you describe
it or how could
I also have
been loved?
Four éclairs
molested by
a bag of carrots
I am mental enough always
to have you in mind
what is economics
on a lofty holiday
my mother’s curse word
was ‘phony’
(the way she said it
there was nothing worse)
what is the evolutionary
task of shame
is the point of
science when mercury
returns Wednesday rain
as far as it works.
Only a target
moves that much
carries that
much sorrow
the attentiveness
of a head-lit doe
with Bambi
another Bambi
the end
of knowledge
run and run
or the beginning
of death
as confidante
and friend.
If we could only
see the shadow
would we have ever
imagined the tree
the whole tree
I would have said
long darker streaks
emerging from a dark wall
a stain or crudescence
and these grouped
together on top of
a gray border the way
science does it
not seeing the tree either
so caught up
defending the outlines
and occasional markings
but then I did see
the tree it was
the tree of desire
it was the wish
to do better.
You are free
because you do not
see your cage
I am free
because I do
see mine
flight of a flicker
yellow-shafted note
perch in the open
nest on the ground
we can feel these dark
clouds go on for years
when our eyes reach
out for them.
This idea of sharing
has us stuck
we can’t get
that into it
we don’t want
to have to
in the idea of war
the idea of death
the idea of a physical
body our best idea yet
except for the idea
of truth-in-movement
the idea of color
the idea of ideas
right
who invented that?
This is not to say
how I expect
to see the place
when I get back
from wherever
it is I’m going
I regret my harshness
in the morning
in the face of
your neglect
the night it
rained all night
cats and dogs
refrigerators
and horses
I was just horny.
After the earthquake
I started arranging tangerines
and two apples in
a painted bowl
as if for some painting
I started to think of
planet earth
as a suicide bomber
explosives strapped
to her chest here
and there a catastrophe
leaking through
I started to think
if we could all
think of ourselves
actually
in that position
lying athwart
one another
in a broken bowl.
Dear pseudo-
arch enemy
my faux foe
I write to tell
you all things
are reflections
of some higher
thing or being
relax this is delicious
something I can kiss
on the lips
not mere information
but how can things
be well if the world
is still in the hands
of madmen?
You are a whole environment
but I have planted
ore in the ground
of my being to your form
thus spoke the youth
of
goddess of farmers and the arts
so how did we acquire
such cruelty to one
another over time
and come to believe
in some original murder
to explain it when
it was always about
not sharing or sharing
if what is seen is real?
Just because it
can’t be measured
doesn’t mean
it can’t be weighed
by the mind what
this would feel like
what it would
set in motion
the year I had time
to spoil three
tomato plants
like they were
my whole childhood
imagine that
a tomato plant
one of the nightshade
family.
Old furniture
is more valuable
than old people
fine art
is more precious
than children
all this was yours
but you pretended
to refuse it
I wish I could be
in the here and now
not lost in reverie of it
the flourish or
the grimace
all we know we’ve
had to think about first
not memory but
knowledge of
you first.
Hands washed
with the blood
of chrysanthemums
overnight the city
becomes a forest
in the queue of
disasters the thunder
favors the poorer
flowers whose
medicine is his
illness what number
are we to have
invented death
but to have kept
it for ourselves
as proof of power?
Like a website error
message you shut
me down but I simply
check back later
how will we get through
this pattern the gauntlet
of its trigger-points
where blind or inept
spontaneity no longer
accurately reflects
our need to find support
in drab or commonplace
responses to the natural
world we’ve relied on
for however long
when to obey one’s
thoughtful self alone
is love is freedom?
These general
statements
our lives make
of one another
as if kissing
was a speech to
one’s favorite
street or trees
our friends among
inanimate things
the people next
door moved out
we fatten on
their roses.
The unloved
parts of hearts
get cold first
hands and feet
ears and bits
of ice particles
rain brings
resignation
pounding on
the rubble
you go for food
but don’t come back
I leave this note
for you written
on the air.
Around nine
sun comes
galloping up
drooling a blinding
path of light
hey are you
ready to run
jump fuck sing
I let it rub
my neck and back
I drag its flashing
robe across the
burning tile to where
you’re waiting
with a smile.
It turns out a flower
is a kind of nose
and a nose a kind
of flower each
sniffing to see
if there is any future
in the air and what
darkness draws near
in our thinking
feeling its way
along the perimeter
cities of another
waking self.
That I see you as a shy
and gravely alert person
every leaf in your possession
and as a great being
in the process of bleeding
using the blood
great streams of it
to shape these ruffled
crimson petals
bomber squadrons
over a green delta
in the endless war
mineral plant animal
human angel archangel
but not until each one
of us has a whole lifetime
and silence is heard
except for your breathing.
Slowly fucking
back and forth
we wake up empty
shells of ourselves
on the opposite
shore of dreams
at last alone
where are you
more a constant
angle I can hold
and take of thinking
there’s no beginning
without as rocking
is to creeping
having scratched out
ourselves now we
reinstate me.
I was among the timid
timeless children more
than the restless depressed
smaller in similitude
I forget what we were up to
nine year old touching
hungry for holding withheld
before we felt extruded
into the moon-lit room
the body of a child
no one will care for
how could this
still be happening
on the earth?
Think of it
as a mural
or a moving
sculpture all
of us work on
all the time
our immediate
detail in part
itself the thing
the whole body
seeks to com-
prehend the
mood behind
the catastrophe
we listen for
what we don’t
want to say
we slip away.
One must act out
both disorders
male and female
for a long time
both glories
in successive
passes practicing
down to the vagaries
of thinking alone
with others
in the desert alone
pondering what
manner or device
yelling and yelling
the heart craves.
Direct Insight phoned me
but I let the machine
pick it up
a pause and then
they hung up
that was it
the message
upliftingly brief
and precise
the silence
secondary to
the empty space
waiting sailed out into me
not immediately
filled with ocean.
That we may be unreachable
who long to be reached
unrecoverable who ache
to be recovered
each in our own century
and waste
one romantic boogey-man
after another under the bed
who have abandoned
childish as despair
if it is you who puts you here
guided by more
intelligence than sense
what are light and
darkness to you
if not gods to be
worshipped
and then overcome
what about imagination
don’t you get?
You have just come along
just grazing along
and you find
a large red stone
or seed lying in
the grass and you
know immediately
being a bull
you find it
curiously provocative
and you know
immediately this
is a picture of
my life this stone
or seed what it thinks
it’s doing there anyway
and I knew immediately
how little my life
is my own
or anyone’s
I know.
The aloe offers
tubular flowers
out from a tall
stem an opening
or a letting go
to which it comes
anew in winter Eckhart
like Ezekiel
perceived it as
The Madonna of Humility
where are her clothes
into which a long time ago
how long do you think
we’ve been thinking
like this as reflections
in these patterns
the very highest ones
I leave to the wind
to topple to sink
in the furtherance
of something further
not even a god
can escape serving
some better idea.
That the best among us
must look forward
to the most terrible
sufferings which some
regard as weakness
was Buddha wrong
about suffering
I mean the way
fear leads to courage
desire to compassion
we don’t want to
talk about these things
in poems openly we
let our old ideals
intimidate us
but love isn’t
that stupid.
