Carrying today’s dead out
to the compost
I perceived your face
carefully among them
vines torn from the
trellis conversations
bitterly brown red
a child screaming in
the background so I
had to make a nest
for the bad oranges
for you to lie down in
at the top of the heap
I had to sit down
and talk with you
for a long time
before I could go
back into the house.
Today everything slid
into place for me
its rightful place
without spectacle
or obfuscation
the leaves went
into their basket
the spoons and knives
into the knowledge drawer
me into you
but for my friend
nothing worked out
yet but to continue
where you left off
I can’t even remember
what seeds I planted
under the pomegranate tree
two months ago
sprouting now
all over the place.
Try to hold on to all
your lives you’ll
need them all to hold
on to everyone else’s
take as much clay
as your hands can
comfortably contain
with wrists touching
leaving a small space
between your fingers
at the top of the
world you’ve made
then come the suffering
gods with their artistic
ideas points becoming
planes plains becoming
borderline features
of your own body
the latest Platonic
solid you have shaped.
I dreamed I was
starting to resemble
a large pointed smoky
quartz crystal
a crow in his youth
frequently freaked
out being yelled at
just because I didn’t
think to ask the right
question didn’t think
to think to ask
the question wandering
for thirsty years
abruptly waking up
in a world where
thinking had ceased or
was rarely seen again.
A couple of dozen doves
in this Palo Verde tree
of course it’s for you
who else can see it from here
green in the rain the bare
branches and the doves
dripping and that enormous
rainbow’s serious singing
inaudibly on the way back
to the hotel last night
that was yours too
the names on the room’s
furniture just making it
into your dream
every single spectacle
it was all for you
for you.
A little tight in the ass
but he landed it
a zebra on the freeway
same day delivery
the closest I can come
to something lovely
is to be simply honest
with you yes I’m watching
TV alone in my house
feeling extremely separate
in that isolated
normal way from the rest
of you world and knowing
my only way back
in the dark is to swim
fiercely in the direction
of my heart.
Trying all our lives
to live into that unique snowflake
posture of death that is ours alone
some days you can become
completely conscious of
standing in another world
in which this world
is being worked on as if
it’s all that matters
if not all that exists
to which he said
I just put my girlfriend
on a plane to Tulsa
and my boyfriend’s still in jail
I guess I’ll go for a walk
it isn’t like you just
got here is it anymore?
Thinking is not what thinking is
mine or yours
it is not owned
anyone already has a brain
that belongs to all in common
each separately
a body’s set
of lungs and moods
each with its own
sensations of freedom
think of memory’s mortgage paid
universe of floating
or unpaid
scrapbook of the dreamer
no one’s dreamed.
If I can perceive
every awful thing
about myself
I’m capable of
without flinching
and just decide
not to do it
then I’m free
beyond any country
my will a wild dog
or horse to the ground
I have wrestled
imprisoned together
and if I can think
of every beautiful thing
about myself I love
without getting too absorbed
I might be getting somewhere
closer to you.
Memorize this look
on my face so you’ll
know what I look like
when I’m enjoying
watching you
or when I’m walking in
and you look up
I love you but I do not
love you enough
let me try again
let’s have supper
together later
and afterwards
a soak in the tub.
An empty page like a well-made bed
I can’t resist but stretch
out on rolling like a cat
in dirt to maintain
his sleekness and indifference
a rage like an undone head
may find in here some reach
for warmth for silence sleep
the exhalation of the night
inner and outer away
angling through eyes and ears
having to trouble to dream
to turn over and hold
your body next to me.
Fold these words
in two even places
you’ll have a triptych
reading I love you
by this one deed
I am free
more than in any
other way possible
while still one flesh
that’s all it says but
by the way the body’s
sprawled it appears
he’d just risen
pen in hand
to get more ink
the book left folded
on the table.
January is the slowest fucking month
dragging unemployment down
into the gutter
going south on lilacs
the rain wasn’t worried
it was terrified
what were my motives
I would ask myself
if the price
as Malcolm said
of freedom is death
the cost is life
you laughed.
A sprig of marjoram
offers itself to you
one evening what else
can I do but take it
there are things in the oven
I cannot speak of
but they’re for supper
it was a long day-life
and illuminating
but from what source
inside does dreaming come
that’s what amazes me
not the white pillar
gleaming in the darkness
far out at sea.
I tend to favor
the smaller red
and yellow over
the taller orange
nasturtiums who are
feathery prolific
and flower fuller now
but the nearer I get
to the north of
some specific leaf
where every leaf
considers itself vigilant
remarkable and equal
to any color or flower
the more I see love
has all the power
and stacks the world
with pictures of itself
in every trembling face.
There’s a hole
in that cloud
up there hell
no that’s the mouth
of a dragon
staring at a baby
sitting right in front
of it slowly
they struggle one
another into a kind
of Ezra Pound
face kissing
the mush of history
what is revised
in heaven is
reversed on earth
I look to see
it gone.
Grateful to my enemies
for teaching me to pray
for them the process of
dissolving one another
witnessed in war ruins
the myth of humanity
those roadside grave markers
the Mexican families leave
what are they called
they must have a word
for what is missing in
education
I don’t know
their name?
Caught between
the stupid and
the greedy
as the poem falls
overboard swept
downstream shortly
was it the
you lifted your head
above the horizon
of my thigh
the map of love
written all over
your face?
You have to look out
across the drama of the world
to see what’s also going on
in multiple realities
here and there overlapping
tongues licking shores or
simply sailing out to the edge
of whatever you think
about the word cosmic
as only a mind can do
what is glimpsed
and grasped there
glimpsed and grasped
again of you.
The record of one
man’s perceptions
going to and fro
over the ground
of thinking when it
split in two
before and after
the ice cream slurping
that we don’t but
want to trust even
our own thoughts
a dead face
can begin to breath
again always
there’s a heart-beat
long before any
heart shows up.
Time did enter
the picture
merely as a further
gesture of space
matter subsequently filled
the river imagined its banks
so if maybe it doesn’t return
it’s still a river
and we’re still waiting
on the banks
after the earthquake
furniture sales soared
in all the other countries
people rushed to the stores
what did that portend?
