I blow my nose
on a patch of grass
and wipe it on my sleeve
I am only nine years old
if you don’t count
the other sixty
see how insidious
prose is within the
thinnest words already
a self coagulates
the blood builds
an organ for the narrative
to swim through
and you my love stare off
never more beautiful than
at the moment of surrender.
A poem is a person
who gets up every day
and throws all his clothes
all his possessions
right out the door
and is calm and satisfied
with nothing for a while
to be naked and poor
for a while before
lapsing back into prose
which is not yet a person
more like a dog or pet
for which it must be forgiven
for which it is constantly
whining and making excuses
enough to make a poem
pull itself up to a slanting
position and fly off.
On the first sunny day
after the full moon
after the third Thursday
following that last time
you climbed the tombalo
nearer your home town
stepping into the thick air
of windswept paintings
of this island where
a cache of gold lies
panting under a chapel
of stone still glittering
up at you through sand
your life rises to meet you
almost again and again.
Let me divide it with you
this way Horatio
whatever develops in the body
is not something physical
working or not working
on itself the body
is just a foot-print left
behind or a foothold
for some still invisible feature
of ourselves constantly
being hacked at and played
with by wiser windfalls
than we alone
can ever gather.
He saw goodness everywhere
as the most volatile
of all the elements
to work with how
quickly unstable by
their very own efforts
others notice only later
but if you catch it at
the moment it slides
from rashness into
knowledge or from
vanity into bravery
it will not be possible
to turn back he saw
and reach home.
As high up as one would go
one must have sunk that low
that’s a question to have
been there and be capable
of going back to the dirt
farming it took to get there
in stamina I mean
this time digging out
from under one’s own
compost of lies and tears
in the world formerly
known as truth
in the truth
formerly known as
curious object.
At the end of pleasure
you get to wash down
the warm red bricks
with water sweeping
the sand away
the petals and fallen fruit
the ungrown portions of
a person cauterized
by trauma or cut short
by early death strange
early deaths in full flower
in which the seed
of sacrifice is sown
but who can really do
another’s work for them
or accept for them
the unacceptable loss?
When you tell one person
you tell the whole world
the secret history of
embarrassment that
others know more
about you than you’re
ever aware of yourself
except during sleep
when you appear
in the cupola
of your own brain
that dome that work
of art as one
of the faces
you’ve sketched in
among the blessed
and the damned.
The thing is to not stop
being crazy and compassionate
for oneself when others
are already ranged
against you it’s
a test of warmth
and inner mobility
leaving anger behind
the weakness of not
wanting to hurt others
which is old mixed fear
and patience not
the kind of kindness
you’d think of when
you think what’s needed
for this world.
A lone duck
powers overhead
quacking fleeing
I’m a lackluster lake
for you but if you
could settle into me
leaving Atlantis
arriving in Cheyenne
in such a hurry
chased from your home
in hunger
delusional with grief
like the young guys next
door human furniture
in some department store
with no where else to go
in this greedy
rotten system.
The young soprano
from Alabama
easy for you to sing
thoughtful bitch
in the best sense
of the dance
words return
to their first gestures
I’m not moving to Alabama
find somewhere else
how much is the bookcase
would you have moved
to California if you’d known
do some people own
music and just rent it out
to other people?
I had no idea
how long the angel
had been standing
there staring at me
that grin on his face
I didn’t even know
that’s what it was
until days later
the gods are always
hard at work inside
felling whole forests
for paper products
carefully dismantling
the physical world
teaching us to live
on love alone.
Sight which is secondary
to science dancing
as fast as it can
divides its time
between I think of you
on tenor sax
there on your coast
and me on mine
and how I love the distance
of love how you can
send me a close-up
of your face to study
as part of the experience
of faces we spoke of
everywhere clamoring
to break through forms
layered in by sheaths
of color from
embryogenesis to
disappearance
in and out
the other world
entered in sleep
or after death
that land of oxides
and fiestas
where no one loves you
like I do.
A meal should not mean
but be perfectly taken
hummingbird said sipping me
I prefer to be outside
in some open place
than to be in my body
as if guarding death
said the woman in the dream
it was that kind of afternoon
the trees full of movement
about to fly off
looking up I see
the Palo Verde blooming
for the first time.
Only have this time
before they take me
thirty thousand
feet in the air
to focus on one body
hanging at a time
yes I’ll have some coffee
while I wait
for your call
rehearse disasters
our species has flown
one at a time
try to think back
to your fiery heart
on which we’ve
layered city
after city even
unto the thirty
thousandth layer
of crushed bones.
Just as I cracked open
the blinds to peek out
at the quiet morning light
a cat in the middle
of the street leapt
on four pigeons feeding
close together all
of whom escaped
splashing into the air
as we watched
them fade and then he
looked over
directly at me
I felt our eyes click
before he turned
back again
swaying slowly
toward his house
having insured
nothing would ever
be said about this
regrettable event.
First he was mineral
a red tourmaline
then a pliant stem
one of the grasses
as animal he strayed
between pelican
and beaten donkey
whatever you want to call
the sense of something
moving in the air
in spring
in the fragility of all
social relations
he could see the sinner
in me and forgive
in him I could
seize the sin.
What we carry
around inside us
isn’t the world like
the word ‘gitano’
before we look it up
grasp its
lineage but when
it’s just the sound
of a country
what does it mean
eee ahh ooo
I do and don’t want
to go to Salamanca
or Arles
for that matter
so why is there
something that penetrates
amazes and insists
on suffering for it?
The failure to recognize
how prose always
hated poetry always
tried to undermine
annihilate and finally
replace him with herself
how this goes back to
childhood even to life
before birth before the Greeks
even the later comedians
the post-savants of their time
still pretended things were mended
between them and their rhymes
but it was all just suppressed
a gag order behind walls
until poetry started
to hate back again
even if only to expose
prose as prose
wherever and whenever
she appears as poems.
One of the world’s
most original flowers
but it blooms too
high to be seen
like something left
behind by someone
descending from the
summit exhausted
and alone finally as if
the whole planet
was a single person
about thirty years of age
emaciated addict
sleeping on the lawn
outside the library
starting to crumble.
This lack of final
this lack of resolution
in the pictures
and this after a little rest
it still goes a long way
to come at it trochaically
where words are allowed
to fall back to human
movements how hard poems
need to hold the enemy
prose at bay
anaesthetizing us
with its syntax
so we have forgotten
our mother vowels
how they only fill
to empty the heart.
My first weakness
is the mercurial
world for which
we’ve created these
various bodies
imprisoning them
to take them
through death without
fear to the other side
of the door I guess
consciousness cannot be
consciousness ultimately
that is not kind
that will not wait
chatting with people
hearing their poems.
That screaming
three year old
outside your window
at five this morning
that boy who so
offensively woke you
up way too early
that was him finally
wasn’t it
that was the Buddha
but you missed him
didn’t you
you cursed him
didn’t you
and now who knows
when he’ll
come by again?
Morning myths me
I did not imagine
the hummingbird
came to the lantana
one takes what one
can get in case by
the time one gets
to the aloes there’s
not even impatience left
or was that cyclamen
it never visits
cactus its old lover
never wilts.
The garbage truck
bellows at every gate
but I’m still not hungry
after a piece of bread
that looked like a work of art
dipped in butter
and honey the wind
flicking its robes
angry at someone else’s
sorrow lifting
the book from my
hands and you
ride through the yard
sweating with your bike
home I’m here
over here
swept into
this dark corner.
On Boxes Street
you wonder and
lose time
it flies out so fast
you can’t tell
from which place
then returns
from the opposite side
it can take 60-90
seconds between
retrieval and supply
but leaving
it doesn’t see
the feather
still falling
betraying
our rest.
Which of these blue bottles
most resemble Maine tide-pools
I get wet about to taste
salt on the skin again
of your body
being worked on for eons
still unfinished
unbalanced
how to get the matter
through the spirit needle
purer and purer
yet still not nothing
when all you can carry back
looters after another chaos
is your own saved
love of life?
Isn’t a plant
a less sophisticated
class of animal
is there less
personal desire
in the lupine
than the lynx
who wills my will
to be unspokenly
your desire
or sees how
with water
our bodies
came down
how it begins
always with tears
of resignation.
How far away
do you have to stand
from your own will
to feel this tsunami
of green rolling north
driving just a few
days behind it or
ahead when it turns
crawls or races west
all the animal cries
sent out to the far spaces
then the long wait
to see what
comes back.
Can a poem
have too much
thinking going on
in it before it’s
all about you
recording the experience
of that feeling-perceiving
you’re so fond of
unless I was thinking
of that other you
which thought
unleashes thought
wanting to be
what floats away
its line of flight
a scrawl
not fish or bird.
I love you but
don’t take it personally
these things happen
it’s just your life
trying to kill you
when you see someone
do something you
would do laughing
or when the inability
to visualize one’s own
horror is what distinguishes
us from one another
don’t consider any
hurt feelings automatically
your own when they could belong
to almost anyone or when
the motive for embarrassment
is always gratitude and fun
in all the places
you are waited.
Sitting outside my house
I observe a bird building
a house inside my house
actually in the eaves a pair
of sparrows who come back
every year or else their
offspring have passed
down this summer house
how I envied that
growing up in the city
wintering in empty
resorts a bird’s
life from mouth
to mouth with
you my love.
What were tears
in childhood soon
become these words
thy sun-dial flesh
putting everything
back together again
with green stitches
on green stretches
of dunes and flowers
so much darkness
bursting into light
perceives us totally
alone precise still
arguing passionately
it’s a little creepy
over power or love.
Whose mood is this
I think I know his
physiology how much
he’s playing with the
mechanism one
embarks wherever
one ensouls everything
that’s done exists
gets written down
ends up in a book
no one can translate
everyone reading only
one’s own copies
or painting one’s
own paint.
The petals bleed
onto the turtle’s back
this takes thirty millennia
of the first morning
waiting for a nuance
to awake I could see
a child reading a book
sitting on the top of
a huge rock across
the street a real event
or a symbol in someone
else’s dream minding
its own business
asking not to be judged
simply by the origin
of its bifurcation
is it perception is reception
or perception is reflection
that’s the mantram
for today?
And when the priests
can no longer hear
the speech
of the gods you’ll see
how space descends
into time how
the room is empty
except for a few shelves
one place to sit
to watch the body
being swallowed up
into the ground
into the counter-world
where the double and
the witness meet together
with their collaborators
and the soul-cowardice
of generations steps down
from behind the midnight sun
empfinden empfinden
and you are seen my friend
walking away again.
Our work is clearer
and clearer seeing
until seeing becomes hearing
what one sees is saying
and then becomes the living
thing seen from within
as if seeing double
the self-made self
it will follow what we do
on earth was already done
in some equidistant heaven
try not to think of a thoughtless clock
with its own thoughts
will fail to see
another future
in the prior fact
of thinking itself.
