How can an epic poem
be more like a lyric poem
one that spits
right in your eye
rather than drags you
through all the shame
last year reached
the deepest part
of pleasure
the heroism of
our soldiers
so outdistancing
the purposes for which
our cowardice
sent them to die.
Getupgetupgetupgetup
hearithearithearithearit
fuckitfuckitfuckit
babybabybaby
each thing repeated
loses its mind
in order to live
without one
without a baby
without a memory
of every moment
first or last
today we just have glimmerings
what were you wearing
Vivace but then
you were the music
of my spheres.
Often for nights
and long days
I snore on alone
in a small yard
outnumbered
by grass trees
bird thickets
I will never
understand
again or see
losing both
legs and an
arm is what
the water’s
all about
but how can
or can you not
still go and
sit there how
is it possible
to have all
these movements
and still not
wake up?
I am looking for a lake
like the word ‘customer’
each season custom-cut
train bird ambulance
how long does it
take ants to find
the dead sparrow chick
not long
is life mingled
with death before
death figures it out
succeeds
no
it won’t say.
I wash my hands
before I sit down
at the computer
to click my way
to you into and out
of you cloud or scene
of disembowelment
or someone writing
which must seem
the last thing
anyone would think of
at such a time
knives drawn
and yet
here we are.
We keep coming back
to rejection that sonnet
as the central disturbance
of our time
how one dishes
it out how one
deals with it
a certain group
has gone on ahead
to explore options
currently on the floor
which once resuscitated
may yet stop the gushing
drama of our lives.
They harden quickly
into something you
can keep
a pair of balls
ridged and green
the dried
mother skin
still clinging to
one side like
bodies stuck
together at
the moment
of collision
a subterfuge
all along
the inside
becoming
the outside
back and forth
each surrendering
to another world.
Like a sail hoisted
or an umbrella
bursting open
maybe this year
you’ll have the sense
to make a flower
would you yes
I have the bone meal
right here and
the head is crowning
don’t stop pushing
like last year
the corpse flower
yes that’s it
the sun is all
there is.
Suddenly it was
overcast and the long
uncertain waiting
stood at attention
not for nothing
life rhymes with rife
rustlings of wind
itself a current
of nerves invisible
gathering round
to watch these
human heads
be set on fire
burn like candles
for the gods.
‘Too much light comes in from outside,
and too much spring.
Close the shosi.’
-Butterfly.
Her suicide’s her wedding gift
setting him free
last posture of love
and the child in the bargain
but Puccini curses Pinkerton
in the blaring final
faux-Japanese music
where Butterfly’s ancestors
along with her uncle and father
rise up to condemn
the unfaithful the betrayers
and her among them
who thought love might
overwhelm fate.
Finding someone
who smells like
himself he flits
around the yard
after you or her
his mate her beauty
it’s not the fall
but the moment of
the rejection which
precedes it and
the gradual rescue
which follows
puny because of
how little effort
is given
to saving oneself.
Sometimes accidents happen
indeed they happen
all the time like take
the accident of your birth
but it’s nice to know
who your parents are
don’t you think
and not to invade
anyone’s privacy
but it’s helpful
to know under what
circumstances they
colluded in such
an outcome
how much money
if any was involved
how much love.
O my dear I don’t know
if I should turn the page
and take off for a new life
revised expanded version
or have another go
at cleaning up the bay
I mean the backyard
how could we not create
a picture of our interior
world a world we’ve
soiled like dogs
who can hardly be
expected to clean
it up these last sad
days of the seas?
A line is but an exhausted circle
as prose is to poem
one day he said
he loved the smell
of marriage-I-wanna
in the morning
but in the evening
refused to be
a soldier in their salvation
would rather run
into a gallery or
downtown empty bar
than write about
the anger in the world
and almost all of it made up
out of made up things
the slow machinery
of waves and dreams.
If you take off
twenty minutes
from your life
every day and
put it in a jar
for the starving
children of
materialism
when it bears
down on them
the thought
of an ascension
strangely would
likely occur.
Slowly being comforted by leaves
the shot silk shirt of patience
left hanging on the line overnight
looks dry enough to wear again
even if now pitted with ash
and bone shards from the rain
when he who left it here returns
I’d like to ask him if
this current oil spillage couldn’t
be like the furious bull whale
that sunk the Essex in 1820
nature retaliating
sending a message
with still some time to turn away
from the cannibalism
we know will follow.
You can’t sit
under a boojum tree
you can only stand
beside it or
lie down next to it
no matter
who you’re with
no shade it casts
except the dark
tower of itself
spinning around
and you sitting
there beside it
watching contrails
smelling those
honey flowers.
Flicking bird droppings
from the hair of the bust
of Mercury Hermes Maurice
protector of boars and travelers
with a toothpick I found
I see the sparrows ate
the berries I threw out
on the compost what a heap
yesterdays make if you
layer your waste
if you distinguish it
from your past after
some critical condition
crossed your path
here’s your receipt
you saved $150. today
which is three times
what you spent
exclusively on things
that will kill you.
Sometimes when you’re gone
I nap in your bed but
at night I always end up
sleeping in my own
your room is cooler
in the afternoons
than mine and I like
the light dreaming in
from the window
onto your blue Rothko
print with my head
in the east facing south
rather than the opposite
sensation for a change
and yes because it makes me
feel I’m holding you
and can therefore let go
of everything else.
What are we to believe in
or to have hope for about love
if these two were lovers
before he became a Nazi
and before she a Jew took
him back afterwards forgave
him everything as if for some
exaggerated indiscretion
and this from the king
and queen of the secret
kingdom of thinking
working together
what turns out to be
more of that blind
kind of passion?
At twilight I steal
into other people’s heads
look around for a while
sometimes they know me
know I’m there and can
remember me after
I leave like the dead
who are friendly and
relieved not to have to
hide the truth anymore
others who live among roots
molds and broken stones
who carry water all day
nameless and short-lived
churls trolls louts and oafs
who push the stems up into
the light they themselves
are forbidden to enter.
I can freeze into sculpture
if I see two wrens approach shyly
for I too am shy and see
they just want the water
left in the ditch next
to me for I too am
next to me and
so I can watch as he
leads the way
hoping he won’t see
me as he drifts up
into the crotch of
of a red-bud tree she
hopping close behind
the scene is so still
I suddenly realize
I’ve never been happier
in my whole life except
the real epiphany
came later as usual
in the anti-climax
of sleep and love.
We are like the people
waiting at the gates
for an hallucination
that never arrives
barbarians R us
how can anyone
alive on the earth
be considered illegal
or alien in any way
they mock the mothers
of us all who postulate
such villainy and soil themselves
no one owns the atmosphere
the waterfall the earth
yet anyone can blow it all up
so now how does that work
out for you O horizons of hell
which by another oil-spill
out of control we find you
suddenly broadened
as the fortune cookie said.
So if in old age our animal
face breaks through
so if only in youth a new
spirit birth but if in
even a fly swims my I
so what is the essential
falsehood our time
and place must face
about itself we
the particulate
people and we who
are not the people
must unravel even as
we re-enact it
that falsehood which
must next be offered?
The alphabet as elephant
in the elegant living room of want
those spaces we eliminated
from the poem so time
like someone who jumps
into the sea can stand
alone as our creation
to have just noticed
your jaw’s been clenched
for nine years so it
hurts to relax some
have started to think it’s
a disaster of form
from which all sense
of imminence has been
thoroughly wrung
so only the body remains
like in bullfighting
when the noble bull
is dragged from the arena
and the matador is bowing.
Postponing the revolution again
temporizing and living in denial
like a good regressive
the other side never leaving
their motorcades
I wanted to send you
what’s out my window
in the beach-light twilight
looked at from one angle
there’s a gaping hole the
wind is tearing in the sky
but look again it’s just
an empty trellis downwind
dead leaves a few gods
winking at us their usual
guttural noises turning
and turning the wheels
throwing something down
whispering let’s try
that fool again.
I like the Frenchness
of the present tense
English is all about
the past we felt
but what exactly was
the language of the future
the spring bulbs I forgot
to order if I were Japanese
or that kind of Spanish
garden lunatic who
wanders off to find
a bench and pray
for May to come?
For a long time I was
confusing Giordano Bruno
with Brunetto Latini
Ingeborg Bachman with
Ingmar Bergman in
my final years of school
I was just starting over
on the study of nerves
thinking of different parts
of your body how they
differ to touch but each
a miracle ending in
a horse’s tail of sensations
our lungs more connected
to earth than to air
our nerves more to
memory than sense.
To mark the prepuce
as belonging to the god
to tattoo a number
on your thigh so you
have to be stripped naked
to read it after centuries
to have still not grasped
we can’t let a small
group of people control
all the wealth and still
call it civilized or equal
that dream apparently
sunstruck on its way
somewhere downriver.
