How can I incorporate
this really good new stuff
into my ongoing
evil nature
the boot of greed
wants to know
forgetting every
thing we own
is but the treasure
of our indebtedness
we stand upon
eloquent clouds
telling our slaves
how much their hard
work saves us
rubbing their noses
in it already
they�ve come for
our water
soon they�ll come
for our air.
I am running
my eyes off
drawing lines
of touch and go
imagine the sun
boiling your brain
in its dented little
saucepan every day
wouldn’t you prove
into light
sulphur sugar
as we do
every night in that
other world
where we are all
really together
as one family
for a while?
How can we ask God
or the gods for material
success when that’s
the last thing
they’d want for us
by the time Buddha
got to Gethsemane
Jesus was already
hanging on the hill
the sun was hiding
in shame the earth
was shivering like aspen
it’s a metaphor
what don’t you get
not just for love
but for its power
the absolute nakedness
of its power.
Somehow I entered the day
with a clear desire
to be freer
more equal
to be larger better
than I’d managed
heretofore
and to notice how
many plants have
that Ah gesture
hands in the air
arrested by grace
or invisible police
and the others who
could care less
about the past
about being
remembered
you know how
to get dirt out
from under one fingernail
by using another
tools that we are
but I could hardly sleep
last night thinking
of all the work
we have to do
to get ready
for the future.
A forked stick (or shriek)
stuck in the ground (or eye)
can douse flowers
but is poetry to gardening
what flarf is to yanking trees
out of the ground
to check how they’re
growing then trying
to replant them
in some other field
quite clearly it’s not yet
the monkey wars
but goes all the way back
to the universal cosmic language
in its frog-pond form
prior to percept and concept.
That we could live
together for years
perhaps for centuries
certainly centuries
and still know only
a small cross-section of
one another compared
to all that’s there
saddens and amazes me
the mystery of the small
ego and the big ego
within each of us
and how these are embroiled
in the creation of yet
a third but true ego
the you supposedly
that’s been hidden
there all this time.
Even a word
has its own body
and soul naturally
a movement and
then a meaning
inherent in its
very persistence
every single word
or near word
westwardly
but is it only an animal
guttural still
with no one home
or where a spirit
comes to dwell?
That birds are comfortable
with me and can come
within unsafe distances
a few inches of intimacy
is all I ask there is so
much matter to devour
to get to that kind of thinking
they emulate in flight
and brilliant upwind leanings
now they know I know
to trust how they do it
how far they open up
to capture the light
in their bones and lift
lighter than air.
The homage of my attention
in the plumage of my indifference
the bondage of my affection
in the dotage of my derision
the hostage of my independence
in the marriage of my woes
the passage of my tiny ship
in the ravage of your smile
the cordage of my piled bones
in the tonnage of your death
the vantage of my tightrope
in the damage of your cheers
the voyage of my confusion
in the courage of your fears.
All I can do
is work with the pitch
of some of these voices
that pass through me
and practice my landings
always aiming toward their lips
in the darkness of the music
to carry me further
than I would ever go
left to my own devices
while still remembering
it’s my body they need
to occupy and devour
as daily bread.
Right in the middle
of the just-cut grass
one tall stem still
standing trembling
remember trembling
I never stopped
hiding from myself
we all do that
now I see how
I rejected my body
rejected my mind
but felt enough to know
this bid could go higher
and not to settle for
less light less love
especially when
I’m not worth
it I think.
As soon as I wake up
I want to give up
on everything
completely
my first flush
is embarrassment
for everyone and
of self that little
I have anticipated
and then I have my coffee
I sit down
in my windy garden
feeling this morning
aimed toward me
like a lover or a child
I could be sleeping
through right now.
A pupa is a seed
a sleeping sky
a flower freed
a butterfly
a mariposa resting
on a reed
what grade was that
on my knees
what looks like
I’m pushing out
dead skin from
within or it’s
a thin winding
sheet I weave
around myself
a thread of cum
dries and I melt
back inside back to
the three original
chemical functions
that can take any
form they want
but choose to be
this butterfly.
What a true poem perceives
cannot actually be written down
but still some vain attempt
to speak a few words of grief
is made where memory
once stood trustworthy
witness no more
how else can great truths
living on distant planets
weave pictures of all
our old weaknesses into trees
and flowers as we pass
or the animals poor
creatures we one by one
sacrifice who once
held the poem as friend
go on?
When the outcomes of victory
are no longer viable in
the annals of lovemaking
or on any other channel
you’ll see how your penmanship
never lived up to its potential
or was that a lack of penetration
scrolling through lifetimes
pausing to mute the comedy
whenever you call in Spanish
or is that a bull’s horn piercing
a matador’s throat at last
you want to say
the horrible is more
than possible
it’s actually more
than likely now.
All the things that never happen
all the things you never are
if you could only accept them
and get out of their way
but poetry is not a condom
nor a cosmetic maybe more
an emetic every comparison
smacks of sibling envy last
night I watched The Brothers
Karamazov on TV the story’s a
one liner ‘You know who killed him’
which is where history began
finessing horror
and where I fell asleep
until that little bit of Dickens
at the end as they escape
the sick boy as picture
of our noblest part.
Is it the government’s job
to hide the truth from us
if it is in its own best interest
so we not lose confidence
in the already agreed-upon lies
which are in our own best interest
when the government is a Potemkin
Village big business resurrects
from time to time
when the common wealth
is sold back to us at
poverty-insuring prices
it’s not capitalism
we’re afraid of
it’s the rank materialism
that hides inside it
the cancer we support
posing as salvation.
Will what at first unites us
be the weapon in the end
we use against one another
all the way home
he was beating your ass
rain came down like ladders
but when I came to want you
you hurried off
a rickety bridge of slats and rope
like in the nightmares of escape
to the other side
where it happened
for a moment
a radiant existence
slowly walking its shoreline
waited for you alone.
Because our
human sins
sink down
into the earth
and are turned
into oil gushing below
sticking to everything
it touches it swallows
are these mad teenagers
in some garage we have
as corporate heads
take them to the woodshed
take them far out to sea
please
and drop them off.
A line of brilliant sunlight
about six inches wide
twenty feet
long slides
slowly down over
our three windows
and out across the brick
patio every day
there’s sun at least
this painter who
somehow leaves
the space behind darker
for the light
having been there
how is that
my love?
How we talk
about one another
in years or days
after the fact
love laid its paws
all over us tells all
death is interested
in knowing
if each of us
has four bodies
how finely to get
three out of four
to connect with
someone else’s.
When in the far flung future
these early computer files
are extracted from remote
mineral sensing patterns
capable of retrieving
a kiss thrown through fog
centuries ago
let alone a piss taken in
and on the darkness
let them find here some
of all we touched and smelled
and wanted
great that gathering
of each of one.
The unusual person
of today recognizes
right away the foreignness
of poetry its off-putting
or standoffishness
I’m not sure which
but the sense it
probably shouldn’t still
be happening anymore
a lost art of speaking
once common now dead
forgettable remote
on tombstones
except when it
gasps awake
some dead Romeo
by its side.
Some bird was singing
in the rose garden
when the President
announced the disaster
was permanent and that
the blow-out preventer
the emergency disconnect
and the top kill
had all not worked
an energy that creates
an infinity of power
on the road
but the migratory
criminal acts straight
both before and after
the devastation
as if it was like stopping
your period or avoiding
some of the annoying
aspects of menopause
that bird was singing of.
When we get to return
we’ll have to give up
being afraid to die I guess
which won’t be easy
given our grief addiction
and we’ll have to walk all over
an obliterated earth
on an individual basis I suppose
to really understand
the concept of a conscious life
not as foretaste but as residue
of an inner necessity again
yin and yang being
what they remain
love and freedom
being what they become.
Unhappiness is not
an attractive calling
whatever the reason
but if you forget something
go back to the text
however you remember it
it happened to you
if you lose something
or delete it from
whatever receipt you may
no longer be your body
even if it’s still cheaper
it’s not machines
we should intake
it’s plants in light
silky and budded
who’ve woken.
