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To be safe
and be respected
was all we
ever wanted
as creatures
of the earth
not to be influenced
by death
if life
could not be truly lived
‘I can’t
take it anymore’ scrawled
in ruby
lipstick on the mirror
how go on in
blindness illness
depending
your whole life
on a certain
sense of self-control
no longer to
be counted on to show up
at the
corner of thought and feeling
at midnight
in the village
of
conscience and couth
If you give
yourself up
easier said
than done
you will
receive everything else
this can be
a gradual process
or happen
overnight
but still hardly
anyone
is willing
to take the deal
it feels
like buying a bridge
for a few
colored beads
above all no
one wants
to be taken
for a fool
to be
laughed at and made
to feel
small enough to be
in him as he
is in us all
To survive
in this world
I was
telling myself
you have to
act like someone
or something
is out to kill you
as I jerked
the old mower
around my
postage stamp lawn
but suddenly
I remembered
a God would
have had to think
through
every one of these kinds
of thoughts
before even qualifying
he would
have had to fail
every human
being in existence
just to get
into the finals
he would
have imagined all the details
of his
arrival and his departure
and then he
would just have to do it
Wasn’t
Frankenstein’s glittering
condominium
on 5th Street
in the 70’s
before he
moved back
to Pennsylvania
and became
that assemblyman
who wrote a
book called
‘The Book of
the Dead’
which was
simply an endless
list of
numbers of the dead
in different
categories
in small
print for thousands
of pages the
numbers alone
were
astonishing and tiring
the only
book everyone had read
but no one
seems to have finished
The
Christmas after the house
got broken
into I went looking
for that
clay nativity scene
I bought in
Mexico years ago
and realized
it was one of the things
they took
among several
odd things
to steal some early
color
polaroids of us one of
our toilet
seats and three
cheap and useless
watches
maybe they
were aliens
seeking
souvenirs of things
one only
finds on earth
At 8:32 a
brilliant
trapezoid of
sunlight
enters the
dining-room
sits down at
the head
of the table
a fork
in one hand
a knife
in the other
waiting
to be served of course
our bodies will do
fever-warmed
and
topped with
a dollop
of unsalted
sleep
our master
our slave
our teacher
we save
What you don’t
think about enough
the 45
million people in the air above you
or the 90
million under your feet
that could
be a question of blood flow
at any given
hour
everyone
blames the ocean
but it was
the fault-line’s fault
my car has
lost its stealth
I was home
for Christmas
but Christmas
was not home for me
my home is
in the stars
to each one
his own star
what was
true once
preserved in
relevant texts
is true
again for one night only
even otters
hold hands
rowing against the
dark
A
hole appears
where there
was once
an
attachment
it’s called
a belly-
button
untethered
window to a former
wall a
massive gap
in the demolition
of the
future
cables in
the concrete
how will we
support
the doors
left open
to the stars
how plant
here
a new plan
As we well
know no one
is in anyone
else’s exact same
position in
space and time
this is how
he would talk to me
mild-tempered
as a summer annual
and we would
sit through centuries
how can you
live with just
an
afternoon as your friend
I would lob
that back at him
I say him
but I mean layers
and layers
of identical faces
like skulls
or ranks of angels
each glowing
like a son of a gun
and coming
straight at me
The secrets
are all washed and dried now
some need
pressing the rest are
ready-to-wear
I had no idea
they could
be cleaned up so well
I remember
wringer washing machines
hanging the
heavy secrets out on the line
in winter
stiff as boards freeze-dried
I can’t
believe I’m telling you this
it must be
the power of secrets
to
camouflage themselves as memories
when the
only real secret is that
there are no
secrets at all
everything
is right out there in the open
but most of
it passes for crisp white linens
or underwear
hanging on a line
The one star
visible
above the
city tonight
thinks it’s
the only one
who doesn’t go
far enough
like Samuel
Beckett
who stood
with one foot
in the Old
Testament the Torah
and the
other in warmed-over
Protestantism
‘harshing
his mellow’ as
the smokers
put it to us
what’s wrong
with
pleasure is that we take it
at others’
expense and think
we can get
into heaven without
ever getting
stoned ourselves
Like the
first line of a poem
he rushed
into the restaurant
still in his
pajamas dreaming
look the sun
has come out
from a dark
mountainous sky
to warm my
back for a moment
I knew you
loved me
the things
of the world
insert here
in the waist
of the poem
we’ll need them later
when we have
finally
grasped the
gleam on the roof
another
scrap of the Logos
but also my
lover
as he came
to the end
of the cross
of the poem
and said to
me smiling
the risk
itself
outshines
the lines
What does
the hummingbird see
when it
pulls back the blur to observe
how the
world is built up
life by life
and leaf by leaf
which even
if only in decaying
adds
something to the earth
the presence
of time clocks in
usually
involving a weapon
or at least
a triggering descent
abandoned by
its leaves
the flowers
of the desert rose
bloom tall
pink-flamed
candles in
the cold yard
naked as a
newborn
Is it true
thinking stands
at the
center of the world
at the
center of our reality
is all we
have our thoughts
words like
kayaks we paddle out on
close to the
water like a sports car
let’s row
out to that island of thinking
against the
tide of the already-thought
the force of
the dead waves
that drive
hard upon us
so a note of
terror is introduced
that we
might not make it
that we
certainly won’t make it
at which the
heart just laughs and rows
And the
lives that depend
on growing
grass in the desert
draining the
aquifers to keep
golf courses
green as it gets
naturally in
the east or Midwest
whose future
races will look back
in horror at
the profligacy
with which
we crucified the earth
but sooner
or later even the earth
has to die
at least the physical part
by which I
mean no excuse for
hastening it
along unless perhaps
it’s
brain-dead already and
in a
permanently vegetative state
and we are
only turning off the machines
You can walk
out of a room
and walk
right back in later
and
immediately know something for sure
like that
knowledge had been waiting
for your
return knowing
you would
return and that
you’d get it
all at once surprised
by the certainty
of your knowing
and dazzled
a little by its
sudden
appearance as if it
could lend
you some of its brilliance
and deftness
in passing
wherever
thoughts come from
stones in which
stutters a stream
I tried to
save you
but it didn’t
work
did I think
you
would save
me
and that’s
why
it didn’t
work
you couldn’t
either
you couldn’t
say why
you didn’t
want
to have to
try
easier to
let it
die that’s
why
how can
there
be sorrow
after Christ
and yet I
cry
On the day
you left me
I discovered
Nicanor Parra
I was torn
like a dog
through
garbage
one side of me
was dying for you
while the
other wanted to live
just to be
able to read more Parra
and to laugh
at each of his poems
while still
crying more
and more
feeling sorry
for you
knowing how much
you will
miss me
while I’ll always
have Parra
laughter and coffee con
leche please
How undo the
vine
of my
mistakes
now a
tangled mess
woven
tightly to the trellis
half-dead
with yet new tendrils
reaching out
frantically
for some new
foothold
long past
their flowering
my mistakes
stayed green
and thriving
though yes
brown now so
I can take
each leaf
and crumple it
in my hands
to dust
which I
refuse to do
Like a line
of chalk across
a blue board
the plane’s
trail like
the one the teacher
drew on the
first day of school
and can you
after fifty years
still draw a
straight line
morally
speaking that’s
our problem
we’re terrified
of making
mistakes possible
failure is
coming down
the pike
with me in mind
but no one
will be held accountable
because no
one will say ‘I was wrong’
while
everyone is most of the time
I get all
worked up
because you
won’t
make up your
mind
whether to
live or die
you keep
making
conditions
and then
getting
tired of the terms
and that
unconditional love
you keep
talking about
is what you
have to
bring to
life not what
you can
expect life
to bestow on
you
just for
being here
Now I have
lived long enough
and gone
through my personal piece
of
commonplace and amazing events
I can sit
out under the stars alone
and imagine
a million different
situations
going on at any one time
all over the
world I never feel
more alive
than when I watch
these random
pictures of things
going on in
the world in my mind
scenes of
totally unnecessary cruelty
next to
quiet scenes of ordinary life
like pages
turning in a story book
read by a
child fighting sleep
You have to
come to the end
of sex to
see that it has
nothing to
do with love
which can
only begin
where the
sex leaves off
where as
much as humanly
possible
human desire dies
into
something not physical
and not
about you
something
more important
than you
inconceivably
more
important than you
but which
has come to you
and has
given you all of itself
The way we
lie in the snow
to make angels is the way
the angels
lie in the clouds
to make
humans
and float
them down
to the
streets of the earth
perhaps more
obvious
in winter
outlined in snow
crusty
bundles making
their way
back to the place
they were
born those blue
fields
stretching so far out
with their
armies of angels
their armies
of men
All day I
searched
for the poem
that
stray cat I
did
the dishes
while I
waited I
danced
to my
favorite song
but then I
lost it
I forced
myself
to stop
crying inside
I couldn’t
find you
anywhere anyone
and now here
you are
poem right
under
my nose
actually
perched
there
like my glasses
Like the
roof of the world
falls in and
then it snows
the walls
still standing barely
but the
windows blown out
so grass
will grow indoors
come the
green time again
slowly
rebuilding the walls
each summer
but running out
of money for
a new roof by fall
and then it
snows on the grass indoors
just like I
told you it would
but we need
the snow to shut us up
in our
houses from which we run
screaming
into the fields to hear
if love or
spring is near
I tried to
explain my death to myself
by going out
and raking leaves
but myself
just doesn’t get it
you can’t
mean this dumb metaphor
of a million
lives swept away
and mine
just one among them
lives
beautiful but never to be known
if all you
have is a big yellow pile
of days to
be carried to the compost
here’s my
contribution to the life
of the
future in which I take
my millionth
part myself said
I don’t want
your pity
I just want
to live in New York City
that’s not
what I meant
you never
listen to me
I said I had
to abandon
a pile of
leaves half-raked
to write my
death for you
If you won’t
let the painter
into the painting
how will you
get
the painting
out of the painter
what paintings
would exist
without this
essential confusion
merely a
trope for the world
inasmuch as
painting seeks
a universal
audience of one
isn’t it
always some lack
that
painting speaks to
the lack of
you
the luck of
you (just say it)
the fuck of
you too
In the
stillness after the rain
Christ could
come again
or at least
the B train
that runs
past Mayakovski St.
which is
albeit a longer route
past the History
of Religion shop
with its
finest cheese and wines
it must be
the rain
has me
driveling again
listening to
the stillness
after the
rain waiting
for the
final drop
of love to
fall
stillest of
all
As a
meditative research project
I’ve decided
to grow zinnias indoors
through the
winter in my sunniest
window and
since they’re
in a movable
pot taking
them outside
on good days
if the
temperature allows
already about
twenty have sprouted
from seeds
saved for six years
into their
third set of (true) leaves
I wonder if
they’ll get full size
under these
household conditions
coddled and
watched against nature
forced to
bloom by opposite stars
While my tea
steeps
I write you
from the brink
of disaster
it’s a quiet
afternoon
often I am
falling toward
love but
suddenly I’m
rescued
who asked
you lord
to save me
you or your
minions who
operate
the levers
just teasing God
I love
teasing God
I say you’re
not all that
I mean it’s
not as if we’ve
never had Gods
before
never known
self-importance
I think if
you look
at the
general condition
of women in
the world
at any given
moment
you can get
a true picture
of the moral
development
of the human
heart
struggling
under the boot
of bullying
intellect
love gets as
far as the door
before it’s
pulled back in
another war
breaks out
among the
men as if
a woman
could be owned
as if the
earth itself
could be
owned and kept
The forks
with their legs crossed
cuddling next
to their husbands
the knives
their larger daughter
spoons
matronly with several
smaller
studious ones astride
in a drawer
in every house
in the world
but what animal
does it so
well so how
did it
happen the very thing
that would
heal our hell
is the thing
most hated
confused
curious thing of all
that the
heart is really a knot
tied so
tight have you ever
tried to
untie such a knot
in the
freezing cold
with your
bare fingers
as if your
life depended on it
