Love’s simply
a deeper experience
inside experience
the saturation of
your attention with
its estuary
grassy alert
deep green
you pull and
pull against
as if suffering
always has to be for
something
as if even this
wouldn’t kill it
it would be restored.
No kissing no hugging
no hands below the table
no touching one another
no gum allowed
sit facing one another
speak only to the one
you’ve registered for
any violation of these
rules will result in the
immediate termination
of visit and may include
serious repercussions
for all involved.
I have not made
the inside look like
the outside
the outside look like
the inside just so
they’d blend into
one large room
in the mind
faithful to mindlessness
a little altar to absence
spring fills in
what thoughts
are worthy of a mind
can there be more
of you?
It’s like a god
is gloating down
on this geranium
but no one warned me
when I first came here
about the orange
blossom scent
in the night air
sirens and satyrs
sniffing around beauty
the bees come sticky
and go home drunk
while the mockingbirds
are eating my tomatoes
I’m lashed to my chair
until we sail past
this too-sweet world.
This morning is mine
but who do I mean
who wouldn’t want
to return to that
ream of the line
as hovers above water
prepared to go deeply
out into the deep
they don’t want to leave
us alone the gods
keep their thoughts
uppermost in our minds
fighting it out
one side for love one not
feel how the flags abandoned
by another world
are whipped
where hearing
is braver.
He’s writing a fiction
called Anyway, Your Honor
about a defendant who
hypnotizes a judge
and a whole courtroom
of lawyers and thieves
not with any deceit
but the pure trauma
of the story he tells them
and the history of this
story down through
the space of a life
a diorama of their
passions they could
recognize and own
and so relinquish
and forgive him.
I was just calling to say
I won’t be coming
to dinner last night
I forget what cities
I chased through
on automatic before
I realized I was tired
the world is ravaged
but I am only merely
disappointed in the plot
life takes two
hours to tell you
what should only be
a sweet ride
on that canal again.
Empty for years
your father’s vase
still on the desk
blue-legged trees
over snowy fields
dirty brown hills
his neck is perfect
a headless legless
beer belly beauty
wearing a blue shirt
and tan pants
is our failure that
farmhouse behind
raining clouds
a creek in thaw
or the holy nothing
which it holds?
Pulling the blooming
mustard out
from the moist
loam you put
your hand in
that last moment
crumbly sweet-
smelling before you
disappear
completely
what came first
nothing or eternity
the blood pouring
out for which it
shapes its own
pale grail
or each morning
cautiously
contained?
Finally having tidied
up the yard a little
the goddess can put
her fat ass down
in a firm chair
for a few moments maybe
that 1.2 milliseconds
we lose everyday building
the Andes as some measure
of our moral rigor
and how far it reaches which
nature can’t help reflect
stricter economics all
things being equal actually
with the right to say so which
only the spirit can import itself.
In a field where numbers
trump any kind of intuition
yet when she folds her
arms in tightly to her body
she spins faster and when
you remove the load
the land springs up farther
and farther away from
the center of the earth
everybody knows someone
who died in the rubble
the little shore creatures
in states of decomposing
he saw the sea can’t fall
so the shore must rise
finding fossils on limestone
mountain-tops built up
slowly from sea floors.
Commiserating with him
over the penalty imposed
as his own self-imposed penalty
really underwhelms the killer whale
eating its own trainer
one of the sweetest
girls you could ever meet
she knew her from high school
knew it was all
she ever wanted to do
look at this he smiled
and waved pointing at
the huge flowers in our
own yard as if that too
could never happen.
Into this cold landscape
the various plants are of course
sleeping but in the warm
sun they wake up early and
immediately start their
breeding-burning they love
the rhythm of the
swaying-dancing and
work hard to resemble
wave after wave
of that leftover
beauty pushed through
them like a sieve
into our own much
thicker world.
Under the ficus tree
some leaves sour
some leaves green
with my coffee cup
balanced on the lip
of the big blue pot it’s in
watching the sun
dry the ink into
these spaces as I try
to write them down
on the cold palm of
your hand my name
you would otherwise
poor turtle already
have forgotten.
A poem is like a scale
an ache an instrument
that plays a day by day
kind of gig by which
to mix and match
the tears of things
and to replace the
outside seen as in
a painting of the
inside among those
who lack the insight
the memory according
to those who lack the
love the learning and
to repeat the zodiac’s
reach each animal
contributing its
consonantal best
each planetary god
its moody vowel
everything in all
at once and rest
and up and down
the tortured scale.
If we think backwards
from these things to
the beauties whose
thoughts they are
not using our brains
but feeling our way
along the walls
the empty spaces
where open windows
could replace
the soul world
would we come to
the last movement
of light where
it stands ready
to destroy us
or begin again?
We thought we could
hide behind the
lantana maybe
we dead to you
invisible ones
watching the ripening
go on and on
behind the green
lantana never without
flowers mineral
umbels pink-yellow
black seeds
we thought
you would go on
without us or else
flood-engulf us
with your love
O ye gods
and so we ran.
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?
