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i do it so it feels like hell i do it so it feels real i guess you could say i've a call
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for the eyeing of my scars there is a charge for the hearing of my heart it really goes
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herr god herr lucifer beware beware
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out of the ash i rise with my red hair and i eat men like air
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no of course not it won't
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what do i do do i throw all these away their anecdotes their comforts now black glass
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the unusual rilke and the usual rilke both knew it
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and you go to your men slapping fives feeling good posing as a man because you know as long as you sit very very still the laws of motion will be in effect
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swing magnet swing advancing and receding swing magnet answer dearest what's your final reading
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your forgiveness to what would you confess beyond season-to-season unfaithfulness
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doesn't want to touch this tattooed body sheltered in a solar cave
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or ask for something perhaps out of habit but as the past must always be honored unconsciously formally and persists on this first and singular day though i think of it as last
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well one of you falls asleep and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth and that's how people burn to death in hotel rooms
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and a thousand insects outside called and made me nothing moonlight streamed inside as if it had been
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scene six: in front of an old and empty lot in contemporary athens a crowd motley with priests and bishops gathers to cast a stone the stone of anathema
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but when i try i know it's just another instance of me whistling in the dark me not blazing me not burning out
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to you born into violence the wars of the red ant are nothing you in the heart of the eruption
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i am speaking from immeasurable grass blades you there on the rubble what is the river of vapor to you
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to you the machine guns to you the semen of fire the birth of the maggot in the corpse
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you to whom we send these gifts at the heart of light we are crushed together when the sun dies we will become one
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so i could say mine my own and mean it
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and the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly i noticed that today one day more bursts them open fully
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even the swarms of kids have given in to winter's big excuse boxed-in allure tvs ricochet light behind pulled curtains
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the days throw up a closed sign around four the hapless customer who'd wanted something arrives to find lights out a bolted door
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not your moon who cares she remains unmoved your companion
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unbodied presences the pack'd pollution and remorse of time the horrors of unhouseld crime
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this is the wind out of which i bring clouds these are my hands that gnarled though they be when lifted to the sky bring rain
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on the record oh baby oh measure oh strange balance that grips us on this side of the world
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i charley horse and miracle ride your absence the whipped froth of the ocean
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the map must be of sand and can't be read by ordinary light it must carry fire to the next tribal town for renewal of spirit
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take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls the altars of money they best describe the detour from grace
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flowers of rage spring up in the depression monsters are born there of nuclear anger
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you will travel through the membrane of death smell cooking from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh deer meat and corn soup in the milky way
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what our betrayals were we know with a knowledge intimate beyond revenge history the needle's eye you can't squeeze through
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the partisans cut us down heaped us in a mass grave our relatives dug up: yes there were tears even for us
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now like aliens from space on your tv shows we ravel into mist surrounding you the moment your eyes close
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or the plum tree as in the pulse that forms these lines
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wait till easter to grow then they come up even with snow still on the ground i thought i'd seen that happen
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one dome of air and fire but he was not there nor i here
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hairy muscular suburban wearing chocolate double-breasted suits they blew their tops and beat him black and blue
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in love if love be love if love be ours faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers unfaith in aught is want of faith in all
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it is the little rift within the lute that by and by will make the music mute and ever widening slowly silence all
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the little rift within the lover's lute or little pitted speck in garner'd fruit that rotting inward slowly moulders all
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how warm a wind blew here about the ways and shadows on the hillside lay to slumber during the long sun-sweetened summer-days
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the swallows veering skimmed the golden grain at midday with a wing aslant and limber and yellow cattle browsed upon the plain
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i had a sister lovely in my sight her hair was dark her eyes were very sombre we sang together in the woods at night
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the babble of our children fills my ears and on our hearth i stare the perished ember to flames that show all starry thro' my tears
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but that i knew these places are my own i'd ask how came such wretchedness to cumber the earth and i to people it alone
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by the time they force an entry he'll have skedaddled among hen runs and pigeon lofts
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he has turned over a new leaf in her ladyship's herb patch they'll take it back for analysis
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red strokes sugar sweet widows whelps
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indigenous he teased as he flew by
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so in my bed that curtain'd grave though sleep like ashes hide my lamp and life both shall in thee abide
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it is by falling in and in we make the all-bearing point for one another's sake in faultless failing raised by our own weight
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listen it's time you were chosen too to put the world together
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he scrambled up my science notes with eggs and bacon strips and baked potato chips
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only cinder our scottie puppy paralyzed from gobbling toads i sat mixing black earth and lime
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a fluff of the west wind puffing my blouse kiting me over our seven chimneys troubling the waters
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the finest poster was two or three young men in khaki kilts being bushwhacked on the veldt they were almost life-size
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my hands were warm then cool on the piles of earth and lime a black pile and a white pile
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i'm trying to string together three words which i hate more than i hate myself gobsmacked hubby and
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hickey i'd say sit down pull up set to here's knife and fork there's wine and there's a barmaid let us submerge ourselves in onion-soup
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we stood by a pond that winter day and the sun was white as though chidden of god and a few leaves lay on the starving sod
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each and every moment's a shortcut i follow it through the meaning of the east returning home closing death's door
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like schoolkids asking: why do birds fly south what time is it when an elephant sits on the fence what's big red and eats rocks
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in you ruby the pain you wake to is not yours
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you are the one solid the spaces lean on envious you are the baby in the barn
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blood-drop lung of fire setting past the sea bell and wave why am i separate from that giant burrowing into further life
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we make it human and we call it love this wintering is my own and not the world's although the world is wintering
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i must stop my stopping and start to start i can end at the beginning or begin at the end i feel older younger both at once
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on a branch floating downriver a cricket singing
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i am especially open to sadness and hilarity since my father died as a child one week ago in this his ninetieth year
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we thought we saw the banners then that shook along the walls were gazing on the stalls
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the art of losing isn't hard to master so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster
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o night do i not see my love fluttering out among the breakers what is that little black thing i see there in the white
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high and clear i shoot my voice over the waves surely you must know who is here is here you must know who i am my love
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o darkness o in vain o i am very sick and sorrowful
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but as for me for you the irresistible sea is to separate us as for an hour carrying us diverse yet cannot carry us diverse forever every day at sundown for your dear sake my love
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nothing again will ever be this easy lives being snatched up like dropped stitches the dry stalks of daylilies marking a stillness we can't keep
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and the rabbit ignorant of mercy curled on itself in that white drift of feathers
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they tossed him the portrait from the tallest of the buildings and the sea devoured the canvas and the brush as though his subject had decided to remain a prayer
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all must learn reality is always sterner than pleasures of the nighttime burner
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something real like a bell inside the golden seahorse gift shop
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when others run to windows or out of doors to catch the sunset whole he is content with any segment anywhere he sits
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from segment fragment he can reconstruct the whole prefers to reconstruct the whole as if to say i see more seeing less
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for well they knew the parters in all evenings druid and roman and the rocked phoenician the blood flows one imposed way and no other
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over and over for those lolling and snoozing in the stroller preparing to come after
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tall house standing on its high green hill children do you remember lawns slant down to a stream
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twig to twig the blooms bursting through the runnels that held them five runnels made in the foil by five fingers
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so seemly a seed could not die in vain that sprig nor spice there would be none of that precious pearl without a stain
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such odors eddied in my brain to sudden slumber i was brought by that precious pearl without a stain
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we chase chickens or dogs away from it babies teethe at the corners they scrape their knees under it
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wars have begun and ended at this table it is a place to hide in the shadow of terror a place to celebrate the terrible victory
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at this table we sing with joy with sorrow we pray of suffering and remorse we give thanks
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nodded beard-splitter to sorrowful no power or possessions where my rule is i will make you mine
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the ball our side will be up and i will have to bat and i might strike out
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passing the american graveyard for my birthday the crosses stuttering white on tropical green the years' quick focus of faces i do not remember
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the palm trees stalking like deliberate giants for my birthday and all the hot adolescent memories seen through a screen of water
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hail amp farewell hail amp farewell hail amp farewell
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nothing his body states is safe from the dance of ideas
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