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tastes leafy and sweet and has the power the old ones say to heal
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perhaps to those familiar with their ways the sight would not have been so startling a deer fording the missouri in the early afternoon
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at one point she hit upon a shoal and appeared to walk upon a mantle the light glancing off her thin legs and black hooves
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and now i long to bear witness of such things to tell someone in need the story of a deer fording the missouri in the early afternoon
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inside the northern general they're trying to burn away a small piece of your heart
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i want to know which bit how much and what it holds
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the mind's black kettle hisses its wild exigencies at every turn: the hour before the coffee and the hour after
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penscratch of the gone morning woman a pitched hysteria watching the mad-ant scramble her small wants devouring
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her binge and skin-thrall her old selves being shuffled off into labyrinths this birdless sky a longing
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this hour a purge of its own unselfing she must make a home of it
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here in the cradle of thebes a towering sphinx roams the garden her wet dawn devouring
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it was the thought that if you could watch if i could leak to the public the film of when i needed to reach you that would be one way
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the day's owl and its omen slipping a bright hook into my cheek
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sees him at the far end of the strand squamous in rubbery weed his knees bobbing urchins his lean trunk leaning sea-treasure for her
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sea-scribbler's chest buckles in aftershock his quill is primed: squid-inked and witful
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devouring ammonia cyanide and sewage as fast as we can produce them this hydra emblem of insatiable desire
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meaning homeland mulk exactly how my son demands milk
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yet after work while the boys and girls played at tug of war wrestling or archery shy boy mugoo and shy girl gugoo would draw the boys and girls
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i want a short obituary a life brief amp unfulfilled the introductory melody before a beat's crescendo into song the game over somewhere in the great plains
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arc or the promise of injury if i take a fall my son so distant from other children in his sadness
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how you wrote it down my friend held it in the starless night amp gave it pink fingers with which to scratch back
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when g died began the midnight panic attacks he spoke french and english but that didn't help
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a tendency to choke and then how lavishly it grew to overtake him
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flowery and young came the mourners like bridesmaids g would have liked it that way
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stilettos and stockings the curves of the widow sleek and sublimate in blacksilk pants
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elsewhere people went shopping or to the movies we drove to the crematorium
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i can only hope so many beautiful women come to my funeral m said
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(rude-blooming the flowers of paris as if snout to blossom could uncover could reinvoke
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i once loved a boy who built batteries for pacemakers miniature machines that could glint a heart to life
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a small bear stomping across the table escape on its mechanical mind
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what's within should be held in choke it down medicine for the long haul
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the magic settles uneasy it turns out fairy dust was always fake and the lipstick's made from beetles shells crushed vermillion
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and yet their voices sweeten the snaking air providing the transvestites their proper muses all of whom have streets named for them in the garden district
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but in this room on this costly bed our lovemaking starts out the slowest grind then like this city's weather goes from hot to hotter from moist to rainstorm wet
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we sniggered as the singing voice came closer so close we began to sing along conspirators smiling and we welcomed the doleful silence at the song's inevitable end
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my memory of a perfect scent: pine sage and cypress my friends' faith in the power of rough and winding paths to take me up a mountain and bring me back
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paperbacks record albums text books piled up azaleas on the parkway a howl of buzzing bees late spring just before graduation
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their bungalow has dueling computers and a real backyard while nancy and mike's boxes are slowly being unpacked their bicycles are carefully racked inside their front door
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oh my friends who love to hike to ski to bike and me they love are driving me from boise to ketchum through mountain and valley beauty
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high desert heat is clear dry and when your body rises out of a chilly car blam
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i used to watch death valley days death was hinted but not shown the wagon turned over the wagon train a going
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o those long-suffering white people fearful of indians and scared of bandits desperate for shade for water for land flowing milk and honey
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stewards of american beauty these are the paths my friends make in wild places the rise and fall of future walks
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the laugh that he laughed that he wished wasn't his went hruck sniffle-hick hee-haw
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mama has happened and the rocking horse of your heart heaves on
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my mouth is snow slowly caking that stiff pigeon my mouth the intricately moist machinery of a plant i have forgotten if i ever had a mouth
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i have two mouths one like warm rain or wind manipulating the worn limbs of an elm
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i shall survive this death even though the heart is a shadow of a bone or thick glass
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now wisdom is sour rubbing medicine pasted over nightmares not the proper wealth of an old man the arms of his neighbors around him like laurels
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aliens have inhabited my aesthetics for decades really since the early s
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as if you could leave and you thought gravity was a problem
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at least to those few who knew a book to be a friend
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we decided to go to the army for we did not want to be roasted at home like little pigs
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just do not go and multiply
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if i bow any lower i will be looking up at moss
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everyone i know wants to douse the hungry flames flee the endless aftershocks unravel every vexing question
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although i feel like a bird with a broken wing each day i think of you i fumble an attempt to fly to impress you with the color of my paper wings
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crows are the printed warnings of a wasted life they will never leave or abandon us
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and they sang to us with human wings upon which we sleep
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his official language became latin when he ceased to be a jew biting his nails and collecting cans like a cheap minister with sunny gold teeth the tender years that once wore oysters would never speak to him again
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she is as hundreds of years old as the stories of the lies of grandmothers in the cellar
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may i ask who your grandmother died if she died herself
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stopping by woods on a snowy evening he murmurs something about the dark side of life how awful it can be as i begin to track silence and signal to a cold source
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the picture was magic and so was johnnie and jill though not a children's classic
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i walked on the hill this summer tamely carefully slowly alongside my mother
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routines of decaying time fade and your waking life gets laborious as science
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and a restart of tense summons your waking size out through shreds of story
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i saw sheep herding and shearing admired the baby lambs and followed the from sheep to sweater interpretive trail
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i sit on my dock dangling my feet in the water counting dragonflies
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the boys laughed said shhh and stood me up
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it's too soon for the front porch swing no crocuses are opeing the wind is from the north and chill
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the mockingbird has testified to spring's existence and i see the buds are on the almond tree
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the poem dreams of bodies always leadless bearing only things ordinary as water amp light
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one day i'll leave not you but all this this hunger that pushes each wave
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cement is pumped so it bumps top wiper plug at twelve thirty then two pressure tests
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onds later it was not yet ten o'clock when the mayday call was first made
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i recognize in its warm death the expression of the starving with the o-gape of complete despair i live here
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at the end they soberly bong out their names myths and ideals i could never bring myself to believe in my prayers the self-flagellation of unrequited love
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buses pointing out the hood amp back the route every morning goes by the liquor store
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he worries about the hazing the beatings you tell him this is an opportunity don't miss it
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the blankets are big with his body the cat under the covers because it is cold out and she is not stupid mews
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such gentility reins all vigor all caution
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thought he knew presents a gap between her upper foreteeth when she smiles
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the hovering body of a fiery sparrow is almost transparent like flute music or an idea
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i turn my back and finally i spot her my friend the host
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she's sipping rum punch from a martini glass her whole body appears to be smiling glowing and i don't know what to think
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could the cusan speak of love as a return a plentitude of absence an imprecise count of the dark from which he would always turn
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the binukedine know how to entice the expansive energy flowing from grace an absolute measure a stellar device
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i would propose a failed sun a sacrifice that spins an ambiguous body in time in trust to a sacred field death's other price
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what established light will move or change the structure of light light an order to disprove
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bogged in a bone order syntax and substance of the passing world i place my duge in the fragile arms of silence
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so much for the quick embrace of the ceasing instant the chaste argument only the dead can efface
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say that i have written my absolute descent and stable transformation through a sounding tone to one that now is spent
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the ascent out of despair must be steady slow or your lungs will explode your blood boil
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he squeezed around my throat so tight i thought i'd die with him
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there's a lot going on in the zombie apocalypse
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but wouldn't she recognize that her mother was a zombie
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so you can decide on your own and he wants for you not to doubt this: even more blessed you will be you have heard and not seen
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i would stand for hours in one spot and scores of little kids who hadn't had a wash for weeks would group round me
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i've never been crazy about donuts but these are the aristocrats of the donut world and i salute them
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