looking up from my book

to watch words

rain through the window

is it nonsense to say

that art is only prelude

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when the poem makes me uncomfortable 

I congratulate myself

when the poem doesn’t beg

and doesn’t scold

and is never memory’s fool

I am pleased

when it has an upright zeal

but doesn’t make my teeth hurt

I sign it without regret

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on bridges coming

to the break

I remained

windless

mindless

caution in the rain

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pots and pot-like things

the questions one asks

surviving like our parents

by the phosphate glow 

of television

in a dark room

the nimbus of comfort

slowly curving the spine

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all summer long we sat in bed

reading into his mattress

the western canon

vindicating the whimsy

of a long dictatorship

the garish epaulets

the medal of conceivable bravery

the cross of smugness

the silver star of Whitman, the liberator

until fall, autumn breaking our pact

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when to a the what 
you might well know,
four paws.
in this trap again 
are we?
let’s not begin with goodbye
you know the interesting thing
about collision 
is it’s so mutual
stop trying to right the wrongs
of law and love
the children of man
are naked and featherless
feeble and querulous
and you want to be 
Moses on a motorcycle

don’t think it isn’t a junkie fall
many wish life was just 
one long blow job
but there are dimes
on the eyes of the walking
there is a poetry
to that kind of blindness
the world says no,
and all they hear is yes, yes, yes

four paws, listen to me
this net is a visible sign 
of my continued support
it’s old sad music 
always comes into major
sometimes the second chance
come first
there are opportunities here
for a comfortable earth 
and sumptuous heaven
there is now parking 
free parking
in Jerusalem

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Down the long stair of life
A few diversions 
More diversions
Grows the day 
Swells the night
We are put beyond

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the doing we are talking about

the clench 

the cry stifled

the table of strange theatre

and each and all in the night

slowly home I’m saying

confess my head the dirty bit

finger on nail, the hammer

of manner and motion away from a source

of meaning and the matter it makes

of mother-work, the merry and the dead

quite broken, the blacktop, I’m speaking

a turtle’s back

wet asphalt and now the rain

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of what whose habit is

to be by daylight pain,

like a Danish mope.

(I hate patience.)

I hate you,

and hate you in every color.

go chase rain to someone else’s doorstep.

I feel like a wall now.

Something I could shoot arrows off

or pour boiling oil 

all over your square-jawed silence.

May your lyrics try to keep peace

and always cause war

May it hurt when you laugh

May you watch

as the last snowball in hell

melts through your fingers.

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in other ways distracted

I changed forever by the horns

with the same is me of mind

we never not today dead in narration

homeless in a poem 

become indifferent to the mantle

the urinal mint roiling in piss 

with such a thing including

an original state more than I ought to

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I hear Kelly, I do Kelly

not so much saved 

as salvaged

until I couldn’t 

I couldn’t

just for the moment 

I’m saying

spell comfort

C-O-M-F-O-R-T

this plan is about envy

this play is about summer’s prices

a cock will burn down this city

a Minneapolis in the purple rain

we’re gussied up for the going down

I want to see Kelly

I want her to know

that hate, cold as it is

is only love’s winter

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a world of made is not a world of born

how many rain-soaked lives must I live

this makes me pain great cause, and again, and again

in this opportunity of space, I am an asshole

an asshole deep

from the day that sex made me

from wanting the page to roar back

from the future I’ll never see

god, please grant me, not serenity

not this cleat or that clod

or the beauty of the leaden peonies

god, grant not love and good conscience

but a deeper, blacker stripe.

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I miss the future maybe more than the past

what was to be and now will not

tragically gliding forward and away from us

there were happier men in that future

there was justice in that future

and most of all there was great poetry

can we bring it back forward

or is it gone forever

men will never have the character and intellect

that was to be so

being of the future

this loss cannot technically be 

a fall from grace

but being so close to realization

it feels we really did lose something

and now that wisdom, gentleness, and peace

is never to be had, or almost had, again

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marigold 

a story in place 

a palace floating 

acting mythic

really sinking

I started wondering

got lost

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a square-yes

no not even that

or maybe it doesn’t 

find its fold

the map I mean

make it into work

of the captured heart

the heel is heavy

I serve

a practiced gesture

since I can’t say no

I won’t

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of made to gather

jingles many songs

feeds a complex hunger

live at your ear

to notice and care

admitting exchange

eyes never shut

sense trying to make itself

mist more than memory

a raft of deadmen

late at night 

in low earth orbit

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early the scarlet morning

the sky floods

blood ruddy

we must remember

the heart is simple

the limousine full

it is ancient

it is awful

image: turning baskets over

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willow said to be weeping
joy said to be mocking
hope said to be thin
and the cargo was not slaves

this is the verbal energy
that surrounds the contemplation
of difficult (I mean ravenous) things

a bit daring I do say,
unlovely hand,
you are the subject given over
just like the dead
and in such quantities,
such well-meaning forevers

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by this kind

he means cancer

the prospect he attaches to firmly

narrative abusing time…again

he is the tom of love now

all windows

in the mood to be forgotten

while others discuss

bribes and blandishments

instead of the love

they are too afraid to want

let the heaven we inherit approach

out of the deep business of some dream,

that heaven so stubbornly former

no, Mrs. Khokhlakov, no

what can one say

of how to live a life

other than

to just survive it

burnt shame

darkening memory

can God even caution you now?

I hope, but hope only

waiting to be told

that Icarus melts the stars

from where the animating myth

such a thing including

the farmer/cow rehearsal

always like we call them

we first and death as dead

I was young once

mind big like a city

human above the body

two ass-clenching years of it

like a bird too chirpy

practicing my no-one in a bar routine

you don’t know how shitty perfect feels

and if not why not

talk to me

I’ve given

a wonderful way

a wordful song

a foolhardy love

sometimes you need

off and unlike

various and blinding

I’m not saying stupid, stupid

there falling wasted

when I think closed down

with such a thing including

if by yes

of course I’m telling

what?/but cool

a sign of grace

these woods, these old people

the spring of morning

the bones I still remember

a break like a bend

more or less alive

many rains,

desires, and ideas

dude raw too afraid

the whole jealousy

a suitcase of a man

or a tarball ruining

someone’s beach

the freckled little milk

the mall of dead commerce

the sad clock of particular energy

it’s mixed character

tick, tock, tick

before and astonished, poems.

beneath the honest

and worse the sincere

by hook or by crook?

-crook.

down, as in, to the bottom

then a lateral move

at slow velocity.

And said twice

it seemed

the truth was being told.

minimal, slow, and well put

his mode, total attention

a clever view of necessity

and well worth the fight

here is limbo

you didn’t expect that

yet the world opens

the very kind of north

we are talking about.

a place of faith

deadly serious, solemn

the silence

like a prism for words

and their separation

shakes and groans. shivers

the sky was two

was too watery

what a week

how feels a fellow?

the patient, the fellow

lives to fail

must operate soon

No spare of the headier side

my soul but a devil

the sheath of personal nature

sweating in the shed

prone to need

a list of battles

the body, the great landlord

it’s complaints, coercion,

never-ending

of that much.

both be foolish.

spaders.

smile bones I.

get lost.

are now.

into the work.

a true report

as in the rock

the mind on words

the rush to gather

many great songs

the real suchness

he’s a person that knows better than love

but can’t stop himself all the same.

she was a church in the sky

dropping birdshit on people below.

in Britain, things were done differently:

more slowly and with less passion.

okay, something hit me somewhere.

is it that

I can see myself a portion of malice

or at least the meander of their doing?

our hero arrives in take charge mode,

but who can ultimately confirm or deny the world.

we are left with its giant question.

hero cowers. It’s okay big guy.

beautiful drunk eyes

through which they fall

memory’s sunburn

all over my face

a dangerous inlet

a poem perched on arrival

the elegy blowing through

her sad

it seemed

to the dying

I’m saying.

money,

can we say,

is the most

that matters.

so I have heard

and do in part believe

a wall is a door

you can’t open

am I the one? honestly?

is it Japan where you are?

the distance loving subdivision

compellingly unlikable

(influence felt here)

if you break a name

the cause it gives

the action I mean

is/I have no idea

but think of it this way

because coming north is impossible

what could be ________

and why such hot blood

other than they hate you

and hate you in every color

of that much.

both be foolish.

spaders.

smile bones I.

get lost.

are now.

into the work.

a true report

as in the rock

the mind on words

the rush to gather

many great songs

the real suchness

the dislocations of summer

head behind the stars

thinking right now

something ought to

fall out of the sky.

if we feel a who

where a what should be

or a when that reveals itself

to be a why, then

let time fall back on itself

think it’s own tomorrow

swim like an ocean

an Athens of thought

some trick of harlotry

both signal and noise

sonnets bonnets

and backwards again

young once young always

and life a sort of monster

using weapon love

to hollow your bones

More than the usual pissed off

the inauguration of birds

waving poetry’s flag:

Mick Jagger’s sweatpants

The full-on

tit-craziest

ass-grabber

ever

where is our grumpy

keeper of the peace?

this has started filthy

Nothing corners the eye like orange

they walked the location

whereupon all force resides

and stopped

give this some air, he said

I myself am almost being played

hear the music rough as bark

he now looking cross

the silence distressing

as one block of memories

in question stood

enough of them

darkening his eyes

the subject of his body

he’s a person that knows better than love

but can’t stop himself all the same.

she was a church in the sky

dropping birdshit on people below.

in Britain, things were done differently:

more slowly and with less passion.

okay, something hit me somewhere.

is it that

I can see myself a portion of malice

or at least the meander of their doing?

our hero arrives in take charge mode,

but who can ultimately confirm or deny the world.

we are left with its giant question.

hero cowers. It’s okay big guy.

the order imposed by conflict

the metallic tasting air

boot heels furrowing the ground

we are flying their flag in risk for glory

from simple death there is no escape

from a complicated one

you can always run

I push at my insides

I feel a bit more cushion than stone

that is the conflict’s center

a structure of inspiration and concern

has escaped in the moonlight

and you got thinking life might

be alright for a minute

don’t pretend

it’s beneath your notice

it’s not

(just for the moment

I’m saying)

you rush to gather

loyal and murderous

and ask on Wednesday

is poetry young or old

the corners are sharp in the light

kishmet is hell, what I say

like a collision

talking bird and window here

you don’t mean that, thud

the shame is deeper, thud

I, thud

you, thud thud

Oh God, crack

like the heaven

we can’t figure

or the subject

we inherit

taken on clumsy authority

the liberty for new mistakes

shot or hell shot

instant nature

not to be one

or to be one

we can’t figure

the wall waits

a sign of grace for the head

mixed character and whole jealousy

remembered nonsense forgotten wisdom

and certain interests

whose personal nature makes them

unsuitable objects of

impersonal concern

the thought to leave her

far away behind

rolling contemplation

between your fingers

slowly

how do these things get decided

is this a break or a bend

when do I know

trying too hard

is between her

it’s my rid

Better than nothing. More fitting than otherwise.

A thought that starts that way never ends well.

With pleasure a footnote, and so without striving.

Please note the cares I’m full of

The acts of correction on my body

The thoughts I guard

Their often differing ambitions

The heavy use of question

with never not today

I can’t say no

for forcing bad moons

the stars yelling at your ear

give your name to flight

and little ambition

nonsense forgotten

says plump matron

while she like the water

bends light in her medium

and on the why

I crack my head

bodies are real?

stop leaving me.

becoming what?

the final claw

with you I grieve

the lesson, a bite

forever