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

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do the wasp
do the sex and rage
dreaming closer to dark
of rivals and lovers
beyond reason or will

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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her sad
it seemed
to the dying
I’m saying.
money,
can we say,
is the most
that matters.

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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with never not today
you 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

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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

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