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In one way
the leaves
are only
pointing and
turning back
to the water
from which
they swam
and yet they
have something
of hands and
feet about them
begging to be
set free and are
loosed
at night
among the stars
and in the
still moonlight
you can
clearly see the faces
of future animals
and gods
Don't forget it all comes
down to this not knowing
how to love which is true
for everyone so the
question isn’t only how this
manifests for each chronically
and individually but what if
anything we care to do
about it in a
temporary here and now what risks we
must insist on so love
continues to evade us or we manage
to elude it for one more
day
Can you
really find yourself
if you’re
secretly stalking
someone else
a whole life
close
following other people
getting lost
then finding someone
else to purse
a scholarly study of
the hidden
years the clues
returning to
and re-imagining
the same new places
abandoned
oases could you
care for and
then you turned
and walked
all the way back
from Egypt
all the way home
from bum-fuck
Egypt
Under the
shady tents of summer
we lounged
and read and argued
while they
loaded the tear gas
masks and
stun guns these fathers
still trying
to beat obedience
into their
children when it’s been
clearly shown
for ages to be both
ineffective
and mutually destructive
when will
these stubborn fathers learn
to sit down and
listen to the future
a place their
children actually will
occupy when
they’re long gone
Somehow every
day I seem
happier and
yet more serious
but about
what I’ve no clue
I'm just jonesin' for the
future
something rude
but sublime
at the same
time
like when
making love
you can’t
help yourself
all over you
if you would
let me
advance my forces
and already
tomorrow
makes me
laugh and cry
Don’t forget
you were given
your own
hunting park and garden
stocked with
wild lizards
who graze
freely despite a stray
cat and
screeching starling
lease-mates
on this five cent
postage stamp
of dirt
which flowery
memory tightly
wraps and
sends off
to the north
pole of time
finally the
mind gets tired
of the body
it’s called sleep
or death this
side of which
we fight with
love
A man
bursting into flames
screams in
the cross-fire Look, ma!
The fiery
twig with its cleavage
broken whines
the same
The sun
following along clarifying
the right way
may be into the darkness
and cold and
lost really to be lost
The sky
abusing the ocean
stitching tattoos
all over its harbor
planting its
salty tongue in your mouth
The rose the
petals of whose touch
expose the
thorn and then thrust
The shadows
who acquire fame
and spout the
desirable lines
Everything
trembles like a stone
when you walk
toward us only one
over the
plains of light
Don’t forget
water is love’s signature its first liquidity its voluptuous beginning and yet
proof that total self-surrender was once possible on earth though now we can only
put light and darkness together to make a day to stand in and a night to dream
in that’s about all we can do anymore is put a night and a day together and
stand there between them uniting them and yet separating them in us hopefully
usefully
Everything is
recorded
everything is
captured
even our
thoughts
our slightest
sensations
our
crossed-off lists and
furtive
rememberings
if the path
of return
is not the
voyage out
as any mirror
knows
no one comes
back
who has not
gone
all the way
round
the bend
sinister
of life the
question
isn’t
consciousness
after death
whose
proof is
flowers
but how here
to live as
there
In the
court of man
the torturer
is acquitted
thus
we build debt
on
both sides until
we
come to the place
where
we can distinguish
politics
from religion
(the
long range plan)
there can
be no democracy
without
accountability
here
on earth it’s called
religion
but if you can ‘t
believe
a scientist
who
can you believe
the
dawn
Because
he is proud
he turns
his head away
when I
leave as if
it
didn’t matter so
I’m
the one who looks
back to
see he’s not
looking
back but already
started
raking leaves
or
reading his screen
and
not as if nobly
bearing
the loss of me
by
letting me seem more
important
than himself
I don’t
look back too
long
either knowing
I won’t
be that long
Dear
Frank it may seem rude
to intrude
on you like this
since
we’ve never properly met
though
we could have if what
I know
about you now
was
something I knew then
I
would have hiked to New York
to
meet you or at least
to
stalk you for a few weeks
when I
was 17 and you were
only
17 years older and
would
soon be gone though
in an
earlier life you invented
Italian
singing can you say what
you’ve
planned for us next
Don’t
forget there is a limit set on the number of galaxies and stars whatever that number
is we marvel at it we who love numbers yet
never
care about the number of stones here on earth or grains of sand unfathomable but
how is looking at the Milky Way that different from looking at a single human body
or a hundred billion stars different from a human life let’s say we should start
to see ourselves as galaxies the way the beach should see itself as us
I
believe there’s more Marianne
Moore in
Rae Armantrout
than
Elizabeth Bishop
more
HD than Denise Levertov
more
Plath than Rich
more
Emily than Walt
and
that’s because there’s
always
something to learn
and
one feels hurried along
to the
bathroom and back
with a
certain reverential calm
that settles
over the whole classroom
like
an extended metaphor
in an
early American novel
that
makes you think
of
your first great thoughts
somewhere
in the vicinity of hers
If the
coffee’s not hot enough
the cream
cools it too much
so it
has to be reheated
if I
feel cowardly about being
too conciliatory
or weak
about feeling
too happy
is
yours warm enough
PTSD
goes back to before Gilgamesh FCS
there was
a girl I met in Amiens
who turned
out to be the BVM
it was
in a gallery
where they
undressed her painting
transparent
and inclusive
called
the whole history of time
but it
turns out
I
never saw Amiens
For
the flimsiest of material
to hold
the weight of right now
the
past must be the dress
this
moment just takes off
and
throws over the sofa
to
stand naked for a moment
(as if
one would salute the moment)
before
the future ushers in
the
cover-up the nascent stars
who
play us in the prequel
sleepwalking
their lines as
classically
trained as any despot
the
more violent the police
the
more frightened the leader
is
force fraternal
is
hunger equal
is
life owned
already
you’ve lost it
Finally
I forgot
what this
poetry
was
about for me
actually
I forgot
everything
& poetry
was
just among them
the
many prisoners
taken
to the fort
of the
past
go
right now
&
write ‘I’
on
something
I the
poem we the poem
after
the poem
it’s
all placebo
I
think she is not a bright person
or even
a beautiful person but she
confirms
goodness does not depend
on
brilliance or beauty or that it
even
has to make sense wedded
as it
is to paratactical distortions
and
loneliness out of range of
hollering
grandly elusive except
in its
talent to astonish
by
working on subterranean
and
upper atmospheric forces
suddenly
shoved into our downtown
cemetery
of awareness
recalling
resurrections of old
gentians
dragged up in boggy fields
Don’t
forget sentinels are the senses merely but what do they portend standing there
on their parapets guarding something against something the
heaviest grains reach the bottom first exposing gravity as time equals
matter a formula I remember from fifth grade Miss Adams Atom Bomb we called her
I haven’t thought of her in years or you first face I loved sitting in front of
me one row over where I could keep my eyes on you while the rest of me could quietly
implode
