I know more wrote than read that book which is the self I am

When I had my vision

like the dark structures

of communication

turning somewhat lucid

I thought these

borrowed breaths

could picnic

for a century

and that distance

could allow the windmills

to stall and dry

into an afternoon's landscape.

And my dear child

will you ever know

how I saw the great

ohio ember

the rain move

like a hand with its palms

raised

the admission of the strange

the fuzz

that one sees

looking across the impermanent shore.

This is the mystery

that I am doing to myself.

And sometimes we hear

the tree run, the water erode

the stone grow

Leaving Home

Some of
us,

remember leaving

home in the morning,

exploring

the bayous,
fishing with bread,

catching hermit crabs

catching a fly

to put into

venus-flytraps

growing wild

in the meadow

eating sour weed.

How careless one must become

To know the pleasant promise

And solitary expedition

Of a tiny boy thinking.

:ove :oem

I'm late

I understand that

And I'm not interested

in the unusual ways

bugs mate

I don't think

that necessarily

makes good

poetry

But I do think

if I could touch

your hand right

now that would be

good enough

You see

I am very far away

from you

I don't

fully understand

that you could hear me

I am as a

lonely house

without windows

without floors

still

I am missing

I don't know why

our birth dates

are on everything

I touch

I think you

were trying to be

funny by giving me

a hard time

I got that later

I do love

you much

more

Targets Hit by Accident

And are we not just fragments

Sappho on the street corner

with a girl from Las Vegas

an empty room freshly painted

a mirror in the reflection of a lake

the dream of history reversing

out onto a funereal landscape

the water drop constellations

but I am not going to imagine you anymore

than I have to. One goes back to old sources

the ebb and flow of different species

of trees, the green moons of sleep

the endless fragrance of darkness

Are we not risking the next chapter

the abandoned lap, the fine result

that had easily come to us

O my dear nothing

your voice turned out to be

the same phantom

a tidal pool of words within earshot

It doesn't matter we've forgotten

the submerging months among

the fleeting absorptions

the loose daylight texture

the happy secrecy

the lucid cheerful insight

showing how much you know

etched into a cloud bank

against the ordinary eternity

The explanation will be better than the poem itself

The difficulty has been extended

out from what it needs to be.

And there has been no special

isolation. There has been no

quite walks out in the autumn.

No trying to get at it

as if with the absence of life

brings one closer to it, and then

to what has gone on further

down the road because of a sound

you thought you were being beckoned by.

But we find we are only trying

to keep as a surprise for ourselves,

the buzzing uneaten colors

of fall, the water necklace, and fish streams

a couple of page turning episodes

that is probably a good lesson

for artists of all kind. A peripheral

text draining out of an accordion

like glint off the bay. The possibility

of illuminating the witness

as though everything in her has been left out.

(sic)

Believe me bunny

I never meant to use the soap

and the toothpaste...yes

but only once.

I left the room

and the young their milk.

The fire pleases infinitesimally

and the ruddy nomadic geese

of course are a great instrument

and the dandilions poking

up their yup-yups

through the flagstones

help to measure the symmetry

I think I will eventually break

your heart like apple blossoms.

But now that you

are here in the flesh,

let me touch you.

Rain

When I had my visionlike the dark structures of communicationturning somewhat lucid I thought these borrowed breaths could picnicfor a century and that distancewould allow the windmillsto stall and dryinto an afternoon landscape and my dear childwill you ever knowhow I saw the greatohio emberrain movelike a hand with its palmsraisedthe admission of the strangethe rainfloating acrossthe impermanent shore another

sunwhere darknessdecays

Mother with Daughter

There is an interruption being built within the poememptying my bookto drown the addictionthe clean

daypacked a lunchkeeps more of the work in the presentcontinuious presentround mouthneither

the color of wine or waterorators, lovers, and funeralsrain in a dreamhands love youautotelic
The child is a little youyou holding her legs raisedcoupled under your armsroundedoutside of youher

headnestledunder your chinlong locks of hairone backcurvedback
and you will become someone completely foreign to your self

Echoing

Last century

when the stars cried out their addresses

you slipped off your dresses

the two flowered ones

when the stars cried out their addresses

What were you wearing?

the two flowered ones

the lights dimmed close

What were you wearing

to the earth and whole arms?

the lights dimmed close

were back logging their questions

to the earth and whole arms

and the few like dramas

were back logging their questions

and exaggerated loves

and a few like dramas

blue from the curtains

and exaggerated loves

closing and covered in shadows

blue from the curtains

last century

closing and covered in shadows

you slipped off your dresses

I am in a Tremendous Dog Fight

It shines

suffices to say

and is done well

like the soon

to be cut lawns

the terrible gravity

of how we place

our ornaments

drifting seeds

without the mailman's

communicable ginseng

with out the men

who fancied my mother

who said this can happen

from the burning streets

and coffee poured cities

and the sense to picnic

like crumbs about your feet

the famous drop cloth

with the occasional factory bell

ringing against a spiraling background.

New Poem for People Who like New Poems

The boat sails

in a sea of grass

under the May

air eve ocean.
And Clouds

a single wake of

further

after mooring noons.
Midnight. Cleansing

the cheerful dream

of the constant love

dropping the dissipated

anchor becoming atmosphere

of our fortunes.

Searching for Traces

No posts

No signs

No sonnets

No ocean

No gloom

No turning

No meaning

No story

No land

No loom

No present

No sleep

No secret

No business

No order

No breeze

No standing

No knowing

No dreaming

No sequel

No echo

No moon

Compositional History

Today we find ourselves in a very novelistic world.

As in foot note (1)

What do you have to think the poem is

indicates the source

anything beyond that

you find there is a lot better poetry

decourous certainly

double removed

it is in the letters these figures

write to each other.

1. No one is left behind on earth

Notes From Narragansett

The painter worked into evening

and ended up creating night.

"You see the moon is shinning on the ocean,

and a woman is carrying in the laundry

over her tumbled arms."

It began to rain on the ocean.

I said, I see nothing

but nothing I said

said to him there

was no ocean, no woman, no laundry, no moon.

World as Voyeur

waves slapping like jello

vanished noises

swinging our naked arms

like the dead

laid down on their pillars

living at the back of the orchard

and called and sent home

and bled

a cadence behind the eyes

voices like bombed out homes

reading the train schedules

reading the hotel menu

reading Ulysses for the first time

at 36. Life happens

in a few fine years

and nothing but doing it all

over again will suffice.

I'm wondering when the river

its course, is a bad thing

when it changes

and the fish all die out

or a good reason.

I practice being still.

I practice

and practice.

I think the poem has changed.

Even though I didn't want to show you that.

Poem Without Revisions

He issued the definition

like a hand coming out of the sunlight,

like the universe was suppose to fill up.

He said, "There is more importance

leaving the white carnations of our world."

There was a parade turning down our street.

There were trucks and very shiny automobiles.

There were people throwing candy.

For a moment I felt that I might be coming home

to my dear wife.

And I hoped for a long time.

The summer was almost over in the tomatoes.

There was only one window in which the swallows could leave.

We walked to the field where no horse was.

I could not sing.

I could not say anything.

Not Responding to Things Directly

The few lines of your neck wear you down

like the sodden robe of your last miscarriage.

I am undulant and endeavoring your inner tube delicacies.

On 7th Avenue the cat thinks it must be in heaven

or else why would it be smiling?

Why would it be pawing the suburban subconscious?

And since we are alone, Love,

in our dreams, your contumely umbrella

has hidden you amid the vast oceanic waves.

I’ve flagged you down so we could shake hands.

Like an unhealthy child or a shallow reservoir,

I’ve swam a bit unsteady over the shoals,

squandered my stocking stuffers,

losing a little luster, but also the debris of doubt.

I won’t be much longer in this crawl space.

My landscape, mostly the curve along your chin line

up to your rhododendron eyeliner.

But it is late, it is almost night fall,

and in the sad demure of rain we raise the toasting glass

to speak anecdotally of this young prince.

Saying it so it might happen

We were told to sit on the pavement,

it was ordinary pavement. As if we needed marmoreal

protection from the loiters and people shopping.

The branches shook above the nasturtiums, which

were shaking their rebuttals at the ice cream

pamphlets. This was some college town

someone shouted. That this would be, "a good novel

some day." And in that way we looked at each

other in disgust. Once making love my mind was thinking

that in a hundred years I would never think

as I do now, nor shift my seat in peradventure.

The structure of the bricks was

a kitchen floating over the roof

tops. We were eating our cotton

sweaters. We were trying to acclimate

to our extremeties. We were having a good time.

This was the way we thought about the world.

In Search of Popsun

The Alps Go out from here. We dropped our baskets And went out hunting. There was incredulous Love making. We heard things from the hereafter. We commandeered safe passage Out through the rolling Atlantic. We heard of an attractive hand at the firing range that drew in the pack of hyenas, A few of us responded with a Map of the constellations Others began to desire Brilliant foliage And a few bills in their bill fold. We were waiting for it to get cold, For it to snow, to go out looking through the snowy streets of New England, And find that This is not such a crazy place For a famous hat, In Hartford.

Regular Poetry

 

The coffee was steaming when Doc took off his wig

we didn’t even know he was wearing.

We found a hat within a hat.

Two years before, Lorca shredded me

with a flower stinking like an overripe melon.

That was for I thought I knew better.

Another hat emerges and someone kicks it.

It hurts, like reading a poem with an understanding,

an oar passing over the water, dripping in an orbit

only a few astronomers can comprehend.

Finally You

Last night we finally got wind of the new greeting card. It sounded like shrimp head or lunch pail. But those are things of profound sadness and we decided to rename it, like houseboat or inscribed straggle. It now appears under your pillow like air pocket or  willful sample of a lonely tooth. We suppose it is like wine wasted on the telephone. But we are similarly misled, and it is like the Indian Ocean. Hint it is written like leaf with a passion or long yellow Septembers. From the window we look out onto the slipperless streets. The mailman uses his telescope as an alias. He carries the mail like a deceased brother at a New Year’s Eve party. We don’t take it personally, but are happy when he’s gone. He is a normal letter carrier. Like shag over the ballpark, or nightgown obviously not stitched, funny simple novel or two smiles playing, nothing is heavier than a nickel but the sweet fronds of thought melting like butter between a sandwich, Japanese blooms in fall or hints not unlike statutes left in the rain. In words a thank you letter finds you amid the postcards, taxidermied pigeons, napkin notes.