Turn Here

First, I had forgotten

I was shouting over

the sun shower. Forgotten

that all the while I had

donated my heat to

an impregnable argument.

The stripper loved the way

I peeled an orange.

I’m sure that upset some.

But the downpour went unnoticed over the mimosas.

A relatively exotic weather pattern.

Soon, we knew, life would return

to its pre-shoplifting days.

And we would return to work

astray, and knee-capped in torrentials.

Words play out like catnip from a damp mouse.

A telephone rings and someone says the soggiest

goodbye. There is a dictionary and a word

in that dictionary, but the speaker

postpones its tintinnabulations.

Simply refuses to make a sound.

Another ampersand and observers

Like buoys on the shore, after paddling,

dry like canoes tipped toward the hot sun.

Magnificent droplets bead

everywhere in the background

of an argument being quietly

lightly repaired.

I Never Wanted To

As I divvied up the stars

ripening in the landscape

it hurt. And that’s why I

started writing down my

dreams or any thought

I might have on dreaming.

What I thought was a moth

clinging to your ankle was

really a clover. You were

showing me around even

though you we dead

and still I called you

something I regretted.

When I found out I was

flying someone sat me

down by my arms.

I replaced every reply

I ever made with a bowl

of tulips. To freshen them

up a bit. O lonely

breakfast star! I lack

what smoke lacks—

How horribly brittle

the paint on the swing

set is. This evening

is an overlooked cupola.

And figures fish with their

toes for a stone at the

bottom of a stream

amid the ruins of a

bilingual tomorrow

manana I mean.

It’s very simple.

At last we grow into

another person. Someone

completely foreign

to ourselves. I have this

thought every time I

revise the rhymes out

of my poems. Somehow

it is here you mysteriously

fade. You turn into

something runny.

And I awake with less

of an ability to love you.

The Light Changes Just Like That

A background without stars, without kinescope,

Without trappings, like a parade with lots of confetti

Parachuting into an argument that blows up

Into what we really hate about each other.

With my good hand I trail off a solitary letter.

It’s nothing phonetically, not even a whole bicycle.

Just a monsoon of leaflets I asthmatically perfected

Over a cup of grapes.

I write, “Go far away and be beautiful.”

So something beautiful will be far away.

A Wave

Nylon thoughts firmly prosper

no words fettle for answers

over the sea in some waded shadow

everything jagged, shadowed, leaded

one remarks like a timid first lover

confused, a memory at its corners

like many colored snow falls

your tongue between the gulf

of reflection and suffering

the quality of a country

called the land of petals

not the vain weather

nor that the compost queen

called to the beautiful preordained

impassible ruffian

"Thou hast managed

a wave."

Lines Written in Snow

You begin beginning

flowers and mountains

land, lakes, and streams

shoulders shrugging

off the loss of understanding

I punctuate the coming

just in case

the details that one may pick up

sounds like kissing wax paper

Wheels perfectly imitating,

even the sun the light house reflections

The singer singing the words

You begin beginning.

Little Photo

All life is like this afternoon

on your young sandy face

the weight of the stars

the body tasting like snow

the slipcover of communication

fleeting through the geography

of twilight paintings

firecracker mysteries

calm hurricane

sandwiches

and the intricacies of the days

before you knew they

even existed.

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.