lazy for hours
briefly studious
exhale

I once read
that if a poem
hasn’t got anything
meaningful to say,
it ought to,
at least,
rhyme.
This one doesn’t.

night
under jungle canopy
was dark as a cave.

at twilight
you crept
two hundred meters out
from the perimeter.

you and another.
the radio,
two claymore mines,
M-16s-three clips each-

half a dozen grenades,
pop-up flares,
and four canteens of water.
fear fed thirst.

you opened two packets
of instant coffee,
spilled them into your mouth,
washed them down,
and felt your head jitter
all night long.

there was always sound.

jungle rats or snakes,
maybe even tigers,
or NVA probing the lines.

if there were many of them,
you sent up the flares,
fired into the dark,
detonated the claymores,

and were the first to die.

(I was M-60 machine gunner with the Ninth Marines in South                
                  Vietnam, 1968.    LP is a military acronym for ’listening post.’ )

In a dream I shall feel
The wings of the world unfolding, and
Worlds spinning on the axis of mad journeys;
And the seas breaking turquoise, upon their rippled surface.

In the heart of the ears
I shall hear the shivering willows, dreaming their
Wood-smoke dreams, full of sap and  funneled sunlight;
Pierced by light for a thousand years

And the flowers sleeping nestled in stars;
Gathered in the deep, among the wood-thrushes,
In coagulated violet forests, all shadowed and dark:
And a whispered peace barely rustles this world.

Let the poetry of others repose in majestic halls:
My poems are filler for paper shredders,
For packing in shipping boxes,
And backing for flypaper sticky strips;
To wipe the muddy soles of shoes
That have seen too much of springtime
In the garden.

Others poetry fills the airwaves, and sits between the covers of books;
My poetry is for grocery lists,
And sudden messages you need to scribble while on the telephone,
And maps to undiscovered geneological treasures
That are only a township away-
To trace the faces of cool tombstones
Under a mid-day sun.

You won't find my poetry near any other kind of list
That doesn't say get bleach, dog food, and toilet paper.
Still, my poetry is from a well lettered life-
I have written all my heartbeats, and most of my sighs
Into sibylline hieroglyphics, from midnight initiations
In the secret brotherhood, of my own soul:
And I will die a freeman, because nobody
Will ever feel the need to own any of these words.

This is the desk I sit at
and this is the desk where I love you too much
and this is the typewriter that sits before me
where yesterday only your body sat before me
with its shoulders gathered in like a Greek chorus,
with its tongue like a king making up rules as he goes,
with its tongue quite openly like a cat lapping milk,
with its tongue -- both of us coiled in its slippery life.
That was yesterday, that day.
That was the day of your tongue,
your tongue that came from your lips,
two openers, half animals, half birds
caught in the doorway of your heart.
That was the day I followed the king's rules,
passing by your red veins and your blue veins,
my hands down the backbone, down quick like a firepole,
hands between legs where you display your inner knowledge,
where diamond mines are buried and come forth to bury,
come forth more sudden than some reconstructed city.
It is complete within seconds, that monument.
The blood runs underground yet brings forth a tower.
A multitude should gather for such an edifice.
For a miracle one stands in line and throws confetti.
Surely The Press is here looking for headlines.
Surely someone should carry a banner on the sidewalk.
If a bridge is constructed doesn't the mayor cut a ribbon?
If a phenomenon arrives shouldn't the Magi come bearing gifts?
Yesterday was the day I bore gifts for your gift
and came from the valley to meet you on the pavement.
That was yesterday, that day.
That was the day of your face,
your face after love, close to the pillow, a lullaby.
Half asleep beside me letting the old fashioned rocker stop,
our breath became one, became a child-breath together,
while my fingers drew little o's on your shut eyes,
while my fingers drew little smiles on your mouth,
while I drew I LOVE YOU on your chest and its drummer
and whispered, "Wake up!" and you mumbled in your sleep,
"Sh. We're driving to Cape Cod. We're heading for the Bourne
Bridge. We're circling the Bourne Circle." Bourne!
Then I knew you in your dream and prayed of our time
that I would be pierced and you would take root in me
and that I might bring forth your born, might bear
the you or the ghost of you in my little household.
Yesterday I did not want to be borrowed
but this is the typewriter that sits before me
and love is where yesterday is at.

Oh, love, why do we argue like this?
I am tired of all your pious talk.
Also, I am tired of all the dead.
They refuse to listen,
so leave them alone.
Take your foot out of the graveyard,
they are busy being dead.

Everyone was always to blame:
the last empty fifth of *****,
the rusty nails and chicken feathers
that stuck in the mud on the back doorstep,
the worms that lived under the cat's ear
and the thin-lipped preacher
who refused to call
except once on a flea-ridden day
when he came scuffing in through the yard
looking for a scapegoat.
I hid in the kitchen under the ragbag.

I refuse to remember the dead.
And the dead are bored with the whole thing.
But you -- you go ahead,
go on, go on back down
into the graveyard,
lie down where you think their faces are;
talk back to your old bad dreams.

How can you not let me in?
Let me in-
let me linger on your floor-
I am passion, and I am desire,
I can fill you with fulfillment,
I can fill you with pain.
I am what should fill that empty hole inside your heart,
and I am the empty that fills it already.
I am the food you stuff when you feel swollen
and the drink you take to drown.
Why won't you let me in, and make me stay a while-
Have me enter you, and go throughout, let me give you what I can.
You can count on me to never spill, I'll never let my insides fall, no water will ever spill from these eyes.