"What right do you claim,
to mug so little
and swallow yourself,
to make us **** and beg
to find your
thinking guts,
as if you contain
any multitude
that wouldn't fit
on this table?"

"And you?
What right?
To slosh yourself
clumsy,
over paid-for
digestif,
to gorge the air
with your tongue,
and pass on lean,
to leave so drunk and ask
me
to clean my table of you?"

Between the borders
lie bubbling mires,
thick but porous,
pockmarked and soft.

A chorus of croaking warts,
"Slither through my friend;
take back whatever
is yours,
but please
please
please
add us to your maps."

Should we see
at the speed of grass,
find it stretching
good morning
at the growing heat,
we would notice it pulsing
and step more softly.

My clocks unwound,
I tell time easy,
by the angles of shadows
piercing
my floors.

I let them point me
to how to be
next,
follow them in circles,
chew lip askance
at whatever sun
I'm slowly crashing.

The Greeks made flaws fatal,
but now they merely
tire us,
until we slowly resign
ourselves
to our organs.

We'd be better
to be worse.

I used to find freckles
and write them down.

Now that I weather
like wood,
I find I prefer
weathered wood.

I should be surprised,
but I don't do that anymore.

When the full glint of doubting
came by
this morning,
I didn't hear it knock.

I was busy breathing
and counting angles
in the best air of the day.

I came to
in a cobblestone temple,
ten-foot square,
but full of things.

I found there lightbulbs,
and gnawing,
and came across
cooking,
everything but windows.

When we said our goodbyes,
something strange happened.

I couldn't feel the ground,
my feet,
my mass.

What quiet powers you have,
to turn me to bubbles,
to float me on wind.

Corsairs align
across a french horn army,
tympani cannonades
and fluting rifles.

Pennants slap proud
against whistling breezes,
while boots pack home
firmer beneath them.

Sloops slice the harbors
under sandstone towers,
and the minarets gleam
stubborn, unworried,
in the face of new ruin.

We lounged around like careless gods
in southern heat
in low-rent kitchens,
splurging and
wasting each other like money.

We suggested pale plans
to eat some food
or move to the porch,
just to keep the rhythm going.

We gorged ourselves
on yesterday's jokes
and tomorrow's deadlines,
were sleepy and sated,
back before we got grown.

You projected your voice
to the backs
of ninety theaters,
even whispered asides
to ballrooms and arcades.

It would take generations
to see your domes tower,
to call you to curtain,
our line of sight
at last
unobstructed:

You crafting your
cantilevers,
you setting the stage.

After you left
it was quiet.

I turned off the
air conditioning
to keep your breaths around,

made tea to smell you,

found the poems
I was reading
too dull for words,

saw you
in oak stains
in bedposts
the rest of the day.

A splotch on a map,

spilled ink

that spreads and microbizes

past false edges,

infects other blots,

until we're all stained

with each other

and ourselves,

surprised

horrified

delighted

that we can grow

even inkier.

Here the flags are made of stone.

The mossy British god holds vigil
from a humbled candle spire,
and the old kit bags,
one by one,
are unpacked.

Grass untrammeled
Lines unbroken
Liquid living spouting life,
reflecting something
more gray than red.

We are each our own cenotaphs,
having lost you,
lost us.

How do we give it all back to you,
you castoff children of hell?

We only know to give it
to ourselves,
and to carve you like Pharaohs
for a while
for a while.

they came to prove us their blood
and left their exhibits
like caulk
in the cracks of Paris,
soaked the Seine
with their evidence,
took their turn
to blast Bastille
with chanting cannons,
'we're still here.
we're still here.'

we lack the liver
to filter the past
and so, call healthy diet
the avoidance of facts,
fats, bile,
and meat.

it is precisely here
we drown algerians.

"It finally got to her that Buenos Aires
was her own private prison.
That's when she decided to run away.
She went to Montevideo
and got a job singing in a nightclub,
started divorce proceedings,
and met a man.

Amado Mio."

If I insist on writing poems about movies,
I'm gonna have to find some
with worse scripts.

when the bad things come
i starve them,
when good passes through
i launder the linens.

the cornets blow
and i brave up straighter,
the weather knocks, i put on
clothes.

i pay all the debts that make it back to me,
and the chores get done
eventually.

but as a friend
to a startled, starving anchor,
or as a citizen
of a chronic coughing country

i have no clue
just what to do.

Like a hound sniffing,
a boy groping,
ivy climbing,
we hover cursors
over choices
of things we wonder
if we'd like.

She's gold
with a heart of a ******,
laughing off-key
at you laughing on-key.

Future temples
will make her prettier
in their statues,
will stain the wrong glass
in all the wrong ways,

and it is just then
when the truth that she brought us
will begin to be forgotten.

novels are rocks
to be kicked and chipped,
impress that they remain.

poems accumulate
like ash,
are made to breeze away.

you swam sleepy by
in the sweaty spring air,
drunk on pollen
and nowhere-to-be.

a few speedy flutters
like sharing a secret,
you went on your way
to porches unseen.

An army
conscripted
from neighborly realms,
mismatched
but straightbacked
in clumsy formation,
armed to the spine
with the strange words
of fiendish friends,
an occupying force
of Sunday afternoons.

They've come to make war
on our boredom.
They've come to free us our time.
They will marry the sons of our
doubting
and build new nations
atop the chipped marble
within.

How do you end the future?

Palimpsests
of first footsteppers.
Old starships
and kidnapped daughters.

For forty years we've watched
the screens of lower stars,
their clean floors
and hateless dilemmas,
taking tours of the best of us.

Our problems,
their past,
left lightyears behind.

And the next generation
is always always next,
like planets first federated,
like first contact at last,
a speech undelivered.

An ending that satisfies
may just well be
where no man has gone before.

People say
they love the smell of books.

I'm not sure if I do,
but I recognize it,
and I sniff at every one,
furtively,
a bit afraid someone will see me,
wanting new friends.

I wonder if some books
have a thing for thumbs.

I try to capture
which one glimmers
but I'm always
a sequin behind.

......

I followed you from table to table
like a kitestring unbound.
You seemed to soar, to dip,
to rocket,
flirting earth and heaven
like a half-fallen angel.

Then the night blew out
and you stalled atop it,
and like dew,
glistened down
gently upon me.

......

Tiny shiny paper
on the dress
on the floor,
waterfalling
quicksilver
from the night before.

I wake to ask you
which one glimmers
but the dress
has somewhere gone.

I close my eyes
to dizzy shimmers
chase them ever
on and on.

Feel free
my friend
to let your eyes sparkle
upon the one
you love.

But keep in mind
there is such a thing
as too many orchids.

Sunlight may
disinfect,
but it's only just after
the night is over,
that the air
feels truly
clean.

They call this a 'lesser work.'

How do you write a poem about a poem?

Why write poems at all
now that Fred Astaire has danced?

I'm in over my head
giddy dizzy diving downward.

Rhythm meter grace and beauty
Ginger Rita Cyd and Judy.

I really do think
that this might be
the prettiest thing
I've ever seen

which means

this can't be much of a poem.

Do not soothe the pain.
Do not kiss the pain.
Do not bribe the pain.
Do not take the pain.

Don't argue with the pain,
the pain talks too loud
for civilized discourse.

The pain refuses
all rules of order.

Do not explain the pain
lack of water.
Do not name the pain constricted
blood vessels.
This is too humane
for the thing we call
the pain.

If you should begin
to consider
making the pain a guest,
remember the pain did not knock
and leaves wet towels on your body.

Never ever ever
write poems about the pain.

It is
generally advisable
to avoid
making pro and con lists
about the pain.

Whatever you do,
do not pray for the pain.

The pain has no soul.
The pain cannot be saved.

No.
As a godfearing citizen
of a blameless county,
it is your solemn duty
and right
to
****
****
**** the pain.

Edward G. Robinson,
in an apron.

Let us not forget this man,
this onetime massacrist,
now a nervous painter,
now a lonely cashier.

Fritz fries the city
in chiaroscuro rain,
and Little Caesar
offers us a tattered
umbrella.

His hurt face
his hurting-face,
are barely distinct,
a furrowed brow
a sparking heart.

They've come to remind us,
that artists are heroes
and stupid in love.

Cautious on a couch
we made mild plans
to go to the store
just to come back to bed.

Oh! Thank you!
thankyouthankyouthankyou.

Thanks.
Thank you.

That's nice, thank you.

Oh wow! Thanks!

Thank you. Thank you.
I appreciate that.

Hey, thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you.

Thank you.

Cats could walk tightropes,
but they'd never think
to brag.
They rather hunger.

We may blood better
but pretend we don't.

Instead
we love cats
and people keeping balance,
love purring over pork
and going 'ooohh.'

Like a tax return,
once or twice a day,
I wondered
when you'd get here,

thought about ways
of making you
spent.

i make a list of things to do,
then go back to sleep.

i wander my porch to pieces,
counting all my coffees
until my teeth go tight.

i cover my ears with the altos of experts,
then argue with myself
for a while.

i write a poem.
i take a shower.
i eat a food.
i kiss a cat.

about then, i feel content
and start to wonder
whatever happened
to that list.

little tiny pretty thing
pulling at my mustache.

i can't bring myself
to make you
stop.

my face goes numb
and i giggle like a baby.

of all the people i know,
i still fascinate
only you.

Two inches,
you frighten me
and
make me swoon.

I'm at a loss
to know the difference.

I can't tell you why.
I don't know why.
You're living just as well as I,

but baby mouse,
I'm sorry,
you're going to have to go.

The sweat on Sydney Poitier's brow
might just save us all.

How dare he
sell us our own souls
with so sweet a tenor.

Anne so sleepy
so tired of gritting.
Her lungs pulsing
for a decade or three.
Only she could kind enough,
to grant the night off.

Quincy moans and mourns,
but won't pick a side.

Switchboards tie us to each other,
like saxophones,
eventually.

This movie's about suicide.
Telly Savalas stood stone in the wings.

And I guess,
if we're going to just quit,
it's right that
Kojak should be there,

scowling on a sucker,
to call the time of death.

sometimes in the shower
i heat the water
until it scalds and suffocates.

a few minutes later
i acclimate,
and do it again

and again

until the whole house
is hazy
with steam,
until you screech
like a teakettle.

then pink and raw,
more sweat than soap,
i grow dizzy and breathless

turn you off

let the recycled air
cool me like mint.

i walk around the rest of the day
with new skin,
glutted and brave,
radiating heat and blood.

*

so, i guess,

my darling,

for me,

eating you out,

is something like that.

your armory of sneers
is like the statues in the alcoves
of notre dame.

sure, they're all different,
but people only notice
one or two.

I scan the room for smiles
like radar pings,

homing in on
easy love.

After five minutes
of pleasant conversation,
or twenty
of clenched teeth,

I grant myself a cigarette
and the stolen secrets
of a stranger's back porch.

There's always some other snake there,
and I remember to,
next time,
not wait so long.

I pelt you with puns
while studying slate.
Insult all your friends
til you bellow and trill.

Clumsy and desperate,
I break taboos,
like a ***** boy
testing new squeezes.

It's just that
when I make you laugh,
I can risk to see.

Like a solar eclipse
I can meet your eyes,
in those brief brutal breaths
where I made Light snort.

Thunder, it soothes me,
and quiet disrupts.

Must I always argue with everything?

people are wearing masks
to keep each other safe.

and i thought 'how sweet,'
and 'of course.'

It's nice to know,
that while i've grown duller,
the stuff inside of me
is still bright-red.

"It must have been hard for your mother,
not having any children."
Ann Lowell.

You have to admire
these people,
so ready to love the worst in
themselves.

Remember when we were all legs,
all pomade,
all grayscale and bright,
when our joy was only getting bigger?

Yeah,
me neither

and I think I prefer
being bored
with our color.

It's a nice place to spend the afternoon though.
It's beginning to be a habit
with me.

you called me an angry thing,
said i blamed the leaves for falling
and noticed you less.

i loudly disagreed.

but as i watch you call for cabs,
scratch your ear,
and pack your books,

i miss the angry thing
i used to be.