Once I lost my pen.
I chewed it and chewed it during a problem
Until it was wet and made my jaw ache
And when I paused to gaze up into the air
For one last try
My hand went limp and it fell and
Rolled away

I searched for my pen
Under my desk it should have been
Spit had gathered around the sides of my mouth
And ink had stained my tongue bluey-green
It made me feel so dumb.

On my knees, where is the drenched thing?
I'm embarrassed for I was marked with its puzzlement
I still didn't know the answer to the problem,
And now I have another one.

I am always so much trouble,
but maybe I should blame the government.

They have spent their
content of simpering,
holding their lips this
and that way, winding
the lines between
their brows. Old folks
allow their bellies to jiggle like slow
tamborines.
The hollers
rise up and spill
over any way they want.
When old folks laugh, they free the world.
They turn slowly, slyly knowing
the best and the worst
of remembering.
Saliva glistens in
the corners of their mouths,
their heads wobble
on brittle necks, but
their laps
are filled with memories.
When old folks laugh, they consider the promise
of dear painless death, and generously
forgive life for happening
to them.

Don't get sad about the past,
for it is not sad about you.
It has passed - like the cars on the road
through a green traffic-light.
It has passed like the moment
where the check-out scanner goes 'beep'
and you walk away with your things.

And if Nietzsche said, that if you gaze into the abyss,
the abyss will gaze back into you,
just don't dare to look
and it will cease to exist.
It will know it's place -
to swallow, swallow itself -
up into space.
Just don't look into the past,
for it is just a stretched blackness.
That is waiting, waiting to take you back,
into the life you should have had.

Menace on my garden step
Into ocean eyes
Bathe in sullied salt
Your skin will sap a single drip
To naturalize assault

Peep through shower drapes
Onto pickened flesh
Steam in closed air
Your lips will slap a greedy thought
A sanctity left bare

Knock into soft limb
Produce a curtsied silence
Echoes of anger loom
Your hands will feed a seeded fear
That croons a tasty violence

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

In small actions there is magic
I've seen it in the eyes
Of weary men with nothing
As they look up surprised
At handed change

My teacher once told me
That one single smile
Can cross the world over
From mile after mile
And to this day I still believe her