When I met you, you were day-sleeping in somebody else's car
and running around scrapping all night.

With your shaggy hair and that roll of your shoulders,
you made me jelly-kneed right from the start.

Sunny, you kept your loneliness hidden from your running buddies,
your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars in the Texas night.

I kept you coming back by feeding you, like some Italian mother
with a full pantry and a real bad crush. Come onna my house, birichino.

You had nothing, expected nothing, and were fearless, so fearless,
but when I fussed over some new cut you turned boneless as butter.

When I drank you turned to a rumor, gone like smoke, hating the stuff
yourself, and somehow above it. You made me want to kick loose of it, like you.

How did I charm you into staying, my gorgeous one?
How did we teach other what love was, with your silence and my words?

Til the day I die I know my heart is full of you, and all that you gave me.
I held you in my arms as you gasped and ran free, in the black hour of your end.

Oh, I learned to care again, about life, about myself, about it all,
but it took a long terrible while. and it was the hardest thing I have ever done.

Girls always fell for you like autumn leaves, light as sighs, stars of a moment.
I know how lucky I was to be the one you gave your heart to.

It's been thirty-two years and I still say your name and picture your face
every day. Even the angels won't be able to tame you--I won't let them.

Wait for me. When my hours are over I will find you. I will come running.
_

I was young once, living on hope and ten dollars
in an upstairs flat in Royal Oak, Michigan.

I used to eat at The Busy Oak, where junkies and drunks lived in the weird apartments on the second and third floors.
I went to the movies at The Washington.

I remember buying a jacket at Joe's Army Navy Surplus,
and a bright red scarf at some corner boutique where 80s chic was so thick that it made this ordinary girl feel out of place.

The sky was a brilliant September blue that day,
and I was on my last fine free days of being semi-employed,
an art I had perfected all through my twenties...

I needed time to read Vonnegut and Tolstoy,
and to go see Far From The Madding Crowd and Desert Hearts.

Late that afternoon I sat on the wood floor of my little place,
listening to Joni sing I Had A King, while I read the album jacket and my dog slept in the only chair.

My door was open, as if to let the future in;
I was getting sober and I was getting older.

Who knew then that I would shortly get a real job, a car,
and marry some other damaged soul?

Who knew that the Busy Oak would become trendy stores for out of towners,
or that The Washington would become a stage theater?

Who knew that I would ride by those places every day, a couple of decades later,
having divorced, come out, come clean,

Or that I would still listen to Joni sing about kings and seagulls,
and still wear a red scarf against the chill?

Not me,
whoever I was,
waving to her future self
going by on the street like a ghost begun
but not yet walking the earth.
_

Back in bus-and-duffel days
turned out, less to than away,
half-high, with no plan,
I went up the coast.

San Luis Obispo, Carmel, San Fran
and on up to Portland.
That's where we go now
--people my age--
but this was then
when I had no means, no ways,
and just my naivete.

Out in the water, somebody said
to watch for the whales.
They live in the dark underneath,
and like me, come up, then back down
without learning a thing or so it seemed.

On the bus some guy liked
Gordon Lightfoot
"You've Been Talking In Your Sleep."
He spoke my language like a native
better than the pidgin kid that was me.

He told me a blue whale's heart
weighs as much as a grand piano
and can be heard from two miles away.
Bye daddy, behind me down the coast--
thanks for kicking me out.

I wondered, as Seattle became B.C.,
what if it's all just big empty water,
and me lugging some big booming beater for nothing?
Or what if I'm all ears
but the watersong was never for me?
What then?
And what now?

I look out these days not at California coast
but at Michigan lakes,
cold and deep, choppy or still.
I know only that I still don't know
and never will.

When I was younger,
I washed lettuce heads in cold water.
I would set them on my cutting board, gently,
as if my hands hummed with lullabies.

I lifted tomatoes from their cardboard carton beds
and lined them in a row like nursery babies,
my starched jacket always white and clean.

I knew romaine and bibb,
beefsteak and cherry.
I kept my hair tied back, my nails short,
the right knife sharp and at the ready.

I didn't know, then
that lovers remember the wine, not the greens;
the sugar, not the side plate.

I wish you were here to kiss my hands
with their swollen knuckles and cut scars.
What was I doing with my tenderness
when I had someone who wanted it?

When I was younger,
I had a paying job, a small talent,
and a driver with a dolly at the back door
coming every day to keep my walk-in cooler stocked.

I thought that was bounty.
I thought there was no harm in staying on through another fall,
never considering that what I made was not mine,
Or that someone else was paying for it all.
_

swallow builds its nest
from objects it can gather
steal lipstick, why pay?

I asked the Unabomber
if he had ever been in love.

You know--before Montana--
before wandering the unforgiving winter woods
holding a frozen tulip
and a rolled up poem
nestled inside a pipe as if you were a minstrel.

I asked him
if anyone had ever inhabited
the slow-cooking smoker
of his heart.
Was there ever the very emblem
of desirability
in the formula of anyone's eyes?

In your Harvard classes
full of second-week quitters
and callow
nattering plebes
was there never any elevated romantic
who might have solved for the
impossible equation
of your isolation and your need?

Oh Teddy,
you coward,
you murderous nutjob,
if the one whose heart could have stopped you
were to speak at last to your wobbling soul,
could you still be fixed
even now,
or are you already ******?

Perhaps my question itself
is like postage on a parcel
that can carry your remainder
softly out of shame
or suddenly into Hell?

Lies looking for girls to tell them
gather in groups--
little ions looking for a charge.

Girls grow up greedy to spout the wildest stuff
about each other
or boys
or you.

Girls spend hours in front of mirrors
telling lie upon lie.
I'm ugly/ I'm pretty/ that's enough/ never enough.

Girls grow and haul a whole hope chest stuffed with lies
behind them to college,
to the altar,
to the nursery.

Lies looking for girls to tell them are never lonely for long.
Diogenes ran a girls' school until he lost his mind.
The students lied and said he went sailing.

Sit with me. Talk.
Our mothers did the best they could.
We'll always be like sisters.
This tea is good.

Lies looking for girls to tell them
don't stop when friends go home.
They circle when you're
anxious
afraid
alone.

At sunset I shake all my gathered lies from my apron to the sky,
and when they work together,
oh my
how the feathers fly.

Verse

See the crone that comes
through the thorn-walk and the breaks,
with a ribbon for the coffin key
and a dead-scroll curled with snakes,

she will never die.
she will never die.
roll her bones through the catacombs--
she hasn't the grace to die.

Inverse

My eyes were tired, so I set them soft
in the cotton-bedded heart of a pale red box;
deep under the earth with the coldsong quick,
was nothing--and nothing--I reveled in it.

Verse

Hear the crone who lies
with a dead tongue, poison-sweet,
words chopped blind with a kitchen knife
tourniquet-wrapped and awfully neat.

her teeth in the flesh
her teeth in the flesh
slips gangrene dreams through the finest screens
making rot-milk sold as fresh.

Inverse

My soul was sick, so I intertwined
its feminine face with androgyne,
to speak itself twice in a language of thorns
to bleed--to bear--where vermilion's born.

Verse

Bury the crone who's filled
with a paste of hate in her hollow bones,
a candle kept in the bag of her gut
to wax the devil a hag-head stone.

she will never die.
she will never die.
resurrected, insane, infected,
she hasn't the grace to die.
__

sky,
earth, sky,
never try
piloting prop
when you're sad and high.
last night i dreamed that i
cleared my head, got out of bed,
and walked down the wing to kiss you.
never take random pills with warm wine--
sky, earth, sky, fall, roll, rise, you, us, i.

Hearing from you is like being operated on
by a blind doctor
trained in church
by the deaf dead.

The crickets have come
to sing summer out,

smooth black invisible chirring
like planets spinning.

I have fed the little rat
who tips the tray--

each of us awake in differing skins,
on a yellow-leaf evening

under white stars.

The restaurant was a Chinese box.
My order was wrong,
then right,
then wrong again.

The waiters were men,
then women,
then men.

You were angry with me,
then not;
then you weren't you, or at least,
didn't seem to be.

An alchemist came and turned the soup to stone,
the stone to a poem,
together to alone,
despite all assurances printed on the menu card.

Lunch for 2.
Dinner for 4.
In your hand an apple,
then nothing; then a core.

I said, "My love...my love...my love...my love...."
as I dug with my fingers all the way through the world,
to find a hard queen, a woman dissolved
in your eye looking back saying, "Now what, girl?"

I see where David Berkowitz got Jesus in prison
like they always do.
Now he runs a ministry, adept as he always was
at delivering
succinct
sermonettes
delivering people to God.

He was a postal clerk, always involved
with the Message.
Such converts have a carnival of explanations--
the devil
the neighbor's dog
and other invented booshwah.

Susan Atkins got Jesus in prison too
and wrote a memoir
about her redemption, her will turned over
from Charlie
to Christ
but it could have been Moonies or Ekankar.

There is a rat who lives in my garage.
He hasn't heard the Good News
but he never
hurts anyone.
He has published no book, leads no prayers.

He likes to hang out behind the shovel
that has never dug a grave.

The authorities let Leslie Van Houton, Caril Ann Fugate,
and Nathan Leopold out.
Karla Homolka changed her name and might be anywhere,
at services maybe,
holding a bible and smiling.
___

My mother used to say
"You'll fall and break your neck,"
with uncharacteristic hope in her voice
like gilt edging on a pendant.

It made me want to fall and break my neck
just to please her.

It made me want to hold on vicious hard
just to vex her--
to get down and dance like a Hottentot
around a *** of missionary stew.

So, last night I was up on a ladder hanging a picture.
I had little nails in my mouth,
a big old honking hammer in my hand,
and my foot on a banana peel.

Yep.
Fell and broke my neck.
Who's gonna feed my dog?

It was off to the nursing home for me
where I couldn't feel my *** or my broken bones.
Cantcha hear me knocking, I'd sing/scream
from behind the edges of my teeth
like a tornado in a jar.

I wanted to ask all the nurses personal questions.
I wanted to wheel down the hall like the runaway Number Nine,
making train noises and peeing in a bag.

These beautiful dreams that ne'er can be,
Roses forever left unbloomed;
How melancholy the dubious hour
When Desire's crimson comes to ruin...

Ah, what ****!
Somebody else will get my apartment,
After I circumvented the waiting list
By finding out who I had to kiss.

My mother used to say,
"You'll break your neck,"
And the ***** was right.

I returned to my body in an access of spite,
with my stupid neck at ninety degrees
and I was back! Just like that!
Happy Mother's Day, Frosty,
From your darling young, your serpent's tongue
falling hell-for-breakfast beyond your grasp.

Mariana in the morning
by Morning's light possessed
all afternoon she walks the cliff's edge
trying to forget.

Mariana by the window
in a yellow aster smock
She knows November brings the end
of all your foolish talk.

And the mermaids come to die
on her lonely rocky shore
they ask her for her anodyne
then ask for nothing more.

Mariana, bride of Sorrow
in Sorrow's cottage kept
She counts the coins the stars deliver
and medicates the debt.

Mariana, in her silence
braids the horses' tails
She knows November brings the ostler
with his shoes and nails.

And the mermaids come to die
on her lonely rocky shore
asking for her anodyne
then asking nothing more.

Well ducks, it was the place to gather in those days.
There were ceiling fans that made one think
that Baron Von Richtofen might fly in at any moment.
I wondered whether a man wearing coveralls had to climb
up on a ladder each morning
to heave the blades into motion.

They served a concoction of fruit, gin, crushed ice,
the low notes from Hernando's Hideaway, and who knew
what else. It tasted like children's party punch
but made our high perches start to  pitch
on the rough seas beneath our jelly legs.

Down some white stone stairs, there was a blue pond
someone had stocked with mallards, as green and gold
as my jewelry. They were free to fly
but could never leave--the desert
would have turned them to cardboard.

We slept with scorpion nets. One night I dreamt
that a handsome man in a uniform of water lay with me,
told me my hair was good rope from India, and
that I had been a snake charmer
in a previous life. He kissed me and it stung.

Ah, love, there you are looking at me through your new
telescope, your young face behind the lens like an egg.
I gave up gin, and traveling, and most other things long ago.
Now I'm talking to you with my bird beak,
free to choose but forbidden to leave

except via packing box, to be sent by air mail over the dunes
to the oasis bar, c/o my younger self, cash on delivery, payable
in florins, code phrase "wing walker." The Baron will be there waiting.
___

There are ways and then there are ways--
yours put foreign powers on DefCon 5
out of pure jealousy.

Night shift at the factory is enough to melt skulls,
reverse the flow of hearts, turn bones to industrial byproduct
out of sheer boredom.
I loved you wearing jeans and safety goggles,
better than gown and pearls any day.

We took a picnic lunch to the city park,
and set our eyes to floating on the gray waters of the
flammable, compromised river that cuts through it.
"This is fun," we lied,
and fed bread to a one-eyed pigeon
who kept missing with his first peck.

The customs agents had stopped me the time before;
they searched my emphysemic, cookie-cutter *******
right down to the wheel wells.
Holding up my rubber boots, one of them asked,
"Do you work at the plant?"
Well, what do you think, *******? What do you think?
So you got even with them for me the next time--
you, fluent in Russian, Romanian and doubletalk
pretended not to understand the agent's fractured schoolroom parlance,
and mumbled until he let you through just to be rid of you.

How crazy that you should be Catholic--
I've never seen a craftier shoplifter.
Each time the grid went down, I kissed you for your pilfered candles,
your flashlight, your ****** little radio that kept us informed
as I buried my face in your sweetness like an irradiant.

There are ways and then there are ways,
and yours are the finest ever to grace my ******* box apartment
that I had to be on a waiting list for years, to get.
Everything is always in short supply--
once, you backed me through a rope of yellow hazard tape
and right into a defective forklift
with a kiss, on work time.
My shoe soles picked up God knows what from the filthy floor,
but my heart was happy
as the assembly lines rattled behind us.

There is plenty everywhere that can poison a person,
or sow cancer seeds that will explode later on.
We gave that year of our lives to the production of jugs of kitchen cleanser,
since banned.
Everyone who worked there had red hands and brittle nails,
despite the gloves, despite the icons some of us prayed to.
Oh well.
I was happy,
and even though you left just as it all seemed so good,
that year was pure, flawless, redeeming even,
like love can be sometimes,
and as your ways definitely were, and still are,
in some other woman's bed
in another town,
where you mumble into her ear in Romanian
and she holds you closer
for all the good such motions ever do.

My lost friend
is dreaming now of moon-silvered streets
and the lawns in tones of blue and green
like peacocks in repose
Is your lover, my lost friend
one of those?

My lost friend
has disguised herself in the ivy vines
twining around the garden stones
where the gray cats sleep
Is your lover, my lost friend
one of these?

My lost friend
wraps her heart in fox fur red and black
and waits in the dawn for the light to come back
across the lawns in morning mist
Is your lover, my lost friend
coming back to you like this?

The conspicuous Christians
fill four booths and keep the waitress hopping.

12 adults
5 young children needing high chairs in the aisle
17 orders, all different
5 special requests
2 plates sent back
1 spilled coffee
separate checks, please.

after an hour, they leave
dishes, napkins, crayons, sticky syrup spots,
straws, spoons, forks,
and
1 tract
with
2 crisp 1 dollar bills tucked neatly inside.

Teacher says that every time a bell rings
she is awakened in the night and lies there
remembering the bay at San Sebastian.

The stars in the sky there are local,
drifting up from modest houses in Loiola.
They are as close as cats on a sill
and are able to both warm and wound.

Teacher says that when her heart beats,
she cannot sleep, recalling the day of drums--
the Tamborrada, and the clouds that gathered
in search of their pilfered thunder.

During the Aste Nagusia, or Big Week.
La Concha Bay is home to stilt walkers wearing
huge papier mâché heads. The calm waters
are like mothers who knew these giants as babies.

Teacher says that there was a man there,
or a woman, or an enchantment she cannot describe.
Perhaps all three, a trinity born of sangria, celebration,
and one bell beneath the drumbeat, a ringing bird.

On these recent nights, far from the Basque country,
she is startled by her doppelganger lying awake beside her.
The lesson she cannot teach is that neither knew of the other,
though the invitation was always there, a tongue in the bell,

Like an arrow in the flesh of a saint or an invitation
to La Concha Bay, and the days to be lived beyond it.

There is a thing I wanted so much--
a thing always denied.
The evil and the angelic made a pact

and placed this desire in my heart
like a ticket hidden in a boot
worn by someone desperate in a station.

I tell people this desire is over--
that I visit its grave on holy days
to leave woven weeds,

but there is no grave because it is not dead--
only paralyzed like an aster when there is no wind,
no sun, no moon, no garden.

There is someone coming up the stairs
to hurt my heart, and they are so lit with beauty,
such an ordinary marvel.

The hallway floor is wood, the light there yellow in autumn.
It is morning, but the birds are mute.
My heart stops, the visitor walks past, the world ends,

but no one notices. There is no fool like an old fool,
no desire that cannot exalt or destroy,
over and over, in silence, like Shiva in a recurring dream.

Dear Katie,
                  please pardon the confusion--
mine,
yours,
the weather's.

In group they wanted us to talk about
someone who really loves us.
I started to laugh
                            like slipping on ice
I couldn't wave myself fast enough
                            to save a fall
and the laughing became an ugly cry.

They like us to do things with our hands here
so I made
                a love potion for you.
Yeah, too late. like checking a smoking oven.
But,
       I can still portion by intuition
like how much to kiss you in the morning.

I used
a pinch of rust from a love lock
the memory of five black tulips
and 1 tsp essence of caramel fudge ice cream--
       Jeff Buckley ballads to taste
        baked at 350 until the moon turns silver like your poetry.

Gosh Katie,
                   they took away my books,
said I needed to engage with others.
I went back to group today and said, whoa, back up--
let's do that thing
                              from yesterday.
I pulled my **** together this time, not like before,
and I said,
                Katie mon amour
                 Katie je t'aime je t'aime, je t'aime.
This one ***** goes, you're not French,
you're not even Canadian you ******* freak

But she never stumbled drunk up the stairs with you,
poetry ringing in our ears and the summer night on our skin.
More to be pitied than scorned,
                                                    I can hear you say.
Anyway,
              love ya girl
Katie mon amour,
              Our Lady of Tulips and the Silver Moon.

The muscle cars have aged out
of high school hamburger stands
and live in landfills
or junkyards

but some survive.
The codger across the street in the end house
keeps his in pristine condition,
replacing its parts, babying its body

in ways he can't do for himself.
I see him rolling out down the street,
into youth,
joy,
music,
health,

until he rounds the corner
and disappears.

Oriental Bittersweet,
her arms full of swans
never meant, no really never
meant you any harm.

Oriental Bittersweet
cuts her body with a blade
and never sees, no never really
sees the mess she's made.

Oriental Bittersweet
has horse blanket hair--
blacktop eyes and blackstrap tongue
and promises she cares.

Oriental Bittersweet
knows EMT's by name--
she'll take you with her, with her taken
here she comes again.

Take an hour from the morning,
pick a peach from the pile;
one kiss from the courtship,
one foot from the mile--

Eve took an apple, said it wasn't very much.
Eve took an apple, said thank you very much;
now I know how it goes
and see how it is--
He just don't like me taking anything of His.

Take an hour from the night,
won't get it back soon;
poison in the peach pit,
crazy in the moon.

Eve took an apple from a serpent in a tree.
Serpent had an angle, that's some geometry.
Eve ate the fruit,
tossed away the core--
if you want to see some skin, that'll cost a little more.

Take a peach from the pile
and the whole stack roll;
make you pay forever for the hour that you stole.
One kiss more, one kiss less,
stay for the dance
then take back the dress.

Eve tried the cider that she got from the well.
If Adam gonna watch, then she make him wear a bell.
Snake bit the man,
bird caught the snake--
cat catch the bird and give a little shake.

Take a dime on the dollar
and a foot for the mile;
get a little somepin somepin
just for a while.

Eve take an hour from the hourglass round,
Eve leave Eden say I'll see you around.
Adam write the book
with a broad brush black--
write all you want, but it won't bring her back.
_

Emmeline by dawn light
borrows roses from your bed
Emmeline by moonlight
brings back petit fours instead.

Italy had its masters
who loved Emmeline with their oils
touched by God in Trinity
and Emmeline in trefoils.

Emmeline in summer
reads your letters until the fall
then she wades into the water
to the boatmen's barcarolle.

Our mutual friend
had told you
how I used to be Queen of a very small tribe.

"It seems almost..." I said, hesitating.
"Like it really happened?" he asked.

"It did happen. But now
things are so different that it seems
ridiculous."

I sat there,
shot full of arrows like Saint Sebastian--
like him, not dying
but split and empty like a dead pew.

There are more gospels than they let on, you know.
This man loaned me two records--
Joni Mitchell
and It's a Beautiful Day.

Like poetry, it was love for life for me--
Hot Summer Day and Sweet Fire.

I left Illinois not long after
to Gypsy it in a small car with two teachers
off for the summer.

We read Richard Brautigan,
and wandered the bars in New Orleans, then Galveston
where I left both my crown and my grave in a coin laundry
on a Sunday morning.

"I remember Coyoacan," Jay told the interviewer,
sitting under mahogany-and-cane fan blades on the veranda.
Leaning back, legs crossed,
He smiled easily and added,
"He didn't believe in me, Trotsky. Too bad.

"The palms were dripping that day, but the rain had let up.
Mercader set his raincoat on the table
with the ice axe under it.
Trotsky was reading.
When he looked down, Mercader withdrew his weapon,
swung and sculpted a new Winter into Trotsky's mind."

Jay shrugged, as if to say what can you do?
"The guards rushed in and beat that man like a pinata.
Each fist was an eloquent argument,
each kick a blow for the worker."
He waved His hand dismissively.
"It was too late of course. Mexico is devout, but unforgiving.

"Trotsky knew he was dying, and said so.
An aide brought a basin for any final ideas,
and someone put on a phonograph record of Russian dances.
Across the room, Trotsky could see where Death had scrawled
'Te veo pronto'
on the mirror above the sink in red lipstick.

"He never asked for me, and died the next day."
The interviewer followed Jay's gaze to the flower garden--
dahlias, the Mexican national bloom.
"The Aztecs used to eat them," he told the interviewer.
The scribe wrote this down on his pad from the hotel,
with "Bienvenida a Coyoacan"
in bold script across the top like a leaflet or a prayer card.

Ooga booga darling.
It's me, sunflower face
the fox-hearted misdirected letter of your dreams.

I live in the space between the walls.
I play Candyland with brain-injured devils
for a *** of chilly blue dawns.

I raid your fridge while you dream of dolphins.
I tip toe around your place, judging the art,
boiling the pasta, making a mess.

That's me saying "love me" from the heat vents.
That's my voice on the tv during your ballgame,
making you ***** with the settings.

Give in, please. I haven't got all day.
Once, I was an Egyptian queen.
Once I was a Dutch laundress.
Now I live inside your Jiffy-Pop, getting hot, expanding suddenly.

It's me, sunflower face,
the fox-hearted misdirected letter of your dreams.
You'll wake up in love with me.

You'll wake up as a black horse wearing a feather plume.
You'll wake up to find me in bed next to you, staring.
I've put my stamp, my kiss, my spell on you.

Easy my high-stepping Friesian, shh shh...
It's all right, I'm a specter and I've got the cure
for all your missteps, I'm an oval track, fresh spring clover,

a pinch of salt, and a lot of black cat!

I can't recall what this place was like
before the renovations.
There were difficulties--
bombings, whatnot,
and the removal to the madhouse of the construction foreman.

Blueprints are lovely, don't you think?
Smooth and blue as calm seas.
Birth, though, that's a ****** messy business--
the screaming gobsmacked arrival
held up in the hands of the midwife who never cuts her nails.

It's not so much that I love this place as that I was presented with it.
I woke in these rooms
with the hammering already in progress.
I long for waterfalls and love,
but have skin like bricks, and hair like shingles.

People say, make it beautiful, you can do it!
Be your own fetch, a siren of the flooded basement,
luring yourself with your own song.
Make it your home away from home as drowning sailors do,
find the bright side of blistering paint and warped floors like heavy seas.

All right then. I have tattooed the name Rán
on my arm, see it when I hold you.
We are limited only by burst plumbing, crumbling rebar,
and our own imaginations.
We are castaways keeping our heads above water
in our Rubik's Cube Winchester House
of gorgeous possibility.

Oh your friends call you Lily Paloma
but that's not the way that you are
It's too much of a gentle misnomer
for a shooting star
                                                 --Al Stewart
It's not the way it looks
the moon in the sky
your face in the mirror
the thing that was done or not done.

It's not the way it looks
the moon, lonesome rock out in space
ask the fascinated tide
about the gravity of lit soul

It's not the way it looks
your face in the mirror so lined
ask the devils, those angels that free you
from a birdcage of bones

The mirror limits vison
the moon limits sense
and everything you are or are not
will, in time, incandesce.

I'm trying to finish this famous contemporary poet's
fourth collection, which groans under the weight of
all the glowing blurbs on the back cover.

The famous contemporary poet avoids rhyme as if
it was a downed wire and finds form too restrictive--
hangs her skelly on a hook when she composes.

The famous contemporary poet writes a few poems,
carefully packed in vignettes, snapshots, and musings,
all the excelsior found in any packing crate.

In high school I had an acquaintance, this guy.
He'd toss out something cryptic and then wait
like he'd flipped you a Rubik's Cube.

Everything out of his mouth was a test and he'd give
you this bright smirk, like can you figure it out and
get to where I am, up here?

I would like to meet the famous contemporary poet
and show her one of mine, plain as the flat of my hand
when it breaks her nose and the blood comes.

I am trying to finish the famous contemporary poet's
fourth collection even though it's like watching a movie
with muddy sound, in dialect, no captions.

Look, friend Jane, for a wishing star
stuck in the sky like a dime in tar;
Tell that star what you won't tell mother,
tell what we tell, only to each other.

Wish star,
wish star,
Imhotep and Ishtar,
Nile crocodile keep this secret safe!

Oh, friend Jane, tell me what did you wish?
swear on a little finger, seal with a kiss;
meetcha by the rail fence, meetcha by the moon,
mother make the evil eye when she sees you.

Wish star,
wish star,
Imhotep and Ishtar,
Nile Crocodile keep this secret safe!

Now, friend Jane, I know what you said,
mother's at the bottom of the stairs stone dead;
moon on the pond water, stars in the sky,
mother's eyes are open but she's blind, Jane, blind.

When a detective falls in love, he does not know who to bill for expenses--
everything is up in the air.

At a mixer for suspects, he invites me to dance via loudspeaker.
Radiant in my white dress, I resemble a snowy owl
even down to my carefully bandaged hand which he takes without hesitation.
I whisper in his ear:

I am Leon Czolgosz.
Your heart is the President of the United States of America.
We are dancing in Buffalo, city by the Niagara.
My detective, of course, falls hard.

The next time we meet, I wait for him in the bullpen at the police station.
They know him there.
They hire cellists.
He confesses his deepest fantasy to me:

I want to speak words of love to you
via telephone
with our hands naked and separated only by the safety glass.
I want the call recorded
and broadcast to wild lovers around the globe.

Shortly after, we are married. I wear my favorite bearskin robe.
My small black cubs frolic nearby,
climbing the pews and then tumbling gaily down again.
My detective is resplendent in his tuxedo.
The hired band plays Funiculi Funicula.
I snarl when my detective gets too close to the cubs, and this inflames him.

At last, we lie in bed together, like busy machines come to rest.
I am wearing nothing but the revolver-shaped earrings he has given me.
My detective wears a felt fedora
and a look of smug adoration like a daredevil over the falls in a barrel.
I am The Queen of the Mist,
suspected in various thieveries, check kiting, and jaywalking.

Our love is an aviary
where birds wheel above the thundering water like intelligent confetti.
Look in your mailbox, I tell my detective.
I have left you a valentine and an Easter egg.
He asks if, after all, I am his mystery client.
I enter a plea of innocent.
My love is happy now, laughing.

zen master
drinks too much coffee
says to class
pardon me
leaves lotus, runs down the hall
but not fast enough


zen master
visits his sister
she hands him
new nephew.
our bodies are illusions
but shoulder puke real


zen master
ponders the spring rain
when stupid
car breaks down.
meditation does no good--
******* thing is ****


zen master
says souls can migrate
from body
to body.
unsightly skin condition
will end when you do


zen master
has the hots for jane
but he must
ignore this.
concentrate on breathing or
think about baseball
_

zen master
hates Shaysie girl lots
and wishes
she would stop
writing stupid shadormas
with him **** of joke

If milkmaids dance,
I haven't seen it.

That doesn't mean it doesn't happen
when I'm asleep
or dying.

If apples can be poisoned
I haven't tasted one.

That doesn't mean to trust your grocer,
lover,
or restauranteur.

Oh, you, decked in white blossoms like some ironic saint,
evangelizing my arms, my tongue, my will
like the loving dead.

I know now that I was kissing a corpse--
one heart beating for two,
pony for dray horse, dragging along.

I can't swear that I'll be smarter next time,
but I mean to be.

I 'll remember your face, your ways, your smile,
turn my head like a lady
and spit.

Espantajo,

I kissed you
but my lips knew no remedy
for you, standing cruciform
  in a desert wind.

Espantajo,

wrapped in
  cornhusk feathers,
no sky knows you.

Espantajo,

I could not move you
from your place in the night.
   For you,
all things rise in the west
sleep in the west
make love in the west
and die in the west.
   You married a northern woman
like un espirito muerto
   appearing in a photograph.

Espantajo,

Face away from my house now.
I have blue glass
   bottles sleeping
in the branches all night
   to snare spirits.

Espantajo,

The same old wind
rattles you
   and you call it talking.
Silencio, ****** scarecrow.
If you can't love,
can't move,
can't hold a woman,
   what good are you?

My gibbet is a fine and private place
where a lady may tarry of a summer afternoon
elevated and untouchable--
an ideal love just out of reach
like fruit for Tantalus, all pointless sweetness.

Allen Ginsberg appears from out of the crowd,
pink as a schoolmarm, fat as a Christmas goose
carrying his harmonium
singing about plutonium,
barefoot as any angel, toking on the Golden Blunt.

He looks up, mistaking me for a caught kite
dangling above the street in my gibbet
making other women's children
point and cry
demanding candy or weather reports.

Someone climbs up and ties tin cans
to the bottom of my gibbet
in an atmosphere of giddy holiday.
I die and begin to stink
pieces falling away like confetti.

Here I sway to this very day, high above
the Emily Dickinson Parkway
a paragon of virtue and demure reserve,
dead as hell
black as a bowling ball
ring still on my finger, an ingenue of the afterlife,

until gentrification when they'll take me down
because gibbets are out, they're upsetting,
like poetry,
like dead dodos
like buskers in the subway, beautiful, buried, irrelevant.
_

I made a thing from weeds and bark
and called the thing I made--a heart.
I wrapped it 'round with wire and twine
and crossed it, kept it--called it mine.

Love my heart, love it much
despite the rot and wasps and such
and when you're done--I'll love you back
to see what nightmares come from that.

In a nutshell, meat and wings
and infinite other disturbing things
that rise and rule with iron fist
the little nest that crowns your kiss

Curse the summer, curse the tree
that swelled such nutshells patiently
gardener saw, gardener knew
even as those nutshells grew.

I had a planet,
just a little one
but still.

it had activities--
recreational
illicit
volcanic.

from a promontory above one of its seas,
I pondered what to do with a drunken sailor
early in the morning.

I had to rent out my little planet
due to the commute.
Years passed.

When I returned and saw
what the renters had done,
I brought the flood in my righteous anger.

Things are better now,
lo these many months gone by.

I have a koi pond with native goldfish.
I sleep in until lazy o'clock
or until the stars wheel above my gingerbread cottage.

The sailor got sober, survived the flood,
and sings, "Weigh-hay and up she rises"
when I stir

both my happy ***,
and the coffee he has kindly fixed
the way he knows I like it.

I have a planet,
just a little one
but still.

I am ten crows, twenty-three starlings,
one tree, a world of racket, every dusk that ever was.

I am a holy heart four angels defend,
other times I am nothing but flesh and fingertips.

There are four seasons, three necessities,
two sides to the moon.

The window has eight panes;
I am in them all.

Zebra are seen mainly in dreams,

With licorice stripes--

And bodies of cream--



Their jewelry box hooves

Are made from the moon--

And their manes were lately

Bristles on brooms.



You can take off their heads

And fill them with clouds--

If you fill them with coins, they weigh five thousand pounds.



Lions like stars--

So they hunt in the sky--

But the zebra are hiding

Behind your closed eyes.



Zebra are seen mainly in dreams--

In the morning, they follow the sun--

When its warmth is felt, their cream bodies melt,

And then, away they run.

I feel forsaken
like a rolled newspaper in the rain.

Is that You? in the window box?
Is that You? magnificent in a woken engine?

I don't mean to be sullen,
a crushed flower with a brave yellow bloom--

I'm a vine growing in through the window
of your abandoned holy room.

Oh honey. My fingers flat upon
your smooth chest made of smoke,

I am rain falling ever further from her cloud.
Call me back---use your voice of *****-shaped leaves.

I will come, across the lawns and waters
to kneel at your feet
and sing.

A crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red
in the maple's crook she's hiding.
Her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

A carmine blaze upon her breast to mark the place she's bled
like a penitent confiding
A crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red

The purple splay of sunset now reveals a fraying thread
in her tiny breast subsiding--
her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

Beneath her injured wing, she hides her tawny head
as the sun is lower gliding
a crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red.

The summer grass, soon bereft, would take her place instead
except for circumstance dividing--
her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

The presiding night has finished; the ceremony said--
her new master toward the threshold swiftly striding.
A crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red--
her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

Some wore armor,
those freshbread women
with plums for eyes.

The River God said,
a lot of good it will do you,
then sank down
into a water lily dream.

One went to him
holding a blade made of summer.
Some say he married her
but she never came back to say.

Some wore bracelets
made of fall leaves and owl call
with sorrows lined together like dolls.

The River God said,
one is wise, five are deceitful
and none can sing, or love.
Then the water iced over until spring.

The women went to the silent edge
bearing a robe made of crows and rushes
but when he didn't appear, then or at any other time,
they gave the robe to the morning.

Some wore armor,
but most wore willows.
They were freshbread women
with plums for eyes.