You were very cold;
I was very mellow.
I offered you my blanket;
You let me share your pillow.

The prophets were despondent --
Our futures far adrift:
No glimpse of fated union;
No hope of such a gift.

Then on the back of Time,
Through empty realms of space,
Fled cold and weary Past --
Farewell to that disgrace!

You were very cold;
I was very mellow.
I offered you my blanket;
You let me share your pillow.

I will I will be excellent
I will be will be excellent
I will be ex- be excellent
I will be excel- excellent
I will be excellent — Again!

I will I will …

We cannot create
heaven or earth —
nor must we,
for these are given.

But waters encroach,
fish float,
beasts perish,
and humans fall prey
to darkness.

So we must write,
must write just
to let there be,
let there be light!

The salesman at the door
is looking for a need;
if he doesn't find one,
he weaponizes greed.

No need to be rude
to this simple working man
who satisfies desires
in everyone he can.

Just let him know you're happy
with everything you've got,
and he'll be on his way
to someone who's not.

Unglorified victories
are glorious yet.
No one knows
what the novice knows
as he goes from worse
to better.
The consequence is small,
of course -- too small for pros
to care to notice.
Yet every pro
is a glorified novice.

"We'll divide our time
between Living and Dead,"
they said to themself
getting out of bed.

"Today we'll die
and tomorrow we'll live."
Then they showered, got dressed,
and left for work.

She ***** the breath
from every word
and chews it up
like bubble gum.

Then, daintily,
she wraps it up
in tissue paper
for the can.

I could sell water purifiers
and do some people good
by straining out carcinogens
that might get in their blood.

I could sell encyclopedias
and help nice families out
with everything they need to know
or care to learn about.

I could sell fancy automobiles
to people moving up
so they can ride in luxury
and never have to stop.

Or I could give away these lines
to children yet unborn,
who may or may not give a ****,*
whom I will not have known.

You may be forty-five today,
          But still look twenty-one;
And even when you’re eighty-five,
          You’ll be the only one.

I live my life to hear your laugh
          And see your smiling eyes;
If I could gift wrap happiness,
          You’d get a big surprise.

Each day and week and month and year,
          My love for you goes on;
And it won’t stop no matter what,
          Not even when I’m gone.

“I’m getting another car,” said Michael.
He zipped and snapped his shorts.
He looked out at the lake.
The waves splashed up the steps.

Margaret said nothing.
He turned to her.

She sat in *******,
holding her shorts,
glaring at him.
“Another new car?”

“No, I don’t want the note.”
He looked out at the lake.
“I’m getting a used car.”
The waves rolled down the steps.

She slipped into the shorts,
lifting her ****,
pulling them up.

“Don’t worry,” said Michael.
“I’ll find one with lots of leg room.
It won’t change anything between us.”
The waves splashed up the steps.

“We’ll see,” said Margaret.

They looked out at the lake.
The waves rolled down the steps.

He fell in a hell of love with her
for art’s sake.  She was a pianist —
he thought only of what she played,
and she loved him for listening.

Soon he composed a lyric.
She laughed with such resonance,
putting his only song to shame
while ******* private melodies.

The walls were rich with hangings:
a mirror for her, a clock for him,
a portrait of a portrait —
all in good taste, for art’s sake.

They struck at all the world
expecting it to cringe
in fear of purest hatred
wrought in a name: Allah.

But Allah loves the world
and favors many names,
so Jihad She declared
on jihad in Her name.

Old man of the new South,
champion of losers,
poet of prose,
one hundred candles are not enough.

On this date born
before Adam fell,
you saw the serpent
and lived to tell.

You tell it so well
even the ding-**** bell
won’t silence your still-talking
ever-prevailing inexhaustible voice,*

as doom itself is drowned
by the sound of a civilization
gathering round
the only candle worthy of your day:

the sun.

I like trivia, trivia. Trivia’s
an important element of my work.
I have a character, for instance, named
Sylvia, in my story “Juvenilia,”
and I depict her angst by having her
recite bits of trivia to everyone
she meets. Sylvia wants to be popular,
so she learns all about anorexia --
especially famous cases like Liz
Taylor, Mama Cass, and Karen Carpenter.
I’ve created this powerful character
by reading The National Enquirer.
So there’s nothing trivial about trivia
in the hands of a great practitioner.

We’re tired of reaching for the tempered dream,
of stretching days and getting squeezed by years,
and bored with the swaggers, the pushes and shoves
of people in rushes to get somewhere,
like hogs in a slaughterhouse hoping to eat.

We’d sooner starve alone in the lively air
than follow billions to a frigid doom.
Why chase the wind when we can turn and face it?
Why measure time by the mirror in our room,
when we can follow earth, sun, stars and moon?

Despite I've seen
cold, cold eyes,
your heated suns
bring me springtime.

Forget? Regret? I’ll never do either:
We were happy for an interlude in time.
Painful it was when we left each other,
But Love’s habit of charging, as a price, pain,
Is not, ironically, so shrewd a crime
That I should regret ever having paid
For an interlude of bliss, during which
We were contented, complete, and so well-laid.
Then we knew happiness of a different sort
Than the satisfactory existence
Endured before we played Love’s part,
And now endured with time and distance.
Memories of happiness sustain Love’s force;
Let's not defile them with bitter remorse.

Melville's voyages among the South Seas
truly commenced with his treatment by pen
of those friendly tribes he cherished no less
than the not less primitive hordes at home.

But those who embarked on his ship of the sea
repudiated his ship of the mind
as it sailed for frontiers never beheld
in pursuit of the whale and immortal time.

Defective products everywhere.
I stepped on one while walking
across the grass that grows like hair,
where lovers were sitting talking

about the money they’d make
by selling defective products.
Anyway, it wasn't a snake
or a squirrel or a pair of ducks

mating, it was an escalator
coming up out of the ground
from Hell, like the old dumb-waiter
in the haunted house around

the riverbend, that used to be
run up and down in the old days,
until the Yankees came and we
each dug a few graves

for the bodies that belonged to
the souls that returned to Hades
after the war. It caught my shoe
and jammed -- ****** and defectively made.

"Don't plant a garden in the city," they say --
As if they have a right to tell me where
To sow a seed just because they've been there
And failed to soften the hard city clay.
But I admit that in this busy day
And age, Metropolis has few plots to spare.
Still, I'll plow it under, if I may dare,
And be ****** if I ever walk away.

So let me overturn the concrete lair
Of sterile waste so that children can play
In a garden cultivated with so much care
That Ceres herself would be happy to stay.
And in my season, I'll lovingly prepare
A rich little plot for my body to lay.

I wish I were close to you
as a blade of grass to earth.

Though trampelled above
or wintered frozen,

I'd deeply grow
in your warmth below.

We sat at the edge and watched the wind
and talked of things we thought about,
safe for the moment beyond the world’s stare,
secure in a love we dared to share
in spite of those who harbored doubt,
heedless of those who called love sin.

We haunted a place where ghosts depend
on outcast lovers to cheer them up,
for surely ghosts could understand
the fiery force at our command,
while they were cold, with empty cups,
as ours overflowed with life again.

But even the living succumb to true love,
and after a while, the world came to us.

The man who died
in the Bornean jungle
dropped his mind
in a nylon pack.

“Call me mad,
but here I am.
Don’t expect me
home again.”

It carefully drifted
down the river
he’d labored up
a learned explorer.

“Children -- love --
wife too ...
Mud -- bugs --
headhunters --”

He did us honor if
only because
he said what he could
from where he was.

The apple rumbled down the aisle
          and stopped beside a boot.
The groom beheld its crimson glow
          and stooped to get the fruit.

The bride could not resist a bite
          when tempted by the groom.
The juice ran down her comely face
          like nectar on a bloom.

The groom ate of the fruit as well
          in solidarity
with her with whom he vowed to share
          the knowledge from the tree.

The guests did cheer but did not hear
          the serpent's sneering hiss.
The apple soon would take its toll
          beginning with a kiss.

The flight of a bird
proclaims the possibility
of flight.

If it can fly,
so can I.

So while we're talking
let's keep walking
toward the sky.

If someone reads these lines,
I'll be surprised if I'm alive.
And if dead, at least
you’ll be alive, and perhaps
you'll be surprised
to hear a dead man laughing,
live.

Two kinds of people
are those who need somebody,
and those who need somebody
to need them.

One who needs somebody
can satisfy this need
either with someone who needs them,
or with someone who needs them
to need them.

But the need of one
who needs someone to need them
can be satisfied only by one
who needs them, and not
by someone else who needs someone
to need them.

Those who need someone to need them
can never need each other,
because it’s the need someone else
has for them they need,

and they never need anyone
for themself, but only
for that person’s need for someone
who, like themself, needs that need.

Today I launched out of Venice and trolled
the Wagon Wheel with jigs and pigs
in the cuts and pockets of the dead-end marsh
canals, caught my limit of monster bass,
came home tired, cleaned the fish and stuffed
the filets in the freezer.

Once I'd grab handfuls of earth
out the worm garden that grew in the yard,
stuff the squirming dirt in a can, pick
a cane pole from behind the shed and walk
down Orleans Avenue to the City Park
lagoons and fish till dark.

The water was black and deep then, swimming
with bream and cats and sac-au-lait, brimming
always with the possibility of a green
flash, the phenomenal churn, yank and splash
of a monster bass erupting like a green
god out of black water.

The logs in the fireplace glow hot tonight
With hisses and pops and the smell of firelight.
He lies on the rug, thinking, If she were here;
She sits on the couch, far away, though near.

The appeal of the fire no longer exists
For her, with him; she’d just as soon sit
Alone and imagine a different place,
A different fire, and a different face.

Fire is fire, he thought, sad to think
It would die by morning, when he would slink
Out alone in the daylight, distracted
By the heat of the sunlight, refracted.

Her eyes would never look at mine,
But I could never look away.
My love became too strong to hide,
And still I love her more today.

The seed I planted barely took;
It never reached the sunlight.
Then a rainstorm washed it up
To fertile soil rich and bright.

I didn't think the seed would grow
Until I saw a new green stem.
When I saw a leaf unfold,
I had to have her back again.

Finally, she looked at me —
A flower burst in love's blind view.
Though it took a while to see,
I knew then that she loved me too.

She said she wanted to be a writer;
he felt the heat of the fire —
the struck match of deja vu,
the long-unoccupied unlit room,
the dusty shelves of books and manuscripts.

He could’ve touched flame to paper;
instead, he lit a fire,
hoping she was born to be
exactly what she longed to be:
Daddy's girl forever, only better.

Those blue jays came around again today,
making such a racket they woke Jim up.
He didn’t mind, though -- he had nowhere to go
today anyway; he had nothing to do.
So he stayed in bed awhile listening
to their blue bravado and feeling alone.

He thought about how once upon a time,
he would’ve played the scarecrow, loud and mean.
But now he kind of liked their morning visits.
Today, for example, after finally
dragging his body out of bed somehow
and making himself a *** of coffee,
he pulled a chair up to the window where
he could watch and listen, silent, unseen.

Smoking and sipping, he passed a blue day
until they flew away. Then he felt sad
again for being white, earthbound, and human.

I wish I could teach you
a thing or two
but I ain’t got
a single clue
much less two.

And I wish you could teach me
to let it be
but if you do
I won’t be me
so let me be.

And I wish time would teach us
to get along
so let’s agree
that time is wrong
to take so long.

This is the day I shall be wed;
As I wait my thoughts are dead.
They lie stretched on the rack of love,
Embalmed like so many dirt-filled gloves.
And each stiff finger remembers
Nothing of the cold black embers
It used to caress with so much care,
As if each branch would lead somewhere.
But now the fingers of every thought
Cannot remember what they sought.

This is the day I shall be wed;
From my heart all fears have fled.
My heart alone is alive today,
A living, beating lump of clay,
Sustaining life with every pulse,
Incapable of feeling false.
Doubt cast out from the heart of life,
I followed my heart to find my wife.
I love her though my thoughts are still,
And when I say, "I do," I will.

He stirs,
discerns a thought and
flinches,
wrenches to see
the clock-
face

throbs
with gaping charges --
he crumples,
shivers,
swears
beneath a breath.

Then,
in time,
he concedes his plight,
sheds his cover,
and ventures into a universe
of blindness and numbness and
music

resounds
with singing forces --
and he rests there
and beholds
the harmony

fades
into the noise
of missing class.

The lawyer casts an artificial worm
along the bank of a City Park lagoon
as the sun goes down upon another day
of casting among digests and reporters
for cases to support a point of law,
and bounces the bait among submerged cover
until the unmistakable tap transmits
through her bones the signal to set the hook

and before she can think it reflex sets hard
as lawyer and fish struggle in shock against
each other, the bass running with the line,
the lawyer lost for the moment in the trial
of instinct versus passion, reason, tech,
the triumph of one predator’s success.

Dare to handle fire and burn --
It will not run away.
Dare to grasp it, it will turn
To meet you and to play.

Pet the pretty, sensuous cat;
She purrs as you approach.
As your hand descends to pat --
Claws repel your broach.

When you invade another's space,
Expecting to be loved,
Watch your back -- it's not the face
In which the knife is shoved.

Love is in the smoke
of this motel room,
never in the air.

Even the lewd life-
like performances
on the screen, where johns

turn for role models,
are cabled in through
insulated wires.

She makes a point of
smoking cigarettes
before and after

every breathless trick --
to pollute the air.
Johns never object.

I notice trees
along the highway and beyond,
tempted as I drive
to ponder each design,
to estimate its weight
in life’s green scheme,

but each lone specimen
evades me as I speed
toward unknown peripheries
of darker and darker groves
and forests and jungles,
implicating blackness
in the blur of green until,
impatiently,
I change the station
and just watch the road.

        It’s a short cut and nothing but.
        It’s nothing but a short cut.

In the tangled humps
of exposed roots I walk
among in preference to the flat
meander of concrete sidewalks,
no subtle clues
of something to do with souls
impress me now,
no metaphoric mazes come to mind
to puzzle me with riddles
of the meaning of roots,
nor do ideas or images
or intimations of immortality
surprise me with the force of things
unknown or new.

I walk among the tangled roots
only because the way is straight
and short.

        It’s just a short cut and nothing but.
        It's nothing but a short cut.

It all looked unfamiliar
and felt the same,
as if a veil had dropped
or had been raised.

Inside utter darkness
brightly shone
on rows of blank spaces
and beds of bone.

With so much of nothing
everywhere,
an air of emptiness
filled the air.

He peeked out through the mouth
(it had no eyes),
but shrinking at the sight
of two skies,

he stumbled back inside
and slept once more,
dreaming he was alive,
forevermore.

He sat in silence as she talked,
but didn't really hear her.

Afterwards he took a walk
updown frigid suburb streets,
where polished cars along the curb
slept like private birds and beasts.

So freshful was the cold night air;
so peacely was the starry sky.
He wandered far, content to be
a maginary man alive.

She sat in silence as he walked,
but didn't feely real him.

Along the path I heard the badger squeal,
stopping me in my tracks, reminding me
of an innocent time when once I rushed
to rescue this weasel from the ragged jaws
of a dogged wolf, swinging my stick, striking
the biter only to be bitten by
the badger I’d just saved from *******,
as if I were his enemy as well.

Now pain remembered engendered new fear
of the badger’s bite as I slowly drew near
the perilous piercing squeals. Then I saw him —
his paw in a trap, the trap on a chain — grim
prospect even for one so fierce and mean.
But do I dare to hope to set him free?
Or stifle mercy for security?

Loving her was like the claim
of a blade of grass to light --
from a seed in a dark, dark womb
of earth

               to the birth
of a will with one purpose:
to break ground,
to crack mountains
that block out light.

The metaphorical heart is in the head,
which is why some literal-minded fellows
have no metaphorical heart, and why,
when their literal hearts literally stop
beating, they may have died for the last time.

Even after the trying and succeeding,
after the unflagging effort, and after
the flagging effort to make another effort,
and finally, after the culmination,
we are still alone.

                                Not that we cannot
choose to be alone, but that we cannot
choose not to be, for if we proceed as if
we did, we find the trying and succeeding
designed to fail.

An insurance agent named Johnny B. Blank
Ran a run-down debit on the poor West Bank.
In the hardest of times he endeavored to be
The number one man in the company.

"I'd prefer not to say what's become of my pay,"
He stood up and spoke at a meeting one day.
"But I hereby intend to reverse this trend --
To triple my paycheck before the year's end."

“Good luck, Johnny Blank," someone said with a smirk,
"But the fact is, the West Bank is all out of work."
Johnny looked at his colleague, spoke steady and clear:
"I'll be number one by the end of the year."

From that day on, Johnny Blank was possessed,
Making pitch after pitch with fanatical zest.
But no matter how hard he'd push and persuade,
He'd hear the sad song of the oil trade:

"The rigs are shut down and the boats are asleep;
It's not worth their while because oil's too cheap.
My husband and brother, my nephew and son
Have all been laid off. As for money, there's none."

So Johnny would leave, but would not overlook
To write down their names in his prospect book.
And always he did the best he could do,
And always the list of his prospects grew.

Then at last the economy started to change;
The price had gone up in the oil exchange.
Business was booming as none had foreseen
From Buras to Boutte and in between.

And Johnny B. Blank was on top of the world
As dozens of pages of prospects unfurled;
He'd written their names when they couldn't afford,
But now they had money, and how it poured!

In the last few months of that famous year,
Johnny B. Blank secured his career.
He tripled his pay for a job well done,
And true to his word, he became number one.