Sending letters to the world at the world hurled;
Not sure why try why have to try.
Unsolicited pseudonymous --
A battle cry hi bye before we die.

Writing stories on the wall any wall scrawl;
Casting songs through the air electric air prayer.
Poets novelists artists lyricists --
All who dare care dare lay it bare.

A billion letters in the mail in the mail fail --
Addressed to anyone read by none no one.
Dear so and so let me tell you so:
The number no one none is no fun one.

Out in the lanes where laughs not Mirth,
          Where maggots thrive 'mid offal fogs,
A mongrel ***** wreaked lethal birth
          Unto a host of puppy dogs.

Six guileless hounds were spewed in Hell,
          The dowager vaporing, dead.
Five unlicked pups heaved blind and fell
          Until but one might Being wed.

Then I, bereft of Pride's respect,
          My spirit cold spurned to this sty,
Touched humble fur -- O dim reject!
          For me his spark refused to die!

It matters not how mixed his blood,
          How flea-infected be his skin,
I now command this canine stud;
          I am the master of Chien.

"We'll divide our time
into 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.

A lucky man
(I forget his name)
gathered his winnings and retired young.
He enjoyed peaceful mornings
in the garden, afternoons
on the golf course, and evenings
with cable TV.
He enjoyed leisurely vacations
in Vegas, Honolulu,
Cancun and Orlando.
He enjoyed health, prosperity,
friendship and love.
Then he died
and will endure
everlasting
oblivion.

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.

I love you, true, but no fine words can say
how much I do. It’s more than that -- more
than simple terms can express, more even
than simile or metaphor could capture
had I Shakespeare’s wit and pen. But I’ll try:

Because of you I’m the luckiest of men.
Whatever made me love you at the start
was my good fortune, and has intensified.
The trials we’ve survived now make me smile
to think how we survived them with each other,
and how all adversity diminished
and diminishes still in your presence.

I love you, I know, because when, as now,
we’re apart, I can’t be happy unless
I talk with you, silently, here in my heart,
and know you’re there, and know you’ll be there, and know
that heartbeat is the sound of what we are.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Grown-ups are too big to see the ground.
They watch the costumes, masks
and arms, the throws
into the crowds from giant floats
like little clouds.
They catch stuff in the air,
but if it hits the ground
they leave it there.

Grown-ups hide even the highest floats.
Backs and backs of heads and hands
like tiny treetops block
the view, so all I see
are tractor wheels and legs
and big shoes.

Grown-ups don’t know what they’re missing.
Dodging knees I stoop and scoop
up tons of treasures
in a blink. They think
they’re smart, but down here
I’m the King.

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 elements of poetry escape
me at the moment, run amuck among
thought-dogs roaming, sniffing in the night

the dry earth for the scent of something without
a scent, hastening the dismemberment
of poetry's escaping elements.

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.

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.