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 once caressed 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,
The tell-tail heart that found my wife.
I wed her though my thoughts are still;
I said I'd say "I do," and will.

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.

The children's photographs hang statically
from mobile threads training in the wind
of time and memory, flashing faces

smiling frozen in the blink of the eye
of mind as it focused at a time within
memory, impelling eternity

toward me now as spaces stretch between
the real trees grass sand and gulf
and places where the real faces move.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

it’s in the blood and not the hand:
the corrupt blood of great great
grandmassa freret through great
grandpa cleo and grandpa cleo
and paps and then me;

the empty hand
to which grandmassa bequeathed
some of his fortune to be stolen
by his other (white) line
under the law by which the court
declared null and void the will
and legacy to cleo
because cleo’s mother
grandmassa’s daughter
could not inherit,

so the hand is empty --
empty of that fortune
but not of that blade
with which this disinherited one
drew the same blood
from three of the heirs
of that other (all-white) line
in the dark of one bleak morning
in the same garden district mansion
where grandmassa bed his housemaid
great great grandma mildred
who then in the same mansion
birthed the first cleo
to whom was bequeathed the blood
and the ultimately stolen fortune:

hence the hand the blood
the corrupt blood in these veins
i let onto the floor of the block
screaming “it’s in the blood! it’s in the blood!”

and so they took away the blade
and again the hand is empty
and still the blood is corrupt

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.

They were married,
but not to each other.
She was the assistant;
he was the boss.
Her name was Sarah.

She stayed late often
and talked with him alone.
Somehow he let her know
he wasn’t completely happy,
and somehow she let him know
she understood,
which made him happy.

He should have been working;
she should have been home.
Before long he couldn’t work anyway,
thinking of her.  

So he fell in love with her.
But he didn’t know it;
He thought it was lust.

When he knew she’d accept,
He offered a kiss.
She accepted.

Once they started,
they couldn’t stop,
and still they talked
as they touched and kissed.
They were soulmates mating.

After awhile,
she talked of leaving her husband, Paul,
and he talked of leaving his wife, Rebecca.
Rebecca was his mistake,
and someday he’d leave her
or she’d leave him.
But he didn’t want a new wife,
or a new mistake.

So he let Sarah go.
She went in tears.

It was the best thing to do.
It was the worst thing to do.

Around him grew
a sad new aura: emptiness --
emptiness in the office,
where the new assistant played computer games;
emptiness at home,
where the dog got heart worms
and the pipes froze.

He thought in time
the emptiness would fade.
But Sarah was gone,
and he missed her.
In time,
he missed her more.
The more he missed her,
the emptier life became.

Then it struck him:
the magnitude of what he’d done:
he’d lost her.
He loved her.
He’d lost the one he loved.

He had to call her;
he couldn’t call her.
He’d made her cry.
She had to hate him.
Maybe she loved him.
He had to see her.

He drove across the river to her new office.
He found her car in the parking lot.
He parked where he could see,
and waited.

At five-after-five
she approached her car.
He got out of his
and approached her.
She stopped
when she saw him.
He stopped
when she stopped.

He said the words:
“I love you.”

She came toward him.
She stood before him.
Her eyes were gardens.

“I didn’t know I loved you,” he said.
“But now I know.
I love you.”

She turned to the car
and opened the door.
“I left Paul,” she said.

“I’ll leave Rebecca.”

She got in the car.
“Call me when you do.”
She shut the door,
started the car,
backed up
and drove off.

So there was hope.

That night
he packed his bags
as Rebecca raved.
Then he left.

The next morning
He called Sarah.
He took her to lunch
that day.
She cooked dinner
that evening.

They've been together
ever since.

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 well laid.
Then we knew happiness of a different sort
Than the satisfactory existence
Endured before we played Love’s part,
And now endure with time and distance.
Memories of happiness sustain Love’s force;
Let's not defile them with bitter remorse.

Look at him. Look at him, they think. Pitiful.
His withered legs like empty promises hang
from hips as dead and shrunken as stillborn dreams.
It must be hell to be half wheelchair
and half man.

                          He understands. He understands
they think they understand how it feels to be
a wheelchair man. So well he understands
the wholesomeness of pity: for every ounce
of pity, you can count a thousand blessings.
So count.

                   Meanwhile he rolls. He rolls and rolls.
Legs – legs he doesn't see. Hips – hips he avoids.
Looking up he sees faces, tall faces
with glass eyes fixed on objects far too high
for him to spy from his lowly throne.

                                                        ­          He rolls
and counts and rolls to a stop before
cathedral steps. The doors are closed today.
He cannot see inside today. No matter –
He cannot genuflect on any day,

but flexes the muscles of his faith each time
he pities them, who stoop to sympathize.

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.

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.

She’s a good and beautiful woman.
But Grandad won the Gold in Swimming
in Thirty-Four, Mom won the Silver
in Diving in Sixty-Six, and I won
the Gold in Swimming again in Two Thousand.
So good and beautiful might not be enough.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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