Row, my brother, row with the wind,
The stars above no longer sing.
The night is cold, the waves are wide
But none return on the turning tide.

Enough, enough
Oh ocean, you beast, you mouth of graves,
You salt-veined god with no mercy to save.

You took my son, his eyes still bright,
You dragged him down in the black of night.
You took my girl, just twenty-two,
He wore her ring, and loved her true.

My heart, my helm, my morning light,
You tore her breath with storm and spite.
The winds were foul, and the work was hard,
But I still begged beneath your stars.

I begged you then. I curse you now.
I spit at your depths, and I don't bow.

Four months (and the fifth is here),
I row through salt, through ghosts, through fear.
The voyage is done, and the winds don’t blow
But I cannot leave her down below.

Bring them back
Bring them, bring them,
Give them back
Sailing, singing, silent now.

Aren’t you afraid of God, oh ocean?
Or did He send you, oh ocean?

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
    Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
    A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
    Of deities or mortals, or of both,
        In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
    What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
        What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
    Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
    Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
    Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
        Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
    She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
        For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
    Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
    For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
    For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
        For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
    That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
        A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
    To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
    And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
    Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
        Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
    Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
        Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
    Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden ****;
    Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
    When old age shall this generation waste,
        Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
    "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
        Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

See that cat?
Yeah, I do mean you.
She’s got a TV eye on me.
She’s got a TV eye.

The sky is a canvas
paint it with greed,
paint it with oil, yeah, paint it with drain.
**** paradise for a parking lane.

Shoot to ****.
Shoot the bird flying the sea.
Do it for fun, don’t do it for me
even though I am hungry.
Do it for fun, don’t do it for me.

Chrome veins twitch,
static twitching in the ditch.
Neon god with a cigarette lip
burns holes in the ozone slip.

She walks like a car crash
slow-mo flash,
glass in her smile and blood in her lash.
Radioactive glamour trash.

Rat race dinner plate,
serve it cold, seal the fate.
Eat the rich with a spork,
and chase it down with molten torque.

Skull full of bees,
heartbeat like a drum machine freeze.
Yeah, baby’s got a Rust Belt kiss
and a chainsaw tongue that hisses bliss.

Preach from a pulpit made of lead,
baptize me in melted meds.
Hell is a mirror
I see the light.
It’s a lit cigarette
on the tongue of a dog.

The dog is filthy.
He's what you think you are.
He follows me wherever I climb.
He follows me with pride.
He’s from Hell.
He’s from Hell.
He’s from Hell.
He belongs in Hell.

We drift so softly, still break in the end,
Moon rising faintly, no path to ascend.
The pull to step out,
To let the sound drown out,
A fleeting dawn, too bright to stay,
Soft embers lost to yesterday

What remains?
The place, the time, the shadow stains.
You falter, play, let it slide,
First you feel
The tide subside,
And what’s left
Lingers in your mind.

Hands stained with the weight of days,
If there's no truth to chase, no one to praise,
I'll still laugh beneath this heavy sky,
And push the stone, though I don't know why,
And clutch the fallout, though I don't know why.

Left two souls tangled in silence at 2 a.m.,
wondering if love was ever there at all.

No
this is blood memory,
ritual,
a brush of bodies that can spark
the breath of another soul into being.

She let him close,
not knowing he would vanish like vapor
the moment she said “What if?”

He left fingerprints on her skin
and none on the crib.

It was a choice.
But his choices vanished.
Hers became a heartbeat,
She wept at the altar of a promise that was never written.

Something scratches, not sound,
but shape. The edge of a shadow.

I do not call it by name.
Even the birds hesitate to describe sky.
Even the dead
they long for it, and it showers them.

It comes in moments:
the spoon lifted,
the glass unbroken,
the wrist staying whole,
though nothing insists it should.

It dresses in light, thin as regret,
then leaves.
A thought unspoken,
burning a ring on the tongue.

I keep the door unlatched
for the possibility of paws.
A cat might wander in.
Or
you, trailing the smell of rain and half-said sentences.

The room holds its breath.
I do, too.
You do not come.

This is how it ruins:
with the almost.
It draws a seat at the table,
unseen,
and eats first.

I’ve been kissed by fire.
She was a woman,
impossible not to watch,
impossible to touch without consequence.
She didn’t save me.
She lit the match,
watched me burn,
and She never looked away.

I wait beside the open door.
I name nothing.
I listen
for the hinge.

I am in a crate, the crate that was ours,
full of white shirts and salad greens,
the icebox knocking at our delectable knocks,
and I wore movies in my eyes,
and you wore eggs in your tunnel,
and we played sheets, sheets, sheets
all day, even in the bathtub like lunatics.
But today I set the bed afire
and smoke is filling the room,
it is getting hot enough for the walls to melt,
and the icebox, a gluey white tooth.

I have on a mask in order to write my last words,
and they are just for you, and I will place them
in the icebox saved for ***** and tomatoes,
and perhaps they will last.
The dog will not.  Her spots will fall off.
The old letters will melt into a black bee.
The night gowns are already shredding
into paper, the yellow, the red, the purple.
The bed -- well, the sheets have turned to gold --
hard, hard gold, and the mattress
is being kissed into a stone.

As for me, my dearest Foxxy,
my poems to you may or may not reach the icebox
and its hopeful eternity,
for isn't yours enough?
The one where you name
my name right out in P.R.?
If my toes weren't yielding to pitch
I'd tell the whole story --
not just the sheet story
but the belly-button story,
the pried-eyelid story,
the whiskey-sour-of-the-****** story --
and shovel back our love where it belonged.

Despite my asbestos gloves,
the cough is filling me with black and a red powder seeps through my
veins,
our little crate goes down so publicly
and without meaning it, you see, meaning a solo act,
a cremation of the love,
but instead we seem to be going down right in the middle of a Russian
street,
the flames making the sound of
the horse being beaten and beaten,
the whip is adoring its human triumph
while the flies wait, blow by blow,
straight from United Fruit, Inc.