In the form of transparent, bundled tumbleweed
it allows us to breathe, the continuation
of carbon dioxide creation, the movement
of clouds and mists and birds, certain natural disasters,
being able to skim bays at a full sail
or the next step a plane takes after taxiing.

It includes us in the endless repudiation of itself
that it can't seem to –  no matter how it may try –
reverse or cure, bringing earlier
peoples to know it as a supernatural force
(there was simply no other reasonable choice available).

And for some reason
it keeps engaging in pyromania as it aids and abets
whatever impulsive firework-lighting-thrill-seekers
or placid cigarette-****-litterers did or did not
purposefully do.

Here the triple-shadowed unveil their beliefs:
wrangled dusk-bitten demigods walking with-
out shame.
                    Between the voice I feel and the
touch I see, sweetness loses itself in multiplic-
ity. Here the ****** creators
                                                     peddle their big
dreams: failed, half-imagined writers writing
for some fame. Between the ink I taste
                                                                    and
the blank page I peel, beauty spills onto an
unfinished film-reel. Here the salient idealists
distribute their silent pleas:
                                                 faceless, disre-
garded farmers farming hapless grain. Be-
tween
           the thoughts I see and the biases I smell,
innocence sits unwanted in a wishing-well.
Here the greatest artists
                                          present their newest
piece: aged, masterful painters painting to
stay stane. Between
                                   the subtlest colors and
the heart-arresting hues, skill picks up a gui-
tar and sings some southern
                                                  blues.

Can you hear the sound of the indomitable wind?
It breathes in great heaves
through these sun-beaten leaves,
so boisterous it could flow through ears to the mind.
The eucalyptus’ standing in disciplined lines
seem disturbed by it,
and by the sun that’s lit,
illuminating their aging signs.
From some stark desert some miles to the south
bundles of dry wind roll
up, over, and down this grassy knoll
that unknowingly beleaguers the skin of both
infants playing with their blocks on the lawn
and an older patron
visiting from Dayton
who naturally rises some hours before dawn.
The wind can easily uproot and tear the land apart;
it can dishevel
a garden neat and level,
desolating work to which the retiree gives their heart.
The lascivious sound of the southern wind resonates
past the final palm of the mind
where Wallace Stevens’ bird went blind,
lying low in the recesses of cranial plates.
I say that that sound is no sound at all,
just a loosing slip
of the cerebral lip
attached to a thing abstractly beautiful.
But it sings its song all the same.
Perhaps it is physical.
It’s certainly divisible.
It pierces the sky like a transparent flame.

dreams woke me with a violent jolt.
Out the bedroom window
dew hung on its last thread
to every solemn grass blade.

The way the sun spread
and carpeted the green
in a flood of pallid light...
it was enveloping.

Another day rises with me,
another moon fades bleak into the blue,
somewhere by the interstate
another daisy edges into ghostliness.

Copper skies hang heavy
above my gazing face;
it is a fresh morning now, the entire
noisy world has decided to wake.

Ghosts climb into the sun to light it's kindling
once more for old time's sake.

I thought for days and could think of nothing
to satisfy the eye and hand and heart,
or satiate the mind, or at least seem
worthy to be willed into decent art.
The past ten years offer little I’d deem
rousing enough to write this first part.
Then imagination just so inclined
the speaker, the scene, what I’d sought to find.

Grasping the pen, I pressed it to the page
and out poured imagination as ink.
I painted a line, then outlined a stage,
and pondered for hours on their supposed link.
It seems excessive thought may shape a cage
in the corner of which ideas sink.
Sometime later the stage had some players
and the line had formed multiple layers.

All vanishes the ensuing day,
forcing thought on what’s soon to expire.
Dramatis personae hardly convey
the message famished minds desire;
Likewise, poetical visions crochet
a meandering, allegorical empire.
The thought-maelstrom bids me “Confess!”:
I’ve reduced life to a logical process.

Dear Mr. Heaney
I wish I'd read your poetry
years ago when I was still impressionable and coy and all that jazz.
Now it resounds in my skull, leaving a tingle in my right hand.
My pen is somewhat snug, but a revolver, no.
Ink and shovels aren't far from each other,
so your point is well-taken. In fact, they're co-workers –
Ink's proved itself just as deadly. It slowly ushers men into the earth,
their soil-seat, while the shovel stages the unending play;
the eternal lattice.
The Nobel hung above your head,
the vast array of pins, medals, papers with your name in billowing scarlet.
What a treat. Like the last cupcake in the back of
the refrigerator that had too much chocolate icing and was only
semi-covered in multi-colored snowflakes. I'd loved to have
personally presented it to you. There'd be my own plaque,
billowing scarlet and all. It'd say, "Mr. Heaney,
, you must own a *****." I hope you'd laugh, and not be offended,
thinking me a distasteful and insensitive lout. It may not be right,
but I can't help but steal the volumes surrounding yours out of
every **** library so
"Seamus Heaney"
may catch the eye of the common passerby
more easily. I think I even went to work on
enhancing a spine with a red sharpie once.
Red hits the eye hard.
That was in the central library downtown.
Don't tell anyone.
Beyond a laugh, what I hope for most is that you get this letter.
Just look at it.
Wonder why someone so far removed in age and culture and place
would ever think of you holding an over-frosted desert as glorious.

We rushed on glorious wings
that fed bombs into Baghdad soil
with feverous lust for a hollow dream.
Now nine long years later,
seventeen bodies lie on earth where oil
engenders a lust that’s even greater.

Seventeen skeletons innocent;
Seventeen bloodlines’ descent.
Karzai’s blank solace and Kandahar’s dead
seventeen lay heavier on the heart than lead.

Three tours were far too many,
the fourth far more than he could take.
A sergeant who’d have given any-
thing for his wife and kids’ sake.
Seeing a good friend’s severe injury –
the last blow Sanity could handle.
Morality goes out – light from a candle
swaddled in smoke’s endless perjury.

Seventeen seconds of forethought
may perhaps have faltered his shot;
Seventeen centuries of ponder
and still the heart may have not grown fonder.
Seventeen lovers left alone,
or loves that’ll never come to pass,
seventeen graves of heavy bones
mark where a madman’s mind broke at last.

Seventeen skeletons innocent;
Seventeen bloodlines’ descent.
Karzai’s blank solace and Kandahar’s dead
seventeen lay heavier on the heart than lead.