Watch out for power,
for its avalanche can bury you,
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.

Watch out for hate,
it can open its mouth and you'll fling yourself out
to eat off your leg, an instant *****.

Watch out for friends,
because when you betray them,
as you will,
they will bury their heads in the toilet
and flush themselves away.

Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.

Watch out for games, the actor's part,
the speech planned, known, given,
for they will give you away
and you will stand like a naked little boy,
******* on your own child-bed.

Watch out for love
(unless it is true,
and every part of you says yes including the toes),
it will wrap you up like a mummy,
and your scream won't be heard
and none of your running will end.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Special person,
if I were you I'd pay no attention
to admonitions from me,
made somewhat out of your words
and somewhat out of mine.
A collaboration.
I do not believe a word I have said,
except some, except I think of you like a young tree
with pasted-on leaves and know you'll root
and the real green thing will come.

Let go. Let go.
Oh special person,
possible leaves,
this typewriter likes you on the way to them,
but wants to break crystal glasses
in celebration,
for you,
when the dark crust is thrown off
and you float all around
like a happened balloon.

I followed you out of the picture,
our subtle breakdowns, anti-matter,
too drunk to function, too vibrant to sleep.

The tables were numbered when we sat to eat,
uniform plates, revolving staff, doors open
to the public, red wine on tap.

I met you in the bathroom, venetian white,
***** on your sleeve, tears in your eyes,
love on your tongue – an emptied stomach.

I know I can poison you with words,
stop your taste for wine with a kiss.

I followed you to the open grounds,
pollen thick in my lungs, the wind ate sound,
removing all history: you and me, you and me.

The fountain turned copper with generosity,
faded queen, bottle-cap fraud; crowds took us
to alleyways, to your opened front door.

I met you in the kitchen, synthetic white,
heart on your sleeve, *** in your eyes,
tongue upon tongue – truth amongst lies.

I know I can save you from endless distraction,
this need for a fiction; this want for an action.

Lips like origami,
eyes like ice.
Hands like soap,
heart like darkness.
It’s dark versus light,
temptation versus innocence.  
I shouldn’t—I know—
but I can’t shake you off.
It’s fights at a wedding,
death on a birthday;
swearing in church,
hurting someone you love;
a book without an end,
your favourite song sung out of tune;
leaving without goodbyes,
spilling someone’s dark secrets;
sleepless nights,
a child without a home;
drinking until you puke,
lying to someone you love;
it’s wrong in every sense
of the word.
But once again,
it’s hands against
heart,
and we all know who will win.
We’re the epitome of dangerous,
crossing on territory that should not be touched.
But I can’t stop.

Whoever has no house now will never have one.
    Whoever is alone will stay alone
    Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening
    And wander on the boulevards, up and down...

  - from Autumn Day, Rainer Maria Rilke


Its stain is everywhere.
The sharpening air
of late afternoon
is now the colour of tea.
Once-glycerined green leaves
burned by a summer sun
are brittle and ochre.
Night enters day like a thief.
And children fear that the beautiful daylight has gone.
Whoever has no house now will never have one.

It is the best and the worst time.
Around a fire, everyone laughing,
brocaded curtains drawn,
nowhere-anywhere-is more safe than here.
The whole world is a cup
one could hold in one's hand like a stone
warmed by that same summer sun.
But the dead or the near dead
are now all knucklebone.
Whoever is alone will stay alone.

Nothing to do. Nothing to really do.
Toast and tea are nothing.
Kettle boils dry.
Shut the night out or let it in,
it is a cat on the wrong side of the door
whichever side it is on. A black thing
with its implacable face.
To avoid it you
will tell yourself you are something,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening.

Even though there is bounty, a full harvest
that sharp sweetness in the tea-stained air
is reserved for those who have made a straw
fine as a hair to **** it through-
fine as a golden hair.
Wearing a smile or a frown
God's face is always there.
It is up to you
if you take your wintry restlessness into the town
and wander on the boulevards, up and down.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

At ***** ****'s and Sloppy Joe's
We drank our liquor straight,
Some went upstairs with Margery,
And some, alas, with Kate;
And two by two like cat and mouse
The homeless played at keeping house.

There Wealthy Meg, the Sailor's Friend,
And Marion, cow-eyed,
Opened their arms to me but I
Refused to step inside;
I was not looking for a cage
In which to mope my old age.

The nightingales are sobbing in
The orchards of our mothers,
And hearts that we broke long ago
Have long been breaking others;
Tears are round, the sea is deep:
Roll them overboard and sleep.

Transmogrified through the written word,
I see myself through his agate eyes;
Shall I take up then the sin of pen,
Transmute smooth paper
To invisible sighs?

Secrets suit him best of all;
A blackness from which ink disappears;
The word written down remains only a whisper,
The heart has it's stalwart lock and key
Which safeguards well it's timeless tales.

For he's the unturned phrase of a day,
Which empties deep into me my own;
And the faint, far echoes slowly returning,
For a thousand years:
Bedrock of my soul.

I go to the door often.
Night and summer. Crickets
lift their cries.
I know you are out.
You are driving
late through the summer night.

I do not know what will happen.
I have no claim on you.
I am one star
you have as guide; others
love you, the night
so dark over the Azores.

You have been working outdoors,
gone all week. I feel you
in this lamp lit
so late. As I reach for it
I feel myself
driving through the night.

I love a firmness in you
that disdains the trivial
and regains the difficult.
You become part then
of the firmness of night,
the granite holding up walls.

There were women in Egypt who
supported with their firmness the stars
as they revolved,
hardly aware
of the passage from night
to day and back to night.

I love you where you go
through the night, not swerving,
clear as the indigo
bunting in her flight,
passing over two
thousand miles of ocean.