dude
they have this
giant blue
monolith
in their
bathroom

no i wasn't
high, maybe
sugar high
becca's
oma kept
offering me
cookies
like i was a
monster that
needed
sating

eventually
i was
screaming
at her:
no, oma, i
don't want
any more ****
cookies

not the
point, dude,
the monolith, you
shoulda seen this
thing i wanted to
worship it that's
how awesome it
was

becca said it
was modern art or some
**** maybe its
their god but then
why would
they put it in their
bathroom?

i guess if
you really love
somebody
you will let them
see you
***, smell your
****

thats true love
man

becca
come into the
bathroom
with me
becca
baby
we're going to
church

i am not a
‘poet’
dan is a
poet always
wearing the same
green sweater
dan who hannah’s
mom thought was
******* because of
his poor eye
contact
dan who tells us he
likes his women with
hairy legs
dan whose poetry
writes about
beauty and
transcendence
and all that
****

in contrast to
me. i write only
to insult my
friends

yeah, that dan

i don’t want to be a
‘poet’
i don’t want to be like
him

When I am old and gray,
And walk with a sway,
and a leopard cane,
and this tattoo starts sagging;

When I am old and gray,
With these bones that start lacking,
And these ***** that are sagging
And I start falling away;

When I am old and gray,
And set in my ways,
With a smile on my face,
And a grandchild at my feet,

When I am old and gray,
What a happy little old person,
I'll be,
with curls in my hair,
And a pleasant memory,
What a sweet old woman I'll be.

Who can live in this quiet
as dog's songs splinter
carmine pressure

Equatorial walls
capture half howls
through gristle lenses

One drop of ash
scars the maps
At last her eye

is the string torn
from the hem of the ****

Delirium tremens the lemons
Lost love and yellow
Cast of eye

Two twos the sevens
And what for those
In Heaven

Rancid liver the Shivers
Something wrong here
The Believers

Window dark no window
Splintered break to make
Betwixt between

Spinning colliding the Hiding
On a wall
The Shadows
Break of Day

Our wise men want to call him Icarus. But he can’t be
that Icarus. There are no melted wax wings, no vaunting
ambition, just the salt crust on his face and limbs.

Perhaps he did fall from the sky and no
one heard his splash. Perhaps as the waves moved
around him, like a bright red buoy tied to the sea,

his swimming bequeathed to the water
the necessary movement for the waves. Perhaps left to swim
ashore, it’s our words that have drowned, not his soul.

Or could it be the waves have calmed?
Could it be that the sea is silent? That there
is nothing left to come ashore?

What if he’s like a cloud of paramecium
or something, and the swimming child emerges
alive from the river estuary and not dead from the sea?

My child, my child! The swimming words,
so much in abundance, about to reach
the river’s mud, amid the river’s eels…

© Jim Kleinhenz

Our language can be seen as an ancient
City—pace Wittgenstein—who  
Surely meant a baptized city, for
The names come only with the blessing…

And even though he boards in Muzot, finds
A seat with a window so he can watch
The rain, a pad and pen and swollen eyes—
His naming is no longer for the living,
He knows that. Squatting, old, narrow-gauge trains:
He studies his reflection in the dark tunnels
In the glass: There is swelling, that
Awful puffiness, rust in the throat…
Mimetic passion, not rocket science.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
    I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
    To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
    To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
        While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
                In such an ecstasy!
    Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
        To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thus Keats, who, he reminds himself, wrote:
the rude
Wasting of old Time -with a billowy main,
A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.
Yet still it rains; the rails, become archaic
Through the Goddard Pass,
His final way of seeing mountain peaks .
In 1926 as the snow melts…
He stops.
The correspondence…

Tsvetayeva has written:  
Your name is poetry! Exclaims:
Your name is poetry! But she always
Exclaims—
May I hail you like this!
Your baptism was the prologue to
The whole of you!

It even smells of death in this train. Dead mice
Under the seats. Why would Marina think
Of baptism here, his baptism?
Herr
Rilke, may I help you?
For baptism
Read death, read mort, but not for ‘mortal’, for
A mort is only played if some music
Is needed at the blessing. Mort:
A horn will sound announcing death,
A horn to announce a new beginning,
Of a life’s deep death in deep
Snow…wolves abound…and not a perfect trip
Through the Alps…

Marina Leukemia on his
Baptism into the ancient city:
Herr Rilke your very name
Is a poem. You are a phenomenon
Of nature. The poet who comes after you
Is you.

My dear, Rainer; my soul, my Maria,
My blood coagulates and sinks
Into the snow. I take to my heart:
One poet only lives, and now and then
Who bore him, and who bears him now, will meet.


And never meet. (There is one only) in
A lightning field, canaries in a cage—
How could we meet?
The world betrays us,
I know, for a field of fire, for poetry
Is correspondence from a great distance
Made only greater by our love.
Great honor, great poet,
(signed) Not for reading. Marina.

(July, 2009)