A gesture's worth a thousand words,
intimations of the body articulate:
my gas-passing interrogatives,
your inquisitive belches, remember?

At first, such unspoken jokes seemed crude,
though useful. So we refined them,
and from trees at night mock owl-calls homed you in.
Do you remember eyebrows, intelligent as lips?

In time, I developed tics, snarls, an expert shrug,
a professional groan. And I grew to resent
your sighs, your phony, irritated coughing fits,
the critical commentaries of your silences.

Just because a girl is pretty
they chain you to a freaking rock,
invite the tide to nibble? ******
way to treat a Princess, and mock
a future Galaxy! Oh, crap --
now what the hell is this? A monster,
seaweed dripping, snip-snap
jaws agape? How gauche! It wants to
ravish me? Take a number,
Frankenstein! Start at zero!
Oh, save me, Perseus, come on
future hubby, Action Hero!
Let's get down to the nitty-gritty!
Can't you see this girl is pretty?

That kiss that burned one Tuesday, four a.m.,
Won't make it into any bulletin,
Nor that flicker-flash of  bird, that garden time,
Nor his shameful need, nor the white wine
Left in the glass, obituaries of hours
Unmourned at cards, some ode to spring
Her blinking heart sang, nor childish chores
Of Sundays drained. Not light. Not anything.

No and no and no. Dim and dim,
A vacant voice pronounces prayers at him
While worlds wane small as words some woman said
Meant hope or love. Then no one else is there
Who peers through dark. Who weeps, or blanks of care,
Or hardly knows him, writing he is dead.

Love's a loaded craps game, played
by ****** people, lads who dream
a sweet and willing cavalcade
of perfect mates who can't exist
(though in the yahoo's mind they must,
or how would any man get kssed
or be excused the wolfish lust
of ****** people, cads who dream?)

A maple leaf flares slow, so slow
Quick children never see, or know
The cruelest days are autumn's, so
They run, and fire, and fall, and throw
Their bodies down. But o, but o! --
The sweetest breaths are autumn's, though!

Say you want a cat. A dog's too easy,
would wag when wag is inappropriate,
and slobber on the guests. You'll take the cat,
so different and strange, it drives you crazy,

its shiftlessness, its ins-and-outs, its chi.
You call. It does not come. Is this a pet,
this Dharma ***? You say you can't accept
its vacant gaze, its scorn, who yearned to be

at home with feral grace, with all you're not.
But you're a Body safely locked from Mind,
that Problem no Mind solves. This point's defined
for you by ****, who's not the pet you thought

but Otherness, one owned by God, or none.
Cat sleeps for hours, wants out. A job well done.

Weight back, son, back -- now!* Pivoting in air, I felt wood crack
and sent one screaming over first. My three mates whirled
around the sacks and fierce joy burst past, or through...
First inning, Father. Bags full. And all for you,
who, miles off, listened hard beneath a static sky.
The radio crowed: "Grand slam!" -- and "You'll be next to die."

Once, you showed me something about the stance,
how the weight came through, and how the dance
of foot in dirt was beautiful and clean --
I don't recall the point -- not now, I mean.
But I still can see your hands, the coiled way
they worked the wood, and how your wrists turned,
mirrored snakes, twin roots, and how the simple day
was shaken by... what was it?... by all I'd never learned?
Your fingers were stubby, grimed with grease, coarse hairs
tangled over bulge of blood. My youth still fares
its way from lost to lost. I move my dancing feet
to match the steps you traced with yours -- and life's complete.

Yet as I gape and gasp in desperate dark,
a voice returns, riding warm winds from that park.
These forty years, I've been turning into you.
I have your hands, your heart -- and these will fail me too.

This world's a story
filled with stones: those five
smooth ones; some temple
tumbling to; a mountain's
stubborn bones. Take this one,

pocked, rounded, smoothed,
rocked by currents sure
they'd find the way. Blue
(or vaguely gray), flecked gold
no miners mine, or can,

diminished thing from David's
bolder day, it chooses you.
Palmed in your closing hand,
it's good, the heft of it, live weight
to tell a tale that's true.

1
Congratulations
on your maturation:
now our lust's "love,"
not infatuation.

2
Romantic "deficits,"
confiscatorial "trends" --
**** your "benefits" --
where's my dividends?

3
I tried to really kiss you,
not co-impregnate a tissue.

4
I must confess
I love that dress --

more or less!

5
-- I'd die for you (you said)
-- I'd mumble you in bed.

6
you  me  us  me
us-me-you  you-me-us-you-me-you
us-me-us-­meyouyou-us-youyouyou
youyou-us-me-youyouyouyouyouyouyou!
you-me-­us-us-me-me-me --
us

7
Three coins in the fountain?
Who in hell's been counting?

8
Nod, smile; I'm playing along
while they're "playing our song."

9
Monogamy
demands its peephole:
Maybe we should see
other people.

10
"The last time I saw her
she'd hired a lawyer."

What hunger drives us out and back
and walking, walking, free of men,
unquenched enough to taste the lack
that set us going out and back again?

From Riverside you turn on Spring
to stalk a night that will not end,
leaf-hurt, gray grieving thing
in darkness spent -- out and back again.

Alone, a million miles from dawn,
small wonder guiltless ghosts pretend
that hunger guides all exiles gone
out and back -- out and back, my friend.

Ford and man aim stiffly toward the frame,
Ranch Wagon north, my father somewhere south --
But who can picture either one of them?
I see that car, I guess, my acrid youth,
Flash of chrome, fogged screen -- and, when we moved,
That cat we hit, flopped from its crushed skull
On the road behind. My father said it proved
All dodges cancel out; All Ahead on Full,
He said, and don't look back. How did he know
We'd lose the road, and swerve from off the plan
When crooked routes misled, or that we'd throw
His maps away? Just do the best you can,
That's all I ask. The camera clicks... time's torn...
I'm seven, eight... last sister's just been born...

-- Wish You Were Here* -- standard postcard greeting
-- Poems aren't postcards to send home -- Anne Sexton

Dear friends, dear friends at home, resent
No pagan rite nor chance event
We've failed to photograph for you
With technicolor flair in the true
Late Tourist Style. Be satisfied

You're there, not here in Circe's herd
Or dodging stones some Giant's hurled
Or fending Triton's tempest blasts
Or lashed, like me, to a shattered mast
As tempting taunts roll down the tide.

When night winds grind the wheel of sleep
Consider Cyclops, counting sheep;
When home-fires cool, just think of us
Attending smokes more perilous!
Home-bound friends, be notified:

This holiday's a Trojan Horse.
The wine's gone bad. The weather's worse.
So mark our fates by this palsied hand:
*Have sacrificed most every man.
Now homeward-bound. Still terrified.

An auction just last month -- no sale, I guess,
for now a square of white on your window says:
"Building Condemned, Order of the City..."
A salable family place, and there's the pity --
your roof and sills square, the clapboards straight,
the windows shining -- but an enemy of the state,
apparently, too good to live. So, bang --
you're dead! No one loves you, home. Go hang.

A house needs people in it! But your soul's gone,
your family fled, flat broke, or simply broken.
What a waste -- and one on every street, forlorn,
contrite, like jilted brides that none will visit.
Still, you're left here, waiting. Who is it
loves you now? And not one word is spoken.

Even the stars, they say, and worlds -- but first,
It's April rain, it's light on greening gardens --
One sparrow, yes, in book and branch -- then worse,
All memory of love, the heart that hardens,

Resisting still the news. Seasons, reversed,
All water, always, quick or slow, the snow
On fields, then farmers' woods and crops immersed
By river's-work, and floodplains' overflow.

All leaves, all trees, all earth by wind dispersed;
And men, men too, each falling long-rehearsed.

I wonder what she thinks they'll learn tonight
From two blocks off, from lonesome hoot, mad shriek
And metal moan, this blinking ruby eye?
Transport, I guess, a ticket out from bleak
Existences: this boy, this girl, their Mom,
Three sidewalk engineers who've claimed worn seats
To marvel once again where wheels come from,
Who catch trains up in nets of city streets.

"This one's so long!" the young girl shouts. "You're right!"
Mom points through blast and blur. "Just look at all
Those tanker cars!" Her son, in fevered thrall,
Counts loud and hops, to keep his tally true.      

I wonder what she thinks she's shared tonight,
The kids in bed, train gone? Though I'd watched too.

Her job's detecting errors God has made
Designing Summer Street: this busted curb,
These tattered feathers, wrappers, dented cans.
Forever stopping, stooping, in pale charade
Of chores her mother's set her to, deferred
By rapt attention to detail, she scans
Detritus, bark, branches, torn wings of seeds,
Thin husks that stalked or shaded summer's grass --
Then sighs brief prayers for lives she never knew.
Her older brother hauls dead leaves and feeds
The hose its coil, then snipes at her, who'd pass
Her hours in gawking, still so much to do...

She scrapes the lawn a bit, a guiltless thief
Who leans to pocket gold: one perfect leaf.

Beast surfacing, the geyser blows
sea-spume that sudden, broaching, slows
to blue, then falls, no prim fountain
or ticking clock, Leviathan counting
decades at formal intervals.
On benches over rising thermals
that reach to roast us, faithful, waiting,
we cheer the act of hesitation
before the final curtain -- though, see,
the trick's just heat, just gravity.
Almost enough, I hear you say --
this tidal flame, this awe-filled day,
as mists dissolve and quick steam clears
and cools and sinks, for years, years.