Anna,
the young lions won't want you
forever.

Eventually you are going to
get tired
of keeping it tight,
of batting your eyes,
of applying the gloss just right.

Anna,
what will you do when the invitation beds
come to an end?

Eventually the lions will settle,
while you gather cobweb and callus,
while you smoke cancer and wallow in cellulite.

Anna,
find a boy who makes you feel like the sun.

Ultimately,
he's the only one who can save your soul
from all the crimes you've done.

In Florida sometimes it rains so hard
that you believe that it can't possibly stop,
that it will just rain and rain forever.

Sometimes I'd wake to a storm late at night,
and I'd sit out on the porch.

You could smell the lightning, and the coolness of the storm would
make your hair stand;
I'd feel so alive.

Some nights I'd go out, and my father
would be sitting on the porch already.
Lost in the storm
or maybe
called to it.
We wouldn't talk,
but we'd be lost together
in the rain and thunder.

Sometimes I wonder what of him
is left in me.
I am not sure
if I am more afraid of there being
very little
or of there being a great deal,
but when it rains
I think about him on that porch;

Bring to me infinity
From where it dwells in lore
Or return with empty, wounded hands
And speak of it no more.
For if we are eternity
As one, when brought together
Why then do our faulty lips
Find pause upon "forever?"

On August 18, 1936,
a 38-year-old Spanish poet
named Federico García Lorca
was taken from a jail cell
in the city of Granada,
escorted to a courtyard
in the hills outside the city,
and executed for the crime
of loving life and Spain.
Bullets are as lethal to poets
as to anyone else.
Lorca died and fell
and was buried in a rude grave
just where he hit the ground.
His books were burned
in the public square.
What the Fascist beasts
failed to understand
in their deadly ferocity
was that killing a poet is easy,
but killing his poems is impossible.
Franco is long dead,
his Fascist minions scattered,
but Lorca's poems sing
more sweetly than when he breathed
and the Spain he loved
listens with eager ears
and chants them with living joy.

The Library van has reversed into place
the same place it parks every month
It came over on the  9.30 am ferry
as it has done for at least twenty years.
Folk arrive like a small swarm of insects
all hurry out car doors laden with books.
This will increase come the dark winter
the time of Human slowed activity.
Come next spring, all will be a little wider read.

Iggy & Lou,
my iron angels
I do love you two
I am your sister now
schooled in experience
a Passenger
a Transformer
of dark days
though, Lou
they never tried
to fry my brain
thank god
Iggy, what did you do
when you were bored
locked up
what did you do
to shock them
I want to see your notes
& what they wrote
what havoc you caused
if you tried to jump over the fence
Boys, no matter how they treated you
your music still came out
they couldn't stop you
& they won't stop me
for with you, I am free
donning my leather
strutting my stuff
spitting words
out like charcoal
& grit
through the night's
backside