You salt the wound
you bend it back until it breaks
You just consume
despite the way that it may taste

Caught in the bloom
of creations which are not your make
You walk the plank
veiled steps towards what they say and think


Don't even blink
as we push the planet to its brink
Cohorts of war
without reason to what you wage them for

You just forsake
a sedated apathetic state
You choose to pray
to a non-responsive deity

Repeat after me
   I am free

As death nods his head reassuringly

Being the kind of girl
that can get anything she wants
I would already have known
  if you truly wanted me.
and if that had been the case
I would already be.
yet here we are
after all these years
a cyclical tragedy

for leather accrues
The miracle of the streets
The scents & smogs &
pollens of existence

Shiny blackness
so totally naked she was
Totally un-hung-up

We looked around
lights now on
Top see our fellow travellers
~~~

I am troubled
Immeasurably
By your eyes

I am struck
By the feather
of your soft
Reply

The sound of glass
Speaks quick
Disdain

And conceals
What your eyes fight
To explain
~~~

She looked so sad in sleep
Like a friendly hand
just out of reach
A candle stranded on
a beach
While the sun sinks low
an H-bomb in reverse
~~~

Everything human
is leaving
her face

Soon she will disappear
into the calm
vegetable
morass

Stay!

My Wild Love!
~~~

I get my best ideas when the
telephone rings & rings. It’s no fun
To feel like a fool-when your
baby’s gone. A new ax to my head:
Possession. I create my own sword
of Damascus. I’ve done nothing w/time.
A little tot prancing the boards playing
w/Revolution. When out there the
World awaits & abounds w/heavy gangs
of murderers & real madmen. Hanging
from windows as if to say: I’m bold-
do you love me? Just for tonight.
A One Night Stand. A dog howls & whines
at the glass sliding door (why can’t I
be in there?) A cat yowls. A car engine
revs & races against the grain- dry
rasping carbon protest. I put the book
down- & begin my own book.
Love for the fat girl.
When will SHE get here?
~~~

In the gloom
In the shady living room
where we lived & died
& laughed & cried
& the pride of our relationship
took hold that summer
What a trip
To hold your hand
& tell the cops
you’re not 16
no runaway
The wino left a little in
the old blue desert
bottle
Cattle skulls
the cliche of rats
who skim the trees
in search of fat
Hip children invade the grounds
& sleep in the wet grass
’til the dogs rush out
I’m going South!

Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and
choose the sign of your day
The day’s divinity
First thing you see.
A vast radiant beach
in a cool jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by it’s quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the woolly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us.
Choose, they croon, the Ancient Ones
The time has come again
Choose now, they croon,
Beneath the moon
Beside an ancient lake
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Everything is broken up and dances.

The one who said

only Chameleons

Change Color

hasn't met Humans

I watch the house come down
like a vengeful wave crashing
against my barefoot shore.

I don't know if
I wore my grey shirt
or the blue one with checks.

I can't tell from the dust caking
my chest; beating loudly I
put my hand to it

as if searching for my heart
in the shirt pocket;
I fumble

and feel nothing there.
I'd kept a picture of you there
in the breastpocket of my grey shirt

close to my heart.
And not any more, but a familiar ache;
left are these buttons of your last touch

and your breath in these threads.
You don't know that once you breathed into the sky
it just wasn't yours to take away.