The new growth on my apple trees is covered in aphids;
the leaves curl and darken under the crawling green foam of their bodies.
My roses broke out in black, dropping yellow leaves,
bearing thick sickly flowers of hope on bare spindly stems.
Now even old hollyhocks have scales, those innocent seeming bumps
multiplying and spreading. And the aphids will go everywhere when they
**** the apple trees dry, they are already migrating
to poppy buds and young tomatoes.

I go to the nursery, resisting the urge to wring and brush off my hands.
She uncovers the facts--my garden got no fertilizer, and water may be insufficient.
So I will try to give my garden what it needs--the nutritious powder, the thorough watering,
the ladybugs in cheesecloth cages, the beneficial microbes, and where I must I will hack the plants away.

My self, meanwhile,
crawls too.

I slather vice on the wound, but the sting always returns.

The world expects me to be stronger than I am. The world is set up
for strong people, and it provides for them.

Once again I am like the short, shy child standing by the counter, overlooked.
But I cannot expect to grow into strength. And the world will only protect me
once I no longer need protection.

At times I sit in a stream of presence. I slather virtue on the wound,
but the sting always returns.

I straddle need and lack,
a gaping wound between my feet. I could sink down that hole,
but it too hurts, it hurts.

I am in the wild--no gardener comes to tend to my hunger or thirst,
or my illness after harsh conditions. Well, one comes--
a harsh gardener comes.

I wring and brush off my hands. I brush off each little invasion,
but there are always more.

It's spring and I mainly feel morbid,
dark, in my bitter little room.

Watch, the blossoms are falling from the trees again.
The year cycles through another series of imperfect moments.

Outside open mike night clubs, each evening, the young mustachioed hobos
hobnob in their fine tight pants.

I stride past them and wish that I wanted to know.

I pretend there's some kind of north star
and I have pasted an invisible face
on it,

but you won't go along with my play pretend.

I could be sitting in the center of a web,
with a long cigarette and my lips dark red,

but there's no devouring mouth at the end of my promise--
I just want them to want to know.

In case you haven't noticed, I am dull, dull
though tempting still
to men who follow close behind their pointy bits

Yes, I, glory and glamour, unattractive isolated child,
great adventurer, efficient traveler, queen of my enameled laundry *** and tiny oar,
fearless reader of uncomfortable old books about Africa and paperbacks,
seer of mirrors for the first time, knower of a few obscure things,

have been diminished, trapped
in a cage of my own making
hardly gilded
$775 a month with torn floors and bruises, still a good deal,
rent gradually rising

I could strip my skin away to the milk inside

or I could build a great, if dubious ship
and float along the river of fate, unguided now, see how far I get,
bailing myself out for as long as I can

I co
me
in li
ke
a
se
rpent:
clos
ed
tight
and
long,
writh
ing
imp
er
cep
tib
ly
wi
th
in
my
se
l
f

You are a wisp of a thing, cradled in my arms, suckling in vain, a ghost in my shirt. No one knows you are there.

They forgot you in a paper bag, withered, and you were taken out with the trash.

You come for me with your absence, you comfort me with it: I protected you by making sure you are not here.

I am here. I am a wisp of a thing, and no one knows it (yet they all do) because I carry you in my shirt, the way some carry stains. You can't seem to live.

I don't know why any more. I acknowledge that I have been bested. I carry on, knowing that--my defeat resounds, year after year. I cannot spin it and myself again. But I manage to shield you still.

I do carry on--I will enjoy this life until I sink down and am taken out and finish my withering, as you have.

We are only a little more insignificant than everyone else for dying this way, early.

I visit the black cup but rarely
so I find it only soft and slow.
Drunk in the corner of the living room
the rabid dogs forget you.
They slumber, sore and fretful,
until grey peace invades their brains again.
We have all confused enlightenment with something...
a bottomless cup of love,
an oblivious fog.

You are my race forward and backward,
and my truth and my lie.

You are sorrow and joy in one cup--
and a sobering high.

You are my wild ally, or I am yours,
and this is the celebration
of our uneasy truce.

x

I give you my heart, as I might give it, tied in a little sack, to a stranger passing on the road--
yet the bird is a heart that flies where it wills, and renders all ******* into illusion,

so you can not keep it,
any more than I could have kept it
in its safe cage.

What use do you have for a wild bird, anyway?