In the middle of the night, she wanted me to
feel her belly—I forget if there was a tumor there
or the gap where a tumor used to be or
just a gap, a mysterious gap in her belly.
And old skin ripples and softens—now mine does though
nobody knows, I look only a little different,
and only I see the downturn in my mouth in the mirror.
I don’t say anything to you because I don’t want to talk about
the gap in my belly, the sags, the hardness that shouldn’t be there.
All I have to say is about pain, pleasure and poison.
So I wait for the good days to speak, I avoid answering questions
and try not to be too much myself as I am.
I wonder about your quiet days, though,
what dismal truths do you keep to yourself?
And do you have moments like these,
reaching through the lonely velvet dream
towards the scintillating shadows of someones,
only to fumble and go slack, exhausted
before having touched the other end,
to find if it’s an inky vibrating projection
or an ephemeral, delicate reality?

I know you are there though I can’t reach you.

And I have something to say though I don’t know what it is.

It isn’t that I love you, although I might.

It's some unformed thought, an adventure lemon bright,

cold lake shine, green dark roots,

quiet mud…

It is peaceful urgency,

reposed progress.

It is knowing that between us words will play like children in the light,

and their games will endlessly expand,

and we will always glance and understand

that language secret even from ourselves.

the fever sits on my face
like an owl on my nose
brooding

The daddy long legs dandy
has a mad hatter laugh.

where were you
when the world unrolled itself before me,
all teeth and tongue

where were you
when the promise that silence would end
never fulfilled itself

where were you,
where were you?

always a one, always a two,
two sides in the mirror, one black, one white,
draped off the other.

two was enough to make one and one was enough, enough.

so I found myself a friend to limp along--with

and we limp along we limp along

one of us is unreal and occasionally we argue as to which one it is

but I think it’s me, I think it’s me,
that teeth and tongue
for two was always found in one
it opens wide and reaches round and—

schwoomp.

you are as beautiful as death
standing outside with your cigarette.

your eyes seeing further
than far away—
you can’t quit that one utterance
of nothing, or you would be left with everything
you have to say.

stand outside and forget that it hurts,
simply exhale and watch time’s tendrils blow away,
and let death make you feel alive
as it settles its tight cool peace on your mind.

you are beautiful as death,
standing outside with your cigarette,
******* impermanence in deep, deep, deep.

the end can’t come soon enough.

Hide your despair from God.
Bury it deep in your heart.

Do not think of kisses,
or hands touching skin.
Do not think of meeting with relief.

Forget the blankness of
this room in the dark.
Forget the empty,
scooped out sadness,
no longer pungent.

Only when you forget your desire
can God see it
in its truth.

Cover it in a cloud of forgetting
and turn your thoughts to the simple joy
of unencumbered being.

There you are a little god,
enough to answer your own prayer.

Here you are a demon,
swathing yourself in torment.

Hide your despair from God.
Bury it deep in your heart.

this can last forever,
this not lasting.
this can be my whole life,
this which is not my life.
I can choose this,
this not choosing.

should I choose it for them?
shall they be the knot that ties
two ropes that do not quite touch?

this is love,
this which is not my love--nor yours.
shall this be their love?
and then they'll be boats tumbling over changing seas?

or should I wait and give them that,
if I ever have it to give?

It is strange to think
that I am striding up a mountain
though I feel so small in my heart.
It is strange to think
that I am still alone on this peak,
though I was holding your hand all the way.
It is strange to think
that no matter how I cling to worldly beings
I still have nothing but this mountain and this sky.
I don't care about what I ought to be--

it never feels like enough.

How can I not
keep trying for more?

I fell in love with a shadow on the wall.
I fell in love with the light.
I fell in love in dissolving, parting,
stepping in sing song.
I fell into never falling,
spreading into every direction,
feeling and being felt everywhere, within and without,
feeling familiar and utterly new.
I fell in love with nobody.
I fell in love with nothing.
Nothing was there--I could see it
in the shadow on the wall,
in the light.
I could not see it, and I was in rapture at the not sight of it,
a face that was not there,
a thousand times a thousand times greater than love.

Yet here I am, miserable, a fool.
With no great gift of strength, or if I had one I squandered it.
A snarl on my lips and my face in the mud,
cringing all around my heart,
withdrawing my hands ever away,
dragging a great sack of rocks.

You say: Your power is effortless.
Your effort is confusion.
Be still and remember what is inside you.
It is a fire that burns sorrow clean.
It is a river that washes your heart new.
All you have to do
is stop trying to be you, or safer, stronger, or better. That is not you.
Don't keep grabbing--let go. Say "Not that, not that."
All those grey, thorny treasures are worthless.
Return to what is eternal: nothing.
A great, shining, smiling, flowing, blossoming, nothing.

Say no, say yes.

along the spider's threads I climb
to find the one I'll claim as mine

even if he's just a bite
to get me through one night

afterwards I'll stay quite still
until the next small thrill

You climbed into a boat of light.
Then the night grew, until it devoured you.

You found your great soul.
And then, you lost it.
You know it is gone forever--
for it will never come to you in that way again,
willingly, and enormously.

This is
how it almost always is.

Once, you were gently surrounded
by endless, loving, non-discrete beings.

Now it is an infinite ache and confusion--
emptiness.

Your love is laid to agonizing rest
in the grave of your heart

and you wade through pathlessness
without any reference points.

O Mourner, remember.

Your love is also there, in despair.

You've lost everything of beauty, strength, and safety;
yet you have gained the only thing of value.

You cannot truly love
until his beautiful mask is stripped from your sight.

The darkness which surrounds you
is not your enemy.

It is the greater aspect of your friend.

Be merciful towards it, even though
it causes you pain.

Remember that emptiness is love unmasked.

(When emptiness presses from within and without,
against what does it press?)

When you are also empty,
then you will be full.

Soft rain on
a cool summer night
quiets loud voices in gardens
revealing the contemplative hum
of the city in motion.

You sleep, still dressed
beside me
in your world always
slightly apart.

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?

what does the river say,
her eyes and mouths and fingers
blinking and glimmering in the light
forming an endless flickering web
traveling up my legs and skin, never quite

what does the river say,
running fast through trees on stones
rippling and pulling

what does the river say,
carrying the lonely barge that floats
into darkness, his long face
looking forward into obscurity from high above
what does he know
(where does he go)

what does the river say,
her body arced and wide
and waiting, never quite

a hand in the waterfall
the river sliding over my shoulders, down my sides
the memory of waves rising in my mind

closer than a thought
ghost standing inside me, looking the other way
a secret known to no one at all

If you give me your glittering pieces
I can make you whole
you speak from inside me

This is not a night to immortalize in words, merely a quiet evening--and there is no great success or fall here. We are more ordinary than we expected to be, yet more odd; and these autumns of our lives are light in fruit.

I feel always like a bright shadow, standing aside--a tree in the garden's periphery, planted as a counterbalance for the side of the eye; paired with a contrasting element and yet waiting to be paired more directly, and to be seen more directly.

My desire has no grand meaning, I am neither deprived nor fulfilled. I am protected, and hurt by protection; for the most part left untended, yet not strong of will or wild.

We are the garden in winter, waiting to be entered and enjoyed; for without you, we are not quite empty, yet not quite full/real. Will spring make me soft/sweet/welcoming again? Will it come (to me)?

some stories are too small to tell
but for the finest eyes to observe
and the widest mouths to recount.

some journeys are too small to take
but for the most patient
and the most determined.

strangely, i live in a world of equanimity
even though I am not equanimious.

quite the opposite: I can even loathe good things
and crave terrible things
and everything in between.

when i am at peace with my longing for it, i come out the other side:
the absurdity of it all is no longer new,
and the sense of possibility
torments me so much less.

long ago, i betrayed any manifesto
i could possibly write.
i am one of the absurdities.
i am not what i am.

good and bad are the boots we need to walk.
one step, two step.
we need more than boots to travel;
and, indeed, you can stay still;
in a sense you could fly instead;
or run, barefoot, calloused, and wild;
either way, the land-sky is,
walk or not, move or stay, see or forget,
it is.

it stretches on, so terribly samely, round.

that is why i am lost
because there is nowhere to go
only to move

and i am alone because
the land-sky is with me, in me, is me, not me.

a place is not really a place
a thing is not really a thing,
nor is it
its opposite
really.

I was once at the tip of an Arrow
then it pierced the wOrld.
When you reach the end
the end and the beginning are one.
What then?

everything is littered around the living room
while it rains softly outside.

you walk around
while I sit tired.

all the objects in this room
wish for someone to care

as they lie, unable to move
to some place better;

instead they are where we dropped them
or where the cats last pushed them, in play.

and they all
wait.

wherever I go,
I never seem to be there.

only the things in the living room care.