No more missives of ordinary agony.
Control, control, tighten your belt,
and your lips, and your eyes,
and your smiles.
Hide your hands beneath your thighs.
Let them descend to your depths if they like
and in the meantime, keep it hidden,
pulsing, private,
let it bloom into a garden
in another world, that they can't yet see
and when they do, they won't know
what it means, that the water awakening and speaking in that garden
was the water of moments and secrets for them (that they could have had,
but instead, the other world has)

I am
the balance point
at the center of
a vast universe—
whooping with complexity
and groaning with emptiness.
And how absurd to see me
standing there,
powerless in an excess of power—
my only fulcrum
within me as I take a deep breath
and whisper, implore, reason, soothe
the great, uneven immensities
to be calmed,

and I dissolve my consciousness
into placelessness
so that I may place myself at the center of each
zone of complexity, each expanse of emptiness,
and center each millimeter within itself,
so that all this universe is a universe of balance,
continuously shifting yet continuously balanced,
her foot in absolute certainty on the path,
her body all containing,
the void her nourishing heart,

the enormity neither ordinary,
nor frightening,
nor any one thing,
but to see the consciousness in formlessness—
looking back at me—
all creating,
(and yet created, reflecting,) and yet
giving me
such power.

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?

explain this knife's wound.
gaping and jagged
and, surely,
without cause.
empty, too, look--
inside there is no substance,
only sound, vibration, shuddering,
flickering, shattering, glimmering, deafening

explain this knife's wound.
always secretly my mouth hanging open
in imitation of it.
no words come out though.
if they did it would only be a call
to close up the wound and
suffocate its interior.

explain this knife's wound.
fear on its edge
though no knife.
that was tossed aside long ago
no longer needed
since the wound opens anew
every night.

You are my axis,
from the root of the earth,
through my heart,
to the star field,
and back.

I can't see you,
but I can feel you;
like balance, you are always there
yet often I have to find you again.

Throughout the day
I am many animals:
leaping, cavorting, laughing,
hiding, crafting, contemplating...
There are times when I stop transforming
and I am either a shadow or a light,
a husk or a seed.

I don't know why it isn't easier.
But I can feel that axis,
that right place.
That place where the chaff
falls away
and I remember that I am alive.

You are my axis,
from the root of the earth,
through my heart,
to the star field,
and back.

I would do better to forget you
before I come to know you.
I don’t know if you cause me pain
or make me remember pain again.
Am I humiliated, or do I merely fear humiliation.
Or is it my fear that is humiliating.
Do you uncover or cover me up.
Is it my falsehood or my truth that I hate.

there's a curtained circle that emerges
and sometimes it's one of care and thought
while it can also be one of soft absolute obscurity
and it can be cold, toothy, rasping, devouring
and these are such different kinds of danger

I’d like to write a little poem without words
like a very small flower located somewhere between
a meadow and the side of a mountain
opening silently, for no one at all,
certainly not you.

But undoubtedly a strange little rodent
would eat it.

Here I'll set down
the rules I'm to follow,
thin threads of
highway lines.
Don't write,
don't ask,
don't invite.
You've said enough, wait
for the reply.
Let him work.
Don't help.
Let him figure you out.
Let him say, "There's something there I want"
"That I can't find in anybody else."
"I must learn how to reach it."
"I must get it for myself."
Let him think about you,
in the middle of the night.
Let him reach out.
Let him reveal himself,
not so casually, not so easily,
let him want more than
easy warmth.
And if he does not
then let him be.
When you're ready for your favorite mind
you'll find it.

The prickly rose does not flower,
and hides its thorns under artificial
innocence.

each strand of desire
woven in the air loom
into a gauzy nest
hidden in the air

there to tell you
how powerful
is each element unseen

each future, each word
each possibility, each touch

and all those desires
hints of which were conceived
long ago, tendrils opening
with powerful wills, stretching outward
along time

do these twine into your air space
or just see you from far away,
harmoniously twirling
in the wind

wind in the trees sounds like a door opening
in the garden, someone is touching plates over and over
dry plates with hands that are only a tiny bit sweaty,
so each time they rub and have to give up their grip
and someone else has a tambourine between the tall buildings
and is shaking it, and shaking it fast
they said that I can see through to death
and I said I know, you told me that just yesterday
then they said you are an actress
here are your papers
the play opens tomorrow night
and the plate and the tambourine went quiet
but the door is still opening

Love makes worlds
give birth.

You are the dream of a dream.

My love can dream better.

Be what you like.

You're no dream of mine,
with your gift of backwards
running
time.

And if you're guided by guilt rather than love
then think on your hands, which touched me
under false
pretenses.

As they will the next one, and the next.

I won't paralyze your pleasure
seeking with truth--God, *****
what you will--

How can I really condemn your half-
truths and your weaknesses, It's
you that said of others "We all
do our best, that's not enough,"
it wasn't I.

Fool yourself if you like.

I'd rather lose you and keep truth
--much rather.

turn the lights on
to this body in this night
flushed with anger
and eyes staring
into nonsense like
fog lights brightly blind
into which we dropped
a spirit deep
as into a bottomless well
and it fell into the darkness
yet can't be entirely lost
and stares back
out of the absurdity
the disordered emotions
and disproportionate flesh
around you one cat is awakened and
quietly crying, light on the white tiles
so you stand before your reflection
and trace *******
down the line of your center,
which in your fancy
seems a means of escape
but the inside will
never open up and be seen
or touched and you
can never quite give up

an ecstasy of snuggles

have the
emotional fertility
of an avalanche
waiting

dusty and small a
million times
over

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.

Wow.

(Wow what?)

Just Wow.

Too many times now.

So many snaking paths arching and winding to this very door.

And what're you crying for?

Facing the grandest, vastest yawn,

what can one say but Wow?

And how.

The world gives so little that

eventually even the greediest must

count as his greatest treasure light seen glinting in the specks of dust.

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'd gladly climb
back into your heart
and get drunk on your pulse
again--that
limitless
chamber.

I'd gladly climb
back between your rivers
and feel the power
of everything most ancient and
utterly new
behind, through,
and before me--
speaking
with rippling
mouths
and signs.

You're gone,
though.
Everything is back to
the way it was before.
The invisible seed
died and dissolved,
unimplanted.
It's all still there,
scattered, dissolute,
lonely.

I would give anything
to be fooled again
by that most true
illusion.

My hands are empty,
my words are empty,
my blood courses without destination,
my cells divide without promise,
my heart only waits for you
to come back with your drunkenness,
your truth.

When you seek me out
and I say it's not happening
don't act out
of the passion of apathy.
What we long for
isn't what we have.
Don't let's find
the virility in sadness.
Not that there's
much risk of that...

You and I already
keep around enough baubles
to keep away the
loneliness.

Don't let's make
each other more
of the same.

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?

dear one
already you're
becoming no one

and I adjust
to yet another
kind of loneliness

the many memories
of your face inspire
faint longing and
a shiver of dread

somewhere you
go about your day
and there our joy's at most
a dissipating footnote
of confused regret

loving you was hard enough;
not loving you,
infinitely harder.

It's all
wide
awake.

That which you love
is right by your side,
every side.

And you
just have to find
the convoluted path
to that closest point.

It all depends on
releasing those painful thoughts
that come from sharp, straight
paths
too obvious to last.
And doing it as a habit so you don't keep getting lost
in the nearness that
seems so far.

It takes time but it's not
hard.

why don’t I pound away at this sadness.
I’ve got nothing else to do but sleep.
somewhere in between the crumbling stones
won’t I find it,
something worth having.
a face that sees,
a mouth that gives
a body that knows.
eyes that turn the lights on.

not another
stumbling shambling
upright stick figure
of a smart man, right
now and usually,
words saying,
face being,
mouth speaking,
body leaning,
eyes to see
where to go.

it didn’t seem to hurt before he came here,
a scarecrow waiting for his clothes
and I put them on him—clothes I’d saved
all that time.
Dress up clothes
for ideal roles.
Clothes don’t make the man.
Buttons don’t make the heart.
A mask doesn’t make a face.
And he doesn’t know the play he’s in,
a play about sadness
to pound away at it
only when everyone else is asleep
like an aspiring escapee
so nobody else knows
how much I’d give
to not be here
to be in the flat plains past these feelings
running in the sun
nothing on and nothing around
and nobody
just completely free
and forgotten
and forgetting.

here's a poem
that isn't about
what it's about.
here's a window in the sky
perfectly transparent,
and deceptive.
here's a face
that isn't a face,
a person
that isn't a person,
pain that isn't pain,
emotions
that aren't emotions,
feelings about something
that isn't what they're about,
physical sensations that
are not physical at all.
here's a jar that is empty,
and dangerously full,
open and inaccessible.
here's a dribble of water in its bottom,
corrosive as acid,
maddening as quicksilver.
here it is.
look around you--
everything's normal,
same as always.

Because this is what's normal,
remember?

night passes slowly,
the air conditioner hums and burbles.

he turns in bed
and the mattress wobbles.

from each point endless threads
span out in all directions.

I am not lost,
I have a wealth of choices.

my heavy, tense, vibrating heart
can soften and slow down.

each strand seems
like a feeble wisp

but eons are built
on this.

these paths
are enough.

the bed is still
and he sleeps.

the hum sings and gurgles
like a wise, rattling drone.

from here my freedom is infinite
yet each choice is the same.

peace comes only
when I accept it.

in the night in the dark
i will shape with my hands
a round word
to roll to the underworld.

sleep's wings fan over my face
making a smaller night.

the word rolled away.
now again I'm left
with a small mouth
and dry eyes.
nothing to say nor cry.
once upon a time
I made my own wonders.
now I am
squeezed out between
worlds.

You thought I needed something from you
But we met by the canal in the night
You though I needed something from you
But I didn't need light
You thought I needed something from you
But you gave it to me
From your chest coursed all the words and sweetness of loss and life
The message I needed to move on to the next world
And though I never saw your face (in that dark)
I won't forget.

sitting inside the air loom,
weaving my fingers through the rippling warp,
a little song sung by each traveling strand

and today I've woven a tapestry of fantastical someone
and his warm, calm regard
and the open walls he builds
to complement the light

sitting inside the garden spaceship,
the sky in my eyes and the jungle at my back,
whispering sweet exhalations against the wide windshield

I fly into a story of fantastical someone
and he's climbing over mountains to see what he finds
and his open heart is a mouth and an eye
open and scanning the horizon for a glimpse of a memory of mine

There's a secret somewhere near.
It's to do with the cities of the heart,
the intricate jungle of tiny weeds,
the ocean of miniature water pools.
It has to do with everything you've dreamed
might appear in the new person in your life
and then learned to wait for--forever.
It has to do with all the pain
you distract yourself from
with each destructive habit.
It has to do with those hints
of what pure life is about.
It has to do with all the ripples
after ecstasy.

What you really love
grows dark and fearsome
as all things have two sides
and for this, both are powerful.
Don't run away, stay
and open your heart
ever so slowly.

how many more times
will you have to break my heart
before it is finally
the right shape

let go of your heart,
let it out of your fist.
let the blood travel in its natural exhilaration.
it knows the way.
(it knows every way.)
look away, let your eyes
rest awhile.
you know the way.
your heart is transforming, transformed
from a pump to a seed,
transforming utterly
into a new being.
grow to the sky.
go coursing forward.
you know the way.
(you know every way.)
rest your voice awhile.
let it change--
let it travel through your body,
let it be transformed.
the love in your heart
can transform worlds
even when
you have covered it utterly
for
it knows the way

I want you to come closer, to be more intimate
but I'm not sure I would like it if you did, or like you so well
and I'm not sure that I like you so well now
although I know that I like you very much, or at least enough
though perhaps I would like you quite a lot if you were happier
which you would be if I loved you of course
and you'd be happy too, for a little while,
if I merely lusted enough, and liked a lot too
but what good is being happy for a little while, or even a long while,
if one simply returns to being gentle, intelligent, dour?
and then, though I know you would love to be loved
and you find me a natural companion, adequately and exceptionally,
I am not sure you like me now as much as one might, or that you will
and that is why I tell you so little of myself
though I wish you would know me better.

Eros is madness,
but madness isn't Eros.

In a half-round room, the air cooler thunders and drones.
Someone snores gently, someone else shifts restlessly, now and then.

The day was hot until a downpour came.
The roof is still standing.

This is a poem about an uncomfortable, unremarkable day.
A day of love, a small child.
Another day of married truce.
A day of distant familiarity, distant warmth, fading and waning,
trembling hands reaching
into the closet for the bandaids.
A day of impatience
mostly set aside,
leaving room for hope
to re-enter,
with its needles
stabbing slowly,
hour after hour,
maddeningly...

So then hope is set aside,
forcefully.
The needles continue anyway, though dulled.
One does not sleep, as usual.
The little child sighs, and shifts; sheets rustle.
The drone intones.

I remember the mirror and color that once kept me company; I can see it there outlined in the dark.

Through the window, a line of lights in nearby windows.
There are those awake in the light, and those like me, awake in the dark.

All is well, well enough, all will be well.
All is distressed, rough heart, looking up at the dark,
the great absence, which has
generously filled this leaky, dented cup
time and time again--from time to time.

I have a path, again, at last.
My youth leaks away.
I drink from the cup of love--it keeps me awake--
and it isn't long before my mouth
finds something missing.

So I write a rough poem.

There was a man, my patron saint--
I twanged the strings and we both cringed but then
I couldn't unstrike the sound--
so we kept cringing--well.
Fortunately that's far away now,
and the echoes have faded.

Who I am, who I pretend to be, who I think of myself as, how people seem to see me--these flash in and out,
like card tricks almost. My self-belief is probably
the least real of them all, though made up of truth.

The tide ebbs now (yet still pregnant with current) but
only one thing has changed: I no longer despair.
The earth's call to my body now is natural.

And now the time for thought has ended,
taken away by the little child.

When he's gone
the bed needs another blanket to be warm.
Often even a heating pad on his side.

I could just set up two heating pads
and without us, the bed would make more sense.

Better than two crap machines.
And more clean.

oh ache,
let me praise thee
let my voice rise
and in turn upraise thee
oh ache,
love in disfavor,
flung to the walls
of the heart's many chambers
you possess vision
like a dark pool that speaks
through the mouth of the vessel
in lifetimes or weeks
oh ache,
lost underwater,
wait a little longer
to breathe again.

Sitting still, this is how I am. Just a little bit drunk on fear.
Sitting on the plank. Legs dangling. Ship heaves up and down,
I swing up and down, holding on, trying to trick myself into the sense
that this is a kind of stability. I say to myself, “I’m on the plank,
off the ship, looking down.” But where I really am is over a very
wet abyss—a universe unbreathably foreign, full of seemingly familiar
monsters. Just dangling. Nothing to keep me out but the grip of my thighs and
my relatively small hands. And the ocean whispers deceptively, “This is where
you belong.” And there is that always suicidal pull, “Yes—embrace me.
Press around me and show me every dark, silent strangeness.”

The ocean is the more real. It holds all those thoughts for which I ache,
holds all that I am missing in /my /self most ancient. And
in there /you turn around and /see me for real.

No. That’s not it. It’s something else entirely.

Something deep down there.

only a fool
would sit here, aching
for nothing.

night after night after
day after
day.

and I can't stop
thinking about the one thing
that hints at what may
one day
be.

It's not you,
it's just my longing I've been talking to.

You are peaceable and still
while I clutch my guts, and imagine myself
to be gravely injured.

I'm just hungry, hungry for a long time.

There's a little something there, in the light
between your quiet and my groaning thoughts

but how small it is, how insignificant,
compared to all my frustration, my stale desire,
an ocean, complete with sunken
cities, ancient,
strange creatures,
vast emptiness,
crevices of boiling stone...

the bus snaked along beside forested beaches
where old men watched and
when they caught one, shot
the local cats

when we arrived at night
at a peninsula with an array of windblown grey buildings
it seemed cold and bleak: so I laughed
loudly and said "How Puritan!"
to show that we would force our brightness
on this place

one of the boys thought I was here to get married
and have a driving test. I said no,
I'm old enough that I've done both,
driven and loved enough to
feel unsafe with them both.
we found the lights to turn on
and the radio. I went off in search
of the wherewithall to make
liquored tea.

and walking down the wooden hall I longed
for a sweet cat to hold against
my chest.

You don't mind the lines quite.
You mind the times nobody saw your eyes without lines.
You mind the lovers you didn't have
and you mind some kinds you did.
You mind that worry lines came first and stayed.
You don't mind the age,
quite,
you mind the time that
merely passed.
You mind the friends that moved
far away and further, forgetting.
You mind the conversations never had.
You mind the days and nights passed without remark.
You mind the waiting gone unanswered, year after year.
You mind that your body didn't stretch out with adventure,
but with disuse.
You mind that quiet was a better choice than disaster.

You mind that you will change now
before you got to be yourself then.

Now you can take comfort that as the flaws slowly change
from flaws of youth to flaws of age
it will be a long time before anyone notices
because no one is paying attention to the little details

not any one of them.

is your dryer driving you mad,
dried up electric or gas?
are the walls melting all around you,
gooey with paper and damp in the mist?
has your garden been taken over by spiderwebs,
each one with a hopeful hungry orange
little being in the center, a thick closure
of soft sticky strands filling up those well planned paths?
have the flowers all fallen away, admitted defeat in august,
to be covered up by eternal mums or merely weeds?
Does the dust creep back into each corner
unjustifiably fast, so that all you can do is to watch with disgust?
Do the dishes grow heavier and more plentiful
with each passing meal?

Well, have I got a solution for you...

So cheap it's nearly free.

Just burn down your house,
wrap yourself up in rags,
and make your way to the temple.

Because I hear at the temple
they need someone to help clean.

You weren't there,
but this morning was a love song
for us.

The sky grew from black to blue,
birds awakened and sang
just as they have, year after year
for hundreds of years.

I uncurled my arm and rested it against your left side.
You did the same in your sleep, your arm clumsily unfurled over my torso.
We were each
equally warm.

The sky lightened
though the sun was still hidden.
The trees were then visible
waving and turning their
acacia fingers and flickers
and bowing and touching.

One bird sang on
of his empire.

You grunted and rolled awake,
and looked at me with a crooked, sleepy eye.
"Still up?"

night passes
and there's no one to write to
though someone snaps his fingers behind me
and wanders back and forth, picking things up and putting them down
and someone else is sleeping somewhere else
and some others wait in the back of their minds

I'm reclined, hands on the keys
belly sorting, one leg bent to warm cold foot on warm calf
face dissatisfied

he's on his way to sleep will I come
and I'll come and do these things and this is all that I'll do
the objects of life exist and I am not
a part of weaving strands between them to create another
world within a world
I'm alive surviving with my vibrance past
and in the face of winter putting out a
few blossoms last

Now this dark pool is quiet,
it hardly drips.
And so we wait here, contemplating,
nervously.
Nothing to say,
little to plan,
less to reveal.
Your private space is safer,
most of the time.
I know that much.
I would lie beside you
and play with your hair
while you drift to sleep
glad that I'm there.
Here, though, who can say
what lies in my dark pool?
Scry if you like and see.
It will tell you of something distant,
not what's within.
Always hiding, disguising,
pregnant with what might be fear.
Elsewhere there are women
with red maps of meaning
coursing through their organs,
veins, muscles and bones--
My heart's as alive as the underworld,
weirdly irrepressible,
eternally mourning.
Still there are roads here too,
and those who know some parts of the way.
I want to do better, be better--
not collapse on the instrument
but touch it one key at a time,
controlled and skillfully wild.
Must remember,
must remember,
I am still alive.

I take it all back. All of it--I'll eat every word. Every contradiction, every idea, every excuse, every truth. I'll eat it all. I'll turn myself outside in and start again--

I wish I could write you a poem
that said everything in it, in code
but all I have to say is the ordinary
version of everything
which is in itself a kind of code

and in order to say everything
surely I'd have the answer contained within it

I wish that I could have gone on being happy and foolish.

now you and I can't
spark anything
because we've tasted
sadness already and
it's like a wet match

and most nights I don't even mind
only you're the only one who makes me feel
not lonely.

(There's so much you want from me
but I doubt there's one essential thing you need from me
like that.)