somewhere at the bottom of the sky
is the promise of divine indifference
and I go jumping after it
desperate for the blackness

late at night
when you want to sleep
and you can't
bear to surrender
press the strange button
disguised in your remote control
and your little television will flicker
with an odd and greyish picture
and you can hear my voice
and see another moment for a world--
pearls of wood tinkling
a wild woman hacking through a jungle of words
uncovering swirls
of teacups and curls
and tiny grey horses
sprouting antlers of moss
and dancers and jokers
and portraits of loss
each one of these threaded
through the path of destruction
she's hacking her way through
your television
while murmering
oh so quietly

then turn off the image
and lie down and rest
reassured by the knowledge
that out there in the world
there's something just as deranged
as you feel in your chest
and it's there as a gift of
tiny horses in teacups
for you if
you can find it.

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.

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.

It was just as I said, cut flowers
making a mess.
Should have let it die on the vine.
No kiss. Just a book
possessed but not read.
Just as I said.

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...

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.

I ran wild in ecstasy through the night, leaping, tumbling, swinging;
but when I woke up, it was as if from a nightmare.

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.

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.

I'd write a poem for the drunk and insane.
The bitter and banged up.
If only I had something helpful to say.
Day comes some days as an enormous searchlight.
Exposing everything and showing nothing.
We'd like to think there's connection in pain
but mainly within it some wither and others assault.
So we just carry on under the glare.
Keeping an appropriate distance.
And carry the memory of night's emptiness to protect us.

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.)

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

have the
emotional fertility
of an avalanche
waiting

dusty and small a
million times
over

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

this moment is woven like an evil plan
I coursed around myself, tightening
until I was crowded out.

a nest of trophies, with nary a trophy within.

and my heart--or liver, whichever part
feels, is hung like a whole lot of oranges
in a string bag, getting banged around
so much that when you get them home and
see them you won't want them anymore.

and this poem fell out somewhere along the way,
unraveling long before it had even begun,
not quite an idea of an idea.

the nights are like bouncers, really.
impassive and large.
they stare at you, largely emotionless,
and you feel obliged to amuse them,
or impress them, or relieve what you imagine
must be their suffering.
You fixate on them, for that fixed time,
but really you don't matter and neither do I...
the night merely passes.

eventually you'll pass into the new day
and be subject to its messy laws,
woven around you in dark lines,
tightening and tightening--growing
into the next night, the nest of trophies
without trophies.

It's not so bad. Just don't let those oranges
get pierced by all the tight black lines
and dribble out until your legs are sticky
and your heart (or liver) is dry
and as long as you don't let that happen
you'll be fine.

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

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

let me bare my soul
if I can find it
it was just here
last year
then it sank
back down
in the folds
I think you saw it last
passing down the hall
you said you saw a ghost
and so you introduced yourself to me
did you see which way she went

call me, I'm nowhere
and you might
draw me out of the white
into a point of light

call me, lay out the path
what seems small to you
is a new universe to me

If only you were for me and I were for you
we would break this shell of misery and take
over the sun and the moon.
Instead we're strangers, listening to each
other's thoughts, pressed together in a
polite intimacy.
I would give you what you want
if I had it.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

Another night
swaddling stone.

In vain
I seek a face.

My chest aches
carrying the weight.

A siren wails.

I clutch the stone to me.
We are much alike.

A closed heart
can't be turned to light.

Your promise of joy
and release
means nothing to me.

If I set it down
my arms are empty.

Teacup,
Ornament,
Galaxy.
Do not scorn me in your sagacity.
Do not be too nice either way--
you confuse me.
Bell,
Card,
Bird on the wing.
You must suffer to be beautiful.
Not alone--
suffer for me.

ship
sank
silently
in
a
silent
sea

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.

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.

it's a second body sometimes,
a kind of chandelier of eczema,
tumbling from my shoulders
like a ragged royal robe,
white, shining, drifting scales

and this time I wear it
as a familiar dress,
put on me or
grown on me,
a lifeless moss,
scabs without passion,
drooping, dragging,
not reaching far,
not covering, not enobling

for in the deep sky where my soul lives
I've found an island to touch on,
an island filled with a swirling climbing hole
which is a road in time.

and I keep flying up to the surface,
surface of what I can hardly say,
to feel the wind (or what) buffet
and whip us back and forth
on the edge.

somehow you're there on the island too
yet you're not here, are you?
you don't know that you're there,
you don't know that it's there.
Only I've found its rocks,
that say "Yes" when touched,
the road that flows.

And so I wear this ragged dress,
not quite white,
showing and engrossing all,
and I can't help but stoop.
I slouch around my soul in prayer,
to stay close to it.
and if it hurts, it hurts.
I can bear it.

I've found the edge of the night.

As it turns out it's a lot like the middle.

Only more tired.

And you're not there.

Only the satisfaction of your absence is here.

Infinite absences

make the night so peaceful.

If you disinfect it they will come,
awash with hope
and stung with bees and swollen and lush and false.

Fat as love we lie prone on the soil,
ready to be ****** by the universe, grand sun and all
elements so revered

And then, oh, it fails us
that universe and all its myths
its stories turn out to be tissue,
so many spindly webs and we
scatter surprised like August spiders hungry and full and
all we wanted to do was weave and wait
but the winds of fate are passing through
and it doesn't like the clinging
touch of our well constructed
reality
no matter how well it caught
our next bellyful
and our continuing survival.

Eventually we'll mourn, drunk and tearless
scabs dried up and scars set.
That's it.

Whatever it was
it wasn't for me.

You're for me,
your invisible clothes
are the most important thing
in this whole universe
and if they cling and if fate doesn't like them and if I agree
well we know what I can do with myself
and this god-awful poetry.

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?

You thought it was the beginning
but it was the end.
and then it was the end again.
And then again.

And then you thought it was the end
but it was the beginning.
And so it went on,
pummeling and muddling
and the less sense you made
the more sense you made of it all.

I hold a heart in my hands--
mine or yours, it hardly matters.
It's a cup of sweet pain--
sweet because it contains
a new world in each
potential swirling drop.
Sweet because we
can taste each world.
And the pain is just
a sharpening, in this moment,
of memories-- of our longing
for this new world-- for birth--
to take what is now real, but hidden,
and let it ripple and be unveiled--
this world hidden in our hearts,
too big, it aches because
it is ready, pressing against
its hidden containment--
we may not hold it in too long--

Life carries on with its own force,
seen or unseen, the new world emerges
in love from the old, warm and slowly scarred--
one new and ripe with life and will,
the other worn and wise, ready
to go quiet--where it will vanish,
covered and concealed, dissolved
then secretly congealed, gathering a secret pulse
and vibrant eye, to once again--for the first time
in all of time--emerge and be revealed--

Our hearts seem like vessels
but they are constantly transforming from old to new,
from hidden to emergent to present. We have
no one heart,
yours or mine, it hardly matters,
but a constant, murmuring emergence,
an ever exploring meaning.
Here in our heart
a spring rises from its endless roots
and meets the air of our awareness--
rippling, shining, silently singing.

Let our hands and eyes be midwives, then,
when needed.
We can ease these transformations
with a little understanding.
Let our eyes and hands
love the hidden heart
and guide its travels
for we are hearts and more,
wide minds, capable, some times,
of comprehending--peacefully--
the sometimes searing
duality
and finding in its balance
a way to, briefly,
crucially,
meet its blade
with peace--
to use the energy of dissolving
and the energy of emerging
simultaneously
to transform
one more
moment.

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.

If I ever seemed pretty
it was a matter of dust
and shadows.
Sleep will
grab me with
its fingers of trains
and buses and
roads that
lead to
somewhere more
nowhere than
before.
And there we'll
be murdered exquisitely
because what could be better
than to become pointless
in the puddles and the horse muck
torn down by feeble minded
gardeners and an immense sadness
that hungers, hungers, fangs and
horrible jaws and
tearing and
long past feeling
you've been
destroyed and
destroyed again
and again
and
again
and
long
past
feeling
you

still


are




desac-­
ra-

-ted

one, no
way, no
wall.
there is no
well, no
we, no
within.
there is no
will, no
with, no
wild.
there is no
would, no
wind, no
wonder.

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.

It's quite simple: you are trapped.
And every trap is just like in the
story. Sit there for awhile and try
not to be too tormented. Don't let
the walls get you down--or the
moat and the crowd. Not even their
pennies and peanuts.

And just like in the story, once
you settle down, you'll find that
secret passageway.

Then the plot thickens.

Don't worry.
It's the same every time.

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.