Am I thus soiled by envy and toil
or bettered in a blind groped striving?
I will blow a hole through a massif
not to defile its majesty, but to carve,
to carve and cut my own dark passage,
below the harrying slopes, below the treeline,
over which ice ever bars my way.

And as you push on to the summit,
short of breath and vague before the wind,
I will burst upon the nether *****
and stand, caked in the grit of digging
long and veered off from the clear true line
to find below, a mist soaked glen,
hunched beneath a hesitant dawn
while your eyes are stung white
in a naked unyielding sun.

If I gave thanks yesterday,
must I do so today?

If I gave thanks that the tires
held traction, there on the black ice,
unthrottled toward the jack-knifed
semi, folded in the median,
thumping through clods
of thrown and frozen earth,
would that be enough?

Would it be enough to be grateful
for the physics of glide,
steer with the slide, after all,
it was only mustard I needed,
coarse ground for the sauce,
for the sauce that will remain
untouched on the table,
peppered with panic and ****.

I find
not many lighters and too many cheap shades,
lain against a loose-hinged trifocal,
Expensive, lost and necessary,
upon the flip-top notebook
bound with crushed spiral wire.
And within, the gibberish
of a young girl’s day -
there are holes above the i’s
and myriad loves to Matthew.

I find
a green squeeze coin purse -
an old man’s plastic strongbox -
scavenged of coin
that only three washers remain,
three washers and a button,
nested in the scarves,
in the acrylic scarves
and the coarse wool plaid ones.

And I find gloves,
brown, amber and worn,
and taking them for my own,
slipping them on, I find
my fingers curl in the fashion of yours
and the momentary warmth
of your hands upon mine.

Must we sing the round ecliptic?
Must we suppose a star immortal -
Must we trace these patterns of us - up there -
While we, down here, know death?

What a noble self-loathing -
To presume upon the unthinking night
Our disdain for cloud, to swell
In our own black vision when a new moon
Unmasks oblivion, when a new moon
Denies a shadowed path.

Stars must die in their time,
Must crush upon themselves
As we wither and lust eternal.
But what can never pass,
Like a low and clever fog,
Is the mute unknowing
Bestowed upon a log.

From some forgotten cache,
a bur oak, scrawny, stunted
humble and tawny, high
on the red sheer palisade,
twists the moon into shards
and shattered pearl.

Raked by the ever wind,
a bur oak -
cleaved into cloven rock
abhors this ****** moon -
its waning wandering wax -
such mockery of clinging.

Sprung from some forgotten cache,
a bur oak rails against it's own
stripped rippling arms,
as if to proclaim and rightly:
I, alone upon this rock,
hold the blackest gray squirrel -
that hoarding, heaving vermin -
to account on this crooked,
blighted night.

Tobacco tar walls,
Resin ceiling,
Dun carpet floor -
all receding -
creased receding
to the elevator door -
and the doors -
the doors - the endless
doors repeating.

I drop a penny.
I squat but it's tails.
I look up at a girl
looking up.
Her hair is black,
tangled comely.

She has a chocolate smear
on her right cheek,
Her uncertain teeth
bared in child's
glee and caked with it.

She wears a mustard
blouse stained canary
and her pants are
frayed at the ankles.

Her eyelids are ticking
ticking the flickering light
She says,
"The light turns everything yellow
and nobody picks a bad penny,
that lift only goes down."

She says her name is Mara,
"Mara will be around."

I know neither ******* nor Liberation.
I have no Holy Day in June.

I don't need to beg for status -
whether legal or human.

I don't run when the laws arrive,
and no clerk counts the items
in my hands going into the fitting rooms.

Nobody checks my receipt,
and no trooper trails waiting
for me to drift over the line.

Ain't no door been closed,
no fountain restricted,
no glass in my ceiling.

Listing these truths reveal
what's been in plain sight
all along.

But I tell you this.

If every crayon in the box
were melted down in one great ***,
the wax will be brown,
and if molded around a wick,
and lit,
the flame would reach
unto heaven,
and light a brave new land.

Sun go down in boxcar blue
Swing arm crank go down them dew
Flash eye drag with horn and load
Coupling break for sorra’ stowed
Side dump **** and tank car ****
Jag the night-black knuckle jump
Jump the rise and run the moon
Next town down be falling soon
Loco Pilot spark them strikes
Wrest the ties out from them spikes
Second howl coyote song
Mayday brake air long ere long

If in digging
through grim archives
I unearth those callous
epithets of my youth
Find on a resin smeared page
the smoke of anger
and the greed
for a touch yielding
to my thick dumb hands

Read the hormones
like a book of days
a book of sorrows
a book of shadows

In a salubrious haze
I will come to know myself
my ways and wend the
crooked maps of the ill-spent
where X marks the spot
turn left at the willow
right at the stump
and realize
I survived myself
if only for a time.

The waning day conducts the night chorus
in the clicking of the chipping sparrow
in the electric pulse of cicadas
and rasping claws of gray squirrels
on flaking bark and cedar fences.

Robins tremolo puddles like dogs
and cut grass fumes with notes
of parsley and cracked pepper
as the starlings dig in for the night
shoulder to shoulder in the ash
raised like a baton for the next movement

When the lights dim and a nail
of the moon polished smooth
plucks a single string and strums
the minor chords of owls on frogs
and the nightswift's perfect fifth.

Sheathed in a concrete calyx,
a flower, a generation folded in
upon itself, waits the horrors of the sun.

These petals once unfurled, fell upon
by hard rains and scorch care not, I am told,
the grim and arrowed planting, but
brace against the stem of the next blossom,
for none, I am told, hold the wind alone.

But that is not for me to know.
I only know that these seeds forever sown,
do not prove lustrous on the hills,
in the fields, narrow-tilled,
worse yet, in a vase, I am told,
worse yet, in a vase for gazing.

Dangling on the burn end of breath,
a word -
gaunt, untenable, reliable
as the long tone of wind in tall grasses.

Dangling on the burn end of breath,
a syllable -
unto nothing, unspeakable
as the split airs among the spruce
wind
breaks.

Dangling on the burn end of breath,
the better half of Bartlett pear,
lightning struck,
bows and groans along the cedar
fence,
into the bass clef of everything
that clings.

Orange pulse light and embers
conspire to darken a moonless night
blacker than eyes, blacker
than the slurs of late tires
commuting,
communing
with cricket brushes,
the snare beat of toads.

Dangling on the burn end of breath,
music -
unconducted, underscored, decomposed
by the rattling rains of silence and smoke.

The cook and the teacher,
paid low,
trusted
to feed the body,
feed the mind,
clean,
left unfed and fettered
to the edge of a dime.
Lower down
the chain of demand,
two rungs below
the garbageman
that swiftly whisks
our waste away.

The CNA, the DNA
of the elderly
trash-heap industry,
scraping by,
just scraping by,
but trusted,
regulated,
called to task
for a stain,
three rungs below
the garbageman
that swiftly whisks
our waste away.

Minimum wage
daycare slave,
entrusted
with the safety
and well-being
of children,
four rungs below
the garbageman
that swiftly whisks
our waste away.

We came upon the delta, we, brothers,
split out from the blue wide river,
contrapuntal and lost among cypress,
moss, muck and brute-teeth jangles.

And though I never carried a tune,
I carry the tone of your faded fifths,
your deviled tri’s and slip-foot riffs,
an octave less than finding you gone.

But in these stale bite-fly airs,
in this green moss-dripped fiction,
better hoped than hung as fourths
for a firm resolution - I know

You perch upon a stone, not lay beneath it,
and pluck the roots of black mangrove.

The pin is broken,
And the wheel has slipped from the rod.
The mechanics of our passage
Are broken now,
And all our worldly ventures
Have spilled out onto the ground:
Her red backed Bible,
Your cast-iron pans,
The lens we used to burn down ants.
All there in the muck:
My bad corduroy pants.
Jerseys of just so much
Victory - and victories
Counted large though
Lying there in the brown ruts
Of just so much passing,
Garbled there in the treacle.

And yet we stand here,
Mute to repair with dumb hands,
Mute to the simple truth
That our eyes must now,
As they always have,
Wander vagrant away
From what is now untreasured,
What is now unburdened garbage,
Beside the still spilled cart,
Beside the wheel that dragged us here,
Beside the sheared-off pin
That left us here
On a muddy track
That will never lead home.

The orange slim line of the chopper overhead
Means only one thing here - certainty.
Certainty that northeast of where I stand
Is a near departure,
Perhaps wedged behind a wheel.
I will count the minutes
As I count thunders and strikes.
I can do nothing else.

For in the next thick hour
In the next thick breath,
A mother may weep a son,
A father may curse the winter ice,
Perhaps wail a daughter’s name.

We must all then pause and wait,
Listen and turn away from this moment
Of our own sure circumstance
And bow our heads to the certainty
Of another, out there,
Uncertain in the crumpled snow.

On the face of it
is  a mountain.
Below that,
orange sinus.

And in the long drip of it,
down to the lip of it,
a snot thing crawls.

But I took it on the chin,
lurching up to the clime
where leaves resolve
to needles, and the white
cliffs fall like beetles
in a tinderbox.

And the tangled lines
hooked below to stumps
and trinkets trickle
in the slipstream,
warm as mucous,
slow as dream,
bound to rust,
released as steam,
and effluents.

They are not yours, those eyes -
those hazel eyes crusted
with sleep-thrashed release -
and neither the mind behind
thinking of toast on a new day,
soft-buttered and still yet crisp.

And those are not yours, those fingers,
curled smooth-knuckled on the cutlery,
waiting for toast and soft butter -
and neither the wait for the kettle’s
pitched steam or the dry tea bag
hanging beneath the rim -

And neither the milk nor honey - ,
never the milk or honey.

No, these are not our things -
these eyes, these minds, these hands -
breads, butters, tea -
not even the footfall that drags
across the bare wood floor is ours
To break the one true fast.

These are our grandmothers’ things,
and all the grands before them
that soon as sunk into sand, rise
and blink in the grandson eye,
takes the granddaughter hand to spread
butter on toast and boil water for tea.

From once to somehow to somewhere,
The brittle language of hope cracks
Between my teeth, much as ice
Cracks beneath my boots as I,
Unhurried on a wax gibbous morn,
Make my way to the car.

For what is hope but an admission
That what is is not enough. Take this -
The assertion that on this day,
In this winter, it is the care of a step,
The purchase of a sole,
The purchase of rubber on ice
That holds this teetering balance
Upright above the ankles.

I’ve little hope beyond that.
I’ve little hope for I know come April,
In the surety of swelling streams,
Each once somehow somewhere
Dripped from the mind,
Stripped from the hope-bound winter,
Will babble on to the sea and die,
While the earth sinks a little
Beneath my feet.

The demonstration of love don't need no permit
ain't gonna be no counter-demonstration
no cops no barricades no rubber bullets twitching
in the chamber for that one yahoo that sets the whole
**** thing alight. Love in the streets is a whispering
riot with small hand-written signs in a style of smiles
and gestures not to provoke but to invoke a species
of politic bent on the destruction of judgement
stopping traffic with small recognitions that the other
is none other than oneself in a similar skin.
The demonstration of love don't need no big flags
honking horns or locking horns or riot gear
to wade baton-wielding dispersions cuz
it already spread down the side roads
and the thin avenues are thick with it.

Three rib bones flush from the culvert pipe
after hunks of pelvis beside the tracks -
the tracks with no arms but rumble
rumble strips and red bell ticks.

Clang go the bones
where no grass grows

Bang go the trains
and the pink prairie rose

Rattles with the rush
in the same stiff pose

as ribs and hunks of pelvis whiten
and wash no further than the small
and shallow depression cleaved
by spilt rain through a culvert pipe.

Outside the house that's never ours, down-***** and foundation, the faceless one in violet jacquard slid the stone away. And he was strong, by God, for he did it with a touch light as breath, light as fingernails and not a callous revealed a trade. Exposed and streak, some long and rodent thing, large as gator, sloth-faced, skunk-haired and toothed barracuda leapt out, then paused. Flicked its wide fan tail. And looking back at me with eyes both black and brocade, it urged my eyes down, down into the pit where the young and unnamed things flickered like moons on sewage, dull but hungry. And I, in a fit begged the faceless one to unhinge the stone and roll it back, but he laughed. He laughed without mouth, without eyes, more vacant and grimace than squalor. With the stone unmoved, he lifted his hand and pointed to a window not ours, slack-paned and green. And with a flash of jacquard, I was there, in the kitchen. And you were there in the kitchen, my love, crouched native and scooping leopard frogs like water in your palms, then sliding them into a box. You said they didn't belong here, in this kitchen not ours, and you sought a relocation, down the hall, where dust settles like rain and cool clean sheets. But those other tenants, more heard than seen, slow to rents and vagrant, held the doors shut and blunt with chairs and no rattling **** gave way. And at the end of it, where a green window spilled vague shafts below, down-***** to nowhere, a faceless one in violet turned. Turned and walked away.

My dog laps the flavors of morning
flicks her tongue to the dew
sniffs at the haunch hanging apple
dangling low and chosen
when still but a flower
knowing ripe this coming fall.

I wait for the coffee
neither smelling nor knowing
but the dew is cold wet and
clean as Mary's hair on a broken toe
and the apple clings low
expanding in a blushing green skin.

First the eagle glid low overhead.
Then the farm cat, lame and tabby,
limped from bumper to dumpster,
while we smoked
and whined about our day.

Monsanto now Bayer's verdict
drifts over the fields
marked as no spray zones
for the hardest of yields

These varied sustained with sweat
soils needn't a yellow crop duster
to spread sour poisons
on our fruits or our clustering

perhaps vain cabbages
to stifle the single ****
that reaches to sunlight
among mono-cropped seed

If the sun rose without you,
thin-lipped and petty,
a day would slump over me,
either frigid or thick-steamed.

And no cool wind will pass the trees,
And the sun, a mere mock of warmth,
will tumble west that is sure,
certain as rock in a dry creek bed.

For what is a light without hands
to hold it? And what is a day without
a warm return to a hazelled iris,
chiselled long and arced as horizon?

For what, then, do we trod
The husks of dead men,
And for whom?
Is it the trinkets improved?
For we are no larger than the beast -
And there the judgement - the beast
That fashioned the first *****,
Turned the first soil,
Laid the first seed,
Sure in the touch
Of sun, water and repercussion.
No, perhaps diminished, reduced
Upon that self-same soil,
To seek, beyond the seed,
Beyond the shoot and bloom,
Beyond the very grain of dulling truth
That all is not forsaken.

I tell you this.
Bone has fashioned socket.
And in that socket - an eye.
And in that eye, and in those eyes
Each a burden falls.
Look not to the lover or fool, fair prince,
But gaze upon the beggar
And find there inheritance -
Find there, centered in the iris,
The black pool of our communion.

And no greater is the elm
Than the hand.
For the one that prospers light to soil
Is the same as that which turns it,
Is the same as that which yearns
Beyond the follies,
But takes one into another -
Cupped and held -
Flesh over bone -
Calloused but braced by the other,
Alone, no, never alone.

S'always gonna be there,
that stain like a slitherin' dog
done nabbed a cookie.

Let's call it spilt milk,
if we must, but ****
that was a rabbit punch.

Let's keep in it the hutch
with all the chipped bowls
and riddled towels.

I know. But forgive
don't mean forgot,
just means put away
with split chinas
and red linen.

If I knew anything,
like a dog's tail wags,
like an iced wire sags,
I would know a hard mouth stings.

But there in the blaze of it,
in that thick tongued moment,
when your eyes glazed on a word,
a dry twig snapped beneath a bird.

And what fell there, what broke there,
now limp in the now dry grass,
was neither a bird nor a wing,
but a foot pressed on breaking glass.

It is not the sapling or bit snow
that scrapes the window, coaxing,
Come out little boy, come out -
Come out where the sting wind blows
Come out where the wind plays a sapling
as a rube to scratch its bidding on a window.
That little life left tight against the foundation
missed in the pruning now the dim witted
accomplice to the sound of nails slow-scraped
on a chalkboard pane, Come out little boy.
And the spine shakes as the windchimes
rattle like keys, rattle like mother’s teeth
sharp above the crib, and taken to the breast
of winter, that cold milked ******,
that rippling drift. And that lullaby sings
another to sleep while the smallest of rodents
dig deep and wait, wait in some self made heat
that little boys and little girls somehow forgot
when the first snow fell upon their tongues
and they tasted death for the first time -
wet and quick gone with eyes slow closed.

Duly noted -
that million dollar baby donation
to United Way
or some other contribution
to whatever charity
the strategists
deemed would
promote the interests
of the body
corporate,
devised as
noblesse oblige,
designed as good
corporate
citizenship,
to veil
the larger sapping
of riches
stripped
from the backs
of workers
hacking out
double shifts
with machetes
and dull knives.

Outside the house that's never ours, down-***** and foundation, the faceless one in violet jacquard slid the stone away. And he was strong, by God, for he did it with a touch light as breath, light as fingernails and not a callous revealed a trade. Exposed and streak, some long and rodent thing, large as gator, sloth-faced, skunk-haired and toothed barracuda leapt out, then paused. Flicked its wide fan tail. And looking back at me with eyes both black and brocade, it urged my eyes down, down into the pit where the young and unnamed things flickered like moons on sewage, dull but hungry. And I, in a fit begged the faceless one to unhinge the stone and roll it back, but he laughed. He laughed without mouth, without eyes, more vacant and grimace than squalor. With the stone unmoved, he lifted his hand and pointed to a window not ours, slack-paned and green. And with a flash of jacquard, I was there, in the kitchen. And you were there in the kitchen, my love, crouched native and scooping leopard frogs like water in your palms, then sliding them into a box. You said they didn't belong here, in this kitchen not ours, and you sought a relocation, down the hall, where dust settles like rain and cool clean sheets. But those other tenants, more heard than seen, slow to rents and vagrant, held the doors shut and blunt with chairs and no rattling **** gave way. And at the end of it, where a green window spilled vague shafts below, a faceless one in violet turned and walked away.