Death the copper penny, grief the rust.
Death the grain standing beside the road,
Death the rider, death the mare;
Grief the road.
Death the Greek invention. Thanatos.
Rather than that, those
stalks and seedpods brought to the mill
which, being destroyed
find purpose.

Grief the eater.

I sat in the old pool and let
the black algae sprout all over me.
I lay down and became soil for
the black algae. Gave it my
sweat so full of minerals. Ate it
to keep going. To keep going
and grow more and eat more.
I have been lying down so long
my ears are ringing. From the soda-water
smell of the pool bottom - my eyes spring
to color like an Indian rug
as I stand up.

I thought I was taller.

Every day I eat an apple
and watch the dogs fight each other
at the big rocks in the park and this
is Freedom.

And I think about you, or who you might be.
You are buried under the skin of the world
behind its face and muscle. You are sweet.
You are a lime seed.

You are a lime seed
and every day I eat an apple
whose seeds sleep in the
middle lurking with poison.

My plan is to **** on the flesh of the world.
I'm no supervillain. I just want the smack of sugar.
I will **** until you emerge. Or I
will run through the park, shout at every stranger
in a new voice.

I thought I was taller.
I thought I was taller.
I lose my balance.
I lie back down.

in the morning
comes a little mist
creeping bowlegged
thick as flies

You breathe & drink at
the same time
& you pretend not to
find the white lines
and safety wire
useful to build yourself by.

the clock hand points along
you lay something down
to remember your way back -
a statuette of a little mouth
Speaking the name
That you forgot you had

Day rises.
You remember what you are.
You talk to god as-you-know-him.
You stand in a basin of beads and sand.

and you sink & you sink & you sink

history -
a history -

I wanted to know what that sound was.
I wanted to know what made your hair so straight.
I wanted to ask you to kiss me on the cheek.

You told me the sound was an Aeolian harp
imitating a macaw.
I am a boy on a scaffold imitating a window.
My hair is always the wind's *****.

So the trip was a disaster.
So there was
an insufficiency in my reassurances.
a crab in the bed.
a wish in the closet.

But I meant it. I did mean it.

history-
at least I knew where the sound came from,
who made it,
and why it was beautiful.

Conception:
life fills itself with
life, to offer
more life

We make things out of mud.
Because we were made out of mud.

But you have to wonder -
Why the first should grow at all.

I want life to sleep in the palm of my hand forever.
Small as it always was.

Like a chick.
Like a good dream.
Like the egg
the snake comes in.

So you have lost it.

Relax, relax -
we are only witnessing the passage of an era.
Relax, relax - it is only
something new.

How life, with something removed from it,
falls down on its own floor,
like a cupboard with a suitcase taken out.
Like the crowded feet and shins
of a demolition.

You are only
whatever fits in a cupboard on the Earth,
and the Earth has greater mass,
and boy,
it will hold you down.

Why, it goes on forever.
Relax - we are only witnessing gravity.

Well.
Life does not desist its tangling.
Two dogs fight for a warm corner
where sits - one
abandoned man with a handful of soot
Wood is ash minus fire.
That suitcase was empty, anyways.

Find something else to do with the space you saved.
Find something else to do with your hands.

So you lost it after all.
Fill your life with tennis, and poetry.
Shroud yourself with something like knowledge,
swaddle yourself with something like comfort,
and exult as you are waved ahead
to fatten your bag with the delirious new.

A skinny cat mounts a brick wall
to admire the scenery -
sprung up out of nothing
by new climbing.

It's not hard.
Oh, let me try again -
it's not easy.

I don't want to be singing this -
when I'm seventy -
boy with two rattling stupid decades in his palms -
small song, small town.
Made a shawl of his lamentations and learned
to play guitar.

Somebody told me I had talent
and immediately I saw myself
on a rocket ship, fists full of Mars rock,
Julius Caesar coins and the stars shattering all around.

I'm not asking a lot.
All I want is my living room full of those who are fun,
my bed full of those who are attractive,
a Starbucks in my area.

Some people have to watch others die
before they turn twenty-five.
I just have to learn to exist a little more,
and speak a bit louder.

I have done nothing but sit still, and yet
I am out of breath - I talk all the time, my cartoon voice -
my sleepy face.

Somebody once came up with something amazing.
Kept it in jars for two centuries, drank it in libraries.
They breathed it into my mouth,
and then I couldn't stop talking.