On a hot hot day
nothing better than
sweet sticky rice coconut
milk a big ripe mango

That, I felt, was what the fly thought
he touched down onto my mango,
it was so sweet, pouring
saccharine sweat
ripe slabs of yellow smorgasborg
endless pleasure of sugar mango flesh
it seemed good to the fly

Across the water,
pressing over the mountains,
opaque threads of rain, like
slim tornadoes twisting ash into the clouds
moved this way
things never looked good for the fly

He ate nonstop, boozed up on mango
an unlimited supply of yellow stuff
he gained weight by the second
there was no point in stopping

the more juice the mango sweat
the stickier its meat
the more mango the drunk fly ate,
the further he sank into its flesh
he was stuck, flailed his stupid legs
in the air as if more flies coming
would rather help him than eat
juicy golden mango feast

he died there, I think
the monsoon would make sure of it
I tossed the mango, sticky rice
the styrofoam plate
thinking it spoiled, fearing the rain

Oh, Progress!  We found you at the back of
The movie theater, spidered around a boy
And we watched.  Progress, couldn’t you
Wait til the previews were over?
At least we could tell he was gentle.

Which reminds me of the story of the father
Who beat his son until the son
Could beat back, and after the son
Killed his father he went cross country
Beating everyone on the way
Beating the mailman, the bar back, the students
He kept on traveling until he knew he was
Unbeatable
And he traveled more and went on beating
When he met his dad in down in Santa Fe
They sat down to drinks and talked
About beatings and beatings
Then they kept traveling West.

Yes, Progress you were a ***** girl
Ignoring whatever went up on the screen.
18 seconds of mutilated armies and a Noble Charmer’s
Ascent to the throne.
17 seconds of painstaking laughter and a fat man.
19 seconds of a young man’s rise to success
His defeats, resilience, his ceaseless winking
And his moral fiscal triumph in the end.
16 seconds of naughty men in suits drinking highballs.

For a movie theater, the chandelier was immense.
Dangling, finely cut glass
Suspended over the audience, crystals tapering
Down to rows of translucent points.

Before I knew you
I thought you’d changed, too
Thank you, you proved me wrong

We made plans, they ended
It was good we wanted
You said you should be moving on

Without any warning
I woke that morning
When you were gone

Left alone, my plans remain the same:
I’m here to do good, it’s not my choice
The cards were dealt, I’ll play my hand—
I’m fine this is no sacrifice

But since I’ve been here
My problem seems clear—
A sickness metronomed

The volunteer’s life
Is filled with small fights
But my disease has blown

Into war with *****
An acid stomach
And no connection home

I see it, believe it, that decency persists
This place is not what it is, but what we’ve made it
We’ve learned to give and take the bad and good
But to see ourselves outside ourselves is how we’ll change it

A place with palm trees
Dead farms and disease
In my students

I saw a pain that
They didn’t know yet
Would break them as they grew

And these ignored ones
These poorly born ones
They had no need for hope

Yet before I knew them
They gave me more than
They took to feed their own

I thought I knew what they could show
That good escapes all circumstance
But though I help them, I cannot love them
My strength’s abandoned romance

And still I’m wretching
My sickness spreading
It’s in my gut

I see your face in
The ripened rice which
They have begun to cut

In the evenings
I walk what once were green fields
Now dirt-blonde husks

That stab the air
The color of your hair
My stomach churns

Hope is useless
And I’ve abused it
I think I’ll leave it on its own

But I keep working
The sickness lurking
Well, that’s how hardship’s earned

I.   You know what it’s like
It’s the carpet pulled away
It’s the hole beneath


II. Smile, smile, you’ve got to
If the truth is smirking at you
It’s the truth you’ve known


III. Draped over your skin
An abysmal sour void drips
Insecurities


IV. As the fog rolls in
Your breath comes out steam, pushing
Cloud into more cloud


V. Your breath and the fog
Watch you.  Ships pull in to dock
Their ghoulish noses


VI. A loose mooring rope
Stray ship’s vein, searching the fog
For all the lost blood


VII. Good, you’re on board.  Some-
  Where beneath you, hot pistons
  Swing furiously.

It should be there, the sea
It was clear by how the sky bloomed up ahead
It was standing up for us
Down the road, shoulder blades spread
It’s face turned and looking out over the water
Not ignoring us, but we could understand
There were things to be seen

We drove up the road
Dune trees thinned ahead under
Blots of royal blue
Staining the horizon
A painting to distract us from each other
I looked and you said nothing
And you looked, saw nothing

We were driving to the water
The sky’s blue skin stretched and paled
Overhead and threats teased our breath
Lingering on brine air
Waiting for us past the coastal brush
Past the pale browns and green
We would be there soon

It was a weird hour when the sun towered
To be slick with moonshine
Cozied shirtless in a rope hammock

Belly-down like my six drunk buddies
Living loose and talking sweet
To bottles now empty of *****

So what is there to do?
Nothing, and that’s a cold fact for high noon
In summer, season of mumbly toasting

But when the humble glug-glug-glugging
Is done with, I’ll tell you, you
Have not licked liquor, not done your part

It’s us who got the moonshine start
Today, you turned your back on white whiskey, yes
We did the work and if it should hurt

I apologize we didn’t want to offend
If it’s the alcohol or if it’s the heat I can’t tell
But who knows why blood boils?

I can see that good-natured drinking
Is the drunk man’s toil
But we’re workers at heart, aren’t we?

And not many are better than us
Except for maybe the rice
Slumped over its stalks, fat on moonshine

Cure-all for the sick mind
Friend to all comers on a humid day
The clear sticky juice that burns all the way down

The Gopher was born
Underground.  He spent so much
Of his life there.  His eyes never adjusted
To the lack of light, he simply
Tunneled in the dark, half-blind.
He never knew the color
Of his fur (it was brown, the same color
As the dirt he lived in (whose color
He never knew either)), but he assumed
It was black. While ambling through
The black (brown) soil, it so happened
That the plump and innocent Gopher
Unwittingly clawed his way to
The surface.  His dwarfish eyes scanned the fairway
Laid out beneath him.  It was in that brief moment
That he witnessed the difference
Between rough and fairway, saw white sand traps
Scoop out the sides of hills, and first watched
Red and yellow oak leaves
Drift to the ground.
And for this short while the Gopher was awestruck,
Riveted to the spot.  As the lawnmower’s blades
Swept closer, the Gopher could not move at all; and in
An instant, he returned to
The endless black he had come from.

As with any person that comes to the city
others will say of him that he came to be
where the action is, looking for his share of the spoils
but the truth is, he came to put on his suit and toil

more than most newcomers here
he knew already what skyscrapers were:
a daywatch to guard the sun from you
and leave you long shadows to walk through—

even on his shaded way to the ad firms
he slides on his sunglasses, he squirms
through the crowds relishing a moment
of thick silence in a packed elevator, as if sent

on a mission to happy anonymity—
but to die at this point would be a cliché
he thinks, and goes to the shiner to shine his shoes black
black, color of the pavement, the suit, the tie and the hat

black, the color of the plush bruise
in an apricot’s skin, the fruit he adores
taking his time to pick out the finest,
juiciest, softest, the freshest

but this man! you would never know it
seeing him walk in the street
seeing his sunglasses over his eyes—
it’s only apricots that separate his from yours or mine

barely two inches of sugary meat
and some skin to get stuck in the teeth
eventually spat onto the sidewalk—
rubbed by passing shoe soles into a grayish spot

Fires are unbiased—
They burn what suits their mood.

I like to do my running
In the morning, before
The mosquitoes start their work.
During the dry season, you
Would think it unsafe—
Roads crowded by vulnerable
Yellow stalks of rice, long since
Harvested—but the trash
Is burning all the same.
By the time I’ve finished my run,
I am coughing, and the mosquitoes
Are dead before leaving the water.

At night, if you are lost
And alone, the fires—
Four feet high and stretching for
The lower tips of eucalyptus—
Will light the road for you.
Do not walk near them.

Near the school
Between dying trunks of banana
Trees, three men in jeans stoke a fire—
Reduced to shades
Of their former selves, the long, burned
Banana leaves lay withered
At the white center of the fire.
Much to their amusement,
A few students have fashioned
Swords of the live banana leaves
Not yet touched by the flame
And are fighting to the death.

Not often, but certain days, (particularly
The hot ones) I
Ask myself—
What am I doing here?

We drink whiskey from the bottle
On a night off and
Stand by the river.
In the overgrowth on the other side
Far-off fires twinkle—
A reminder—things burn
Over there, too.

we play with a retired professional but
none of the other kids mind—
his alcoholism has gotten the better of his muscle
memory and god doesn’t he look bad

the ball is an old piece of garbage made from
a kind of industry plastic
half-flayed alive by loving kicks
that expose the moldy gray rubber inner-
sphere like some soft eyeball

and, behind one of the goals, the
boy who plays goalkeeper only on Wednesdays
lounges like a pimply Greek sculpture—
unable to move as an epileptic fit lazily
puppeteers his body while the players pass the ball into his gut
and I step aside, too—
my stomach aches so badly for the crispy joy
of cold cereal I can’t play—

some days are like that—shed of their seriousness
because it’s more fun to play without a defense
even though we’re always losing **** it I just scored
a goal!

After sweeping clear the grounds
The boys were sent to wash the showers.
You once wore your hair like they did—
Skull-tight shave, except for the top,
Where a thin layer was allowed.
I remember how they tossed soap
Onto the floor and bent down to scrub
While others laughed and slid through the water,
Their rough feet leaving slalom trails
Of bubble over the cerulean tiles.

While the sun pours over the early nightmarket
An old woman sits, chewing
Betel seed adrenaline into
Wilting veins sprawled arachnid
Behind her knees

She, the center of all activity, is merely there
A few children lift cinder blocks
And their fathers solder wire
To help put up the gate
Before a white temple

She spits a thick *** of it into
Her ***, a young woman nearby
Pulls starfruit from a stall
Starfruit, whose name should belong
To the most elegant fruit, what a
Pity it has such a wretched tang

By now, the old woman is bobbing around
Her murky mind, a betel juice
Aquarium she can barely perceive the precision
Of the cremation ceremony next door climaxing with
The scattering of jasmine leaves
To indicate mourning and forgiveness
For untimely suicide and when the
Cameraman approaches our old woman
She spreads a numb smile, revealing her
Black oily teeth
Tarred over in betel juice

Are only the tools of the trade
To swinging ***** and easy Janes
Like these now attempting to muffle their shouts
In the purple suburban evening where God knows
Only all the neighbors are striving to listen;
A couple of loveless friends *******
Each other out of breath and full of big plans—

And now I’m sure that we can,
Just listen to her moan!
A man once told me I’ve got to give it to her
To stick a son in there.
I might ask, but there’s no need now to beg
Because we deserve it too much.
Our dry spell is all wet tonight;
Are those the cries of a baby I hear,
Or our bedsprings squeaking?—

It only hurts a little when he gets this excited
But instances are excusable
*** folds in memory
And ****** success caresses forms into forms
I know she will be beautiful
Her beauty will come to her as easily as it passed me by
I am not sad, neither
And the sweat, his sweat drips from his naked chin onto mine—

I tell mom and dad that’s fine,
I want another brother.
They make noises in their room
Which are so loud they keep me awake.
So they decided to make them after dinner,
When I am trying to read.
Sometimes I listen to them very carefully, but
Then I have nightmares of
Them hurting each other.
They are making noises now;
Something not good is happening.

From the backbroken fliers over oceans
From between the spiny frills along palm fronds
From Mr. Happy, the chain smoking chaperone of good times
From Mr. Happy’s half-burnt ****, coiled in the ashtray
From the disciples of Theravada and the skinny Buddha’s pupilless eyes scanning jocose scansions of jungle
From the tanned holy heads of students lounging in graveled football fields
From my bowl of rice at breakfast in the shade while considering western cities, you are not here
‘You are not here,’ I’ve written in my letters
‘You are not here,’ I’ve typed into e-mails immense
You are not here, my coke head pals locked in the veins of seedy nightmares
You are not here, my penniless friends who mix music in ascetic dark rooms out in Bushwick
You are not here in no eastern Central Park running naked in the night from horseback cops after hours of merciless balling in the bushes
You are not here you fair-skinned beauties in crowded alpine funiculars bearing your aquiline noses holding your hats over the mountains
You are not here my lonely mother waiting by the phone for a call at midnight
You are not here, you are not in my poems, you are not in the distorted notes harpsichorded across my crass imagination
You are not here, you will not be here, will you read my letters home?

There are no bells, but they are there
lining the streets, palms outstretched

women on their knees between cream-colored petals
of orchids carelessly blooming by the drainage ditch

their scrubbed feet free of rice paddy mud
with palm fronds overhead

in their hands, cut butter and fruit
for the monks that file past in smart orange robes

if you were here, you would watch them with me
you would peel lychee fruits for breakfast

at this hour the people are wide awake
and the day is struggling to keep up

somewhere behind the early clouds
the sun is winking over the trees

morning birds never seem to sing here
where the rain has been falling for days

Most people would say
things were better here
before the hurricane—

granted
living on top of your roof
has its drawbacks—

no shade in the day
and no friends nearby—
it’s a ****** quiet time—

things certainly were good
two weeks ago
to watch a funeral step second line

droning a hoarse dirge
down the street—
before this town began drowning—

furniture floats by
on its way out of town
smarter than most watchers-by—

but there are upsides
to the situation—
the view

now free to swing
at its leisure
over a whole city of roofs

spread like Monopoly houses
across the flat
teal-blue board—

small rowboats float
down the brand-new waterways
picking up waving folks

from one roof
after another—
there’s people that have done this before—

the quiet after disaster
expecting help wanting none
and hearing no music for days—

I’d have left off loving you long back
If not for the glory of our local greasy spoon.
Your long fingertips
Curled over the red plastic borders
Framing the menu’s backside, showing me lunch specials, the Hungryman plate.
In this scene we are the couple caught up in a picture-book love
And so shy of speaking it that affection
Becomes a game of concealment versus concession.
We are good at the game, and our strategies evolved
Complex techniques of deceptive chitter chatter.
We made greasy spoon small talk, talk like artificial sweetener;
Because talk of substance would be to take account of the closing in of reality and my
Impending departure to tropical countries, names unpronounceable.
How much simpler to order soggy hash browns.
How much simpler to butter white bread toast
With white butter wrapped in gold packets.
Map spread on the linoleum tabletop,
I pointed out places with names full of P’s and K’s,
Overstuffed with consonants and gathering
Crumbs from our buttery palms.
Our fingers touched so often,
These hands might as well have been holding;
But then, days before my flight into the hot tropics,
These hands won’t touch, they’ll let their fingerprints drown in finger food grease.
Those days it was summer, when the weather was a mystery—
Ceaseless weeks overcast, when grey skies hanging above
Pondered pouring rain on us; it was a very indecisive summer.
We walked from the diner, both tucked under one umbrella,
Felt the unpleasant humidity and
Our own hesitance before saying goodbye.

They were more in love now
Than they had ever been before.

Lying in a small, yellow raft,
The sun lit them for 20 hours of the day.

Small fragments of floes drifted past;
With his pen-knife he carved
Ice flowers of them for her.

At night, the sky flushed ultramarine to match the water.
She would make a pillow of his shoulder
And they slept warm enough, blanketless.

They didn’t do much on their raft
Because there wasn’t much to do—

Around them, the sea was chill-blue
And they loved each mother more.

Months before, when they brought the cruise tickets,
It had been the clean aesthetic of the arctic
And the words ‘Secret Norway’ that won them over.

No, they didn’t want to uncover Norway’s secret;
They wanted to become a part of it, a final
“Great escape” into their dying years.

The cruise ship went under, they thought,
As if by choice into black-water oblivion.

A casual dive through the glassed-over surface.
A few inflated yellow rafts.

Of course, it was difficult for them, to look
On as that stranger’s blue hand stretched for their raft.
‘This is our great escape,’ they both were thinking.

Was it envy they felt when he let go?
It doesn’t matter. They, too, planned
To slip into that same murk at some point.

But for now, they would be in love.
He paddled them through the iceberg drifts and

They fell asleep at night, curled one next to the other,
To the measured sounds of melting glacial drip.

Today, only today,
I am beautiful;
But tomorrow, Oh tomorrow,
That must die away.

Only for this hour
Are you still mine;
But to die, Oh to die,
Is for me to do alone.

There is an electric hum from traffic lights
Barely audible to the people waiting at the corner
Overwhelmed with confusion over the former
Condition of the economy in spite
Of the surplus of traffic signs
So they stare at traffic signs
The signs don’t mind
They stare right back and watch and contemplate crossing, too
But the signs will stay behind
Because people go
As they please
Under an ashy sky
And flickers
Of lightning
Appearing in the clouds

Consider the aerodynamics of taxicabs
You wish humans were so streamlined and yellow
We’re not so bad!
Said a fellow
Accountant using an algebraic formula to attempt to derive
Why you smile for us and I’ve
Noticed, though no one else has, the electric storm churning
Miles above
Polarizing the sky
In silence

They tremble, these, the not-so-poor
It’s that fearful tic, the one we’ve seen before
But you tremble, too
Do you see me quiver
We’ve got that quick jitter
Like a prickling under the skin that’s pulsing through
Our blood the way that caffeine does
Or the wattage exploding in death throes or birth throes
Above us now
Hypnotic
And powerful
Though I cannot tell
Exactly how far away

Afterwards, Stanley said of the event,
“Everything started to happen…”
What did he do? He snapped photos,
He called one The Soiling of Old Glory.
The even horizontal of the flagpole
Would be likened by critics to the engraving
Of the Boston Massacre.
“I saw him going down
And rolling over.”
Before the incident, the protesters
Recited the pledge of allegiance,
Hands over hearts.
Stanley was on the scene—
It all happened in 20 seconds.
“He was being hit with the flagpole.
I switched lenses.”

The sun lights through the window
And a scattering of rainbows slants
Across your eager eyes.

Nothing comes from nothing,
That’s the way it’s always going to stay.

A poet scribbles down a line or two
To keep himself quiet—
You set fire to his pages and
The words all smoke into the air.

Stitch a needle full of fumes and sow yourself a coat;
You’re as good as making nothing.

Under the rural darkness, they formed into a circle.
‘Keep your secrets,’ they whispered, smiling—
Even from the distant hills
The shrieks of the dogs made more noise at night.

If you’re afraid, be afraid,
This is nothing you can understand.

Before a flock of no more than twenty,
Reverand Betham gives his second-to-last sermon.
There were no signs of it in him then.
Forgiveness, he talks about
Forgiving; the backs of heads nod
Between pews in the dust and the August heat.

Is anyone still surprised
That this is happening?
Where is Reverend Betham
Now?

People murmur because Betham
Is no longer allowed to teach
Sunday school.  I still see him
In his office, late nights, reading—
His lamp is always on.  It seems
So obvious to me now, when I think of
How he would fold the small
White robes and run his hands
Over them to smooth their creases.

Sunday, and the Reverend is granted
One farewell sermon, provided
He makes his apology.  Today it is even
Warmer; white paper fans swat
The air between the pews.  A crowd
Has come, only to curse the Reverend
As he enters the church.  I would later ask myself
What caused this?  What violent undertow
Has dragged the Reverend to the pulpit?
I, like any other, am also at the pulpit for my trial.
From the back of the church, I can hear
The click-click of the reporters’ cameras.

I saw him at work;
When he would visit the mangal
With a ***** over his shoulder.

He rolled up his pant legs and walked
Through the tidal wash.  Once he had picked a tree,
He hacked for three days to cut

The mud and the mangrove
Free from the surrounding forest.
He piloted his self-made island into the lagoon.

Shortly, he became mangrove crazy,
A disease he called Rhizophoria
In the notebook he had taken along.

With mud lobsters and tree for his only company,
Of course he had mangrove on the brain.
His life became an ellipsis—

The two centers were the tree and himself.
From tubular mangrove branches, propagules fattened,
And seeds nested inside them;

He would scribble notes with delirium as they fell
Plumply into the lagoon
And were pulled away by the warm current.

Each time the tree condensed its salt
Into a sacrificial leaf,
He would sadly add a tick

To the tally of the dead he kept in his book.
He once wrote:
‘The salt is burning my eyes.’

Late afternoons, with beer in our hands,
We would watch him from the beach,
Five hundred yards away.

Eventually, his mangrove island drifted ashore—
He lay by the suberic roots
With a crust of salt along his cheek.

What is it that we do
When we first want to love each other?

Our early love is a place
Where the senses get bent and blend
Blemishes into so many minute perfections.

Mornings I touch you in bed;
Sometimes, your hand sifts through my hair.
I sense you’ve noticed
That dryness on my scalp—
You look at me, unmoved,
As your hands find the scars on my shoulder.
This is my secret skin,
You have found me.
My own hands wander—
I am searching your figure
Expecting, at any moment,
To find the hidden flaw.
I find nothing
And I give up happily.
Then I fall asleep,
Admiring the *****
Of your coffee-skinned back
And your changing shape—
Larger as you breathe in, then
You shrink somewhat.

I.
Your socks, tight with sweat—
An early advertisement
that spring has arrived.

II.
Spring needs a waking-
bed: pungent mulch ambushes
your April nostrils.

III.
Sunshine plashes down.
Through warm waves you saw days
Unfold at your feet.

IV.
Frail infant stems stretch
through your toes and scan the scnee:
thin grass, sunbathing.

V.
And there’s skin on skin.
Come on!  Get naked it’s spring,
the season for sin.

VI.
When it rained, your eyes
dripped clear drops, their spring fragrance
as fresh as water.

VII.
There are nests, eggs; still,
I wonder, do the birds grasp
the meaning of spring?

It’s early Friday afternoon and,
over plates of greasy spoon dinner,
the musician and the businessman
repeat their weekly ritual.
The businessman has his problems at home
and spills his guts to his musician friend.
“It’s been a real long time coming,
but she’s still been such a bitter *****.”
They’ve met this way since
their college days and nights
spent studying the bottoms
of whiskey bottles.  And, as usual,
the businessman’s hair sits sprawled
on his head like a rag, and his tie
is loosened.  The musician doesn’t understand
divorce: “You look like hell.
You know, if you need a place to stay,
Helen and I and the boy
can always make some room for you.”
They light a pair of cigarettes and wait
for a waitress to kick them out.

Into the haze of a Lower East Side crowd
the musician and his band play
his newest pieces, riffs on the happy swagger
of the Duke.  His critics—
and he has many—
write that his jazz sings
the inescapable ******* of suffering
through the life of every oblivious body,
which makes the musician’s music
sound more like the blues
than jazz.  But it’s jazz all the same
and perhaps it was the intensity
of the growling bass that shot
spirits down the throats in the audience,
reeling drunk in time to the beat
of the musical suffering.

The weekdays die and it is Friday again.
He has a big view of midtown,
the businessman, and though the window the falling
sun horizons over his socked toes,
parked on his desk in triumph over
all those stockholders.  It’s a pain
to lose your family,
but the businessman puts on
a good face, and drinks.

This Friday, the musician and the businessman
are not in the mood for talking.  
But a scotch thrown down,
and the two are tighter than
thieves.
The businessman complains of life at home
and the musician’s eyes cross.

That night, the musician skips his performance.
His wife cries in their bed,
shuddering with worry and asking him
what makes him so distant? she asks—
it’s a mystery even to himself.
He is sweating whiskey—
which suits him fine—
and he spends his night on the bridge.

One week later and it is Friday, finally.
Today, the businessman will see
his children at his former home
for the last time for a handful of months
at best.  The musician has not been home
for three days.  He stays at a friend’s apartment,
puts on his ***** blazer
and a record of the Duke’s
before he throws himself down the airshaft.
The businessman jumps on the 5:44
out of town and calls his friend the musician
to cancel their usual Friday meeting,
but his phone keeps ringing,
ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing.

Go to sleep my baby boy;
Momma’s only gonna be here
for a little while.

Nod your head my precious boy—
Can I kiss you
before I go?

I’ve waited ten dark years
to see your face,
and now I know—

Momma’s been a sinner
and she’s only gonna be here
for a little while.

Momma gripped the infant soul.
She clutched that child to her meager heart,
Hoping like a dying man in fever
To swallow salvation before his hour of going.
Then she heard the eerie angels singing—
The Man stepped out through the cloudy mantel.
She looked to Him and cried:

Oh Lord, please forgive me,
I’m an unwanted guest—
But I snuck in through a back door

And I’ve been to see my boy
before you send me on my way.
I’ve had a ten years’ wait

Since I’ve learned to love my baby,
Only let me stay,
Let me stay enough and be forgiven—

She descended, her back to the place
From which she had came
And the next of her days would be warmed
By the devil’s burly chortle,
By her midwife’s toil in the nursery of demons,
And the smoke from below,
Which rises through three worlds she’s seen
And scratches even the angels’ throats to coughing.

Joseph only nine sat at the dinner table, conversation passing around, a muffled, undulating vibration of utters.  “Don’t stare like that, it makes me uneasy, Joseph,” chided Joseph’s mother.  The hum resumed.  An hour later the table was emptied of its contents, except for Joseph, alone with his uneaten plate of food.  The TV, flickering its wantonly swirling amalgam of colors onto his mother’s face.  “Joseph, please, eat your food.  I’m worried about your eating habits,” her distant voice languidly taking its time to reach him from the couch.  His sister, all of seventeen, sat down across from him.  “Hey, kiddo,” in her reassuring singsong.  They talked and he ate.
Joseph hadn’t liked school since the kids began to make fun of him.  They poked and prodded him with words sharpened by blissful ignorance.  “Crybaby” the boys would jab, their penetrating and mockingly wide smiles, like jaws.  Each clinging to their inclusion, girls, in their giggling gaggles pass by him, atypically hushed.  “Yeah, he’s the one, the one that cried alone in the bathroom like a big baby” amongst themselves, but barely audible from the outside.
Joseph in his room, crowded by the darkness, lost in his imaginings.   The doorbell cries out for attention.  “Hey, kiddo” his sister affectionately, leaving the lights off.  She takes her jacket and leaves. “I’ll see you later Joey.” Hers and her friends’ voices waft, beckoning, upwards through the floor into Joseph’s room.  “What took you?” “Had to get my jacket from my brother’s room.” “Oh, he’s strange.  Sometimes it scares me how weird your brother is.” And Joseph, listening intently, as if balancing his entire weight on one single twig in fearful anticipation.  And his sister, her words forming slowly, then with gathering willingness, “Yeah, he can be pretty weird sometimes.” “Yeah, let’s get going.”  Joseph’s heart dropped, like a stone falling into a lake—less like a lake than an indentation filled with jet-black ink for water, and the stone, falling to the bottom, curling up on itself in the darkness.
Joseph, turning to his mother, her silhouette eclipsing a chunk of hallway light.  “You broke the mirror in my room today Joseph, you ought to clean it up now,” voice straight as an edge, though she layered it with a loud blanket of sweetness.
“No!” screamed Joseph.  “I won’t!  I wish dad was here, he would never make me do what you make me do!”
Her rage bursting suddenly through her self-control, flooded the entire room.  “Don’t talk to me like that!” her sobs even louder than his screams. “Its not easy for me!   Its not easy to do this alone, can’t you please try to understand…”  Joseph was having trouble hearing her, her voice and all else fading, as if the world’s voice were being smothered by a pillowcase, and he became distracted in the silence that enveloped him.
Joseph looked up and to the right, saw the stars, friendly and welcoming, with bright, honest smiles.  He decided he would rather be with them.  Joseph left his room, floating upwards, upwards, still higher, and to the right.
Joseph stretching his eyesight, saw something approach as he drifted further and faster into space.  As if from a horizon that couldn’t be seen and didn’t exist, there approached a colorful object.  Jupiter flashed by, looking very much like his mother’s TV.  It’s random assortment of colors whirled violently around in that confined space.  He said out loud, Jupiter is the most beautiful planet, I’d like to go there.  The planet whisked by.
Joseph, not disappointed in the least, kept floating.  He left the solar system, the galaxy, and came to a black hole.  It called him in, like a Siren, and Joseph smiled an angular, disjointed smile, and fell inward into the black hole’s embrace.

Then, bedded atop cushions of dark blood,
the blonde neck of a white woman.
The sun ravaged her hair
and licked the length of her pale thighs
and kneeled around her browner *******,
yet to be deformed by vice or birth.
Next to her lay the *****: horses’ hooves
had stamped his eyes and brow to a pulp.  He dug
two of the toes on his ***** left foot
deep into her small white ear.
She, though, lay and slept like a bride:
at the brink of happiness, of first love
as before the outbreak of a wave of Ascensions
of warm, youthful blood.
                   That is, until the blade
sank into her white throat
         and spilt an apron of dead purple blood about her waist.

Above all the mountaintops
There is peace.
Among all the treetops
You will trace
Not even the faintest tune.
The birds hold their quiet in the forest.
Only wait for it;
You, too, will have peace soon.

Mr Dodd paid a visit
to the man in the tree;
he asked the man to tell
of the sights he could see.

The squat little man—
who spent his life behind leaves—
shook a bough by Mr Dodd and said
“You would never believe.”

“But why would you live alone in that tree?”
asked old Dodd, and he began to climb a branch.
But the man in the tree lazily
warned Dodd to stand

Where he stood—
from a high-up limb, the man’s voice
wandered down to Dodd’s ears.
“There is a road that slices

Through miles of fields,
herds of cows and small houses,
and leads to a hulking metal city
where lines of gloomy people trickle out.”

Back in his cottage, Mr Dodd dreamt
of the road and the fields and the cows;
but the city unsettled his sleep,
and he woke at last knowing how

Little he knew.
Then Dodd made breakfast for the millionth time:
a buttery bun and some cornflower tea—
he couldn’t smile at the noise of the kids in the town.

He went through the day in his usual way:
he tapped on his xylophone,
he painted his thousandth self-portrait,
he read from his book in a slow monotone.

After lunch he liked to sit in his garden
and smoke from his chestnut pipe
with the eight-inch hickory handle
and the green green herbs inside.

The sunlight pressed the smoky stink
into the weave of Dodd’s vest
When Gilbert—Dodd’s groundskeep—appeared,
seeming so distressed.

“Your sunflowers’ stems have all broke!” breathed Gil;
“I hit them with the mower—”
Mr Dodd saw the sunless stems
and nervous Gilbert cowered.

But Dodd looked Gil straight in the eye
and asked him a question instead:
“Have you ever seen the city, old Gil?”
“I only heard tell,” the relieved Gil said,

“But what I’ve heard is that they that go
can’t come back alive.”
Dodd sent Gil home, who leaving said:
“I also mowed over a gopher; I think he might have died.”

The next day, Dodd went back
to the man in the tree.
“Hello again, Dodd” drawled the voice from the leaves.
“I’m leaving today for the city,”

Spoke Dodd towards the voice.
“But how much nicer it might be to stay
with me in my tree; you could see everything—
all here for you on display.”

No, Mr Dodd thought better of it—
he threw his pack over his shoulder,
nervous of what's new and unknown
and the thought that his life here was over.

There is a pattern of tics in my brain, all
Set to twitching in the space behind the eyes.

If I am the assembly of information under the sky,
I am not the person I am in my mind.

The moon is in the manmade pond where I sit,
dressed in sweet darkness with all the rain.

The problem is my perforated soul—
I am lanced open by the multiplicity of girls and things.

I want to trust the person I am in my thoughts, but I’m falling
Through the many inadequate sounds and words.

Rain blankets the pond—
Infinite, miniscule wave dispersion occurs, overlapping itself.

The intensity of data swerves deep beyond me:
My disappearance takes place in the world of computers.

Love for my daddy and love for a girl
Exchange glances in the digital light;

From my pocket, I draw a small, six-shot pistol—
How fascinating, to learn the system of its design!

Oh, Joseph, we love this fine and ritzy party
No, through the poppy fields we rode a cart, see?
I agree, but at that time the lake was dry
There were castles and spires and dragons this high!
Joseph, what a very, very good party.

--At times, I find there are never parties
But it has been so long since this trip I’ve started
So long from home, with the pain of thought-wandering
Wander, wonder if the dead sit so pondering
In their solitude.

What time find men to thought-wander when dead?
Where seconds breathe lifetimes, bleed red
And when will thought-wandering cave in my head?
The stammered squabbles of parties bled
Out into my hearing.

--Oh, I simply cannot believe the things he says
My dear, did he philosophize about his pauper days?
Lord, how she would twist and turn the conversation
She’d laugh and cheer and nod, all to appease him
Do you hear them now?

--In no earthy place could one ever find such a cracked imagination
Go, and thought-wander the depths of my empty nation;
You’ll find a few dismantled towns, a statue, gold;
A statue of me, built by me, where parties were held
Even there you won’t find it.

Perhaps, if one could find, some lonely corner
With shadows and planks in the heart of the world
Where the dead would sit and the dead would ponder
The fuss and precision of their last friend, the coroner
There you may find it.

I.
White flakes touch the street—
Their millions melt, dying
The way they were born.

II.
She blinked, shaking the
Snowflakes from her eyelashes,
And blushed like summer.

III.
A two-step blizzard
Waltzes in the windy air—
Winter masquerades.

IV.
In the darkness, steps
Crunch and echo in the snow,
Miles away from me.

V.
The buildings weather
The snow, but everything else
Crumbles under white.

VI.
After the snow, trees
Like middle-aged heads of hair
Became old and grey.

VII.
The hot chocolate
Stains my teeth, which once were
White like today’s snow.

The solitary molar of a *****
who had died without a name
wore a gold filling.
The other teeth, as if by silent agreement,
had already left.
The mortician smacked the filling loose,
removed it, and left to go dancing.
‘Only earth,’ he said,
‘should return to earth.’

The mouth of a girl, whose corpse lay long in the rushes,
looked so gnawed away.
As the breast was broken open, there was the gullet, full of holes.
Finally, in a recess below the diaphragm,
a nest of young rats was found.
One little sister lay dead.
The others lived off of liver and kidney,
drank the cold blood and
lived a lovely childhood here.
And sweet and swift they met their death:
They were all tossed into the water;
Oh, how the little snouts squealed!

A drowned beer-hauler was hoisted on the table.
Someone had taken a dark-bright-purple aster
and clamped it in his teeth.
As I cut outward from his breast
under the skin
with a long blade
and removed the tongue and palate,
I must have touched the flower—
she slid into the brain which lay nearby.
I packed her in the cavity in his chest
amid the straw stuffings
as he was sewn up.
Drink yourself full in your vase!
Rest softly,
little aster!

Joseph sits on skinny chairs, reads the funnies
she would be tall, pretty hair, she don’t see
see he won’t be reading one bit, he looks dumb
just staring, looking fat, broken, glum
she cleans up all the plates

—Put those dishes down, now is a time for love-making
I’ll take you now, and wonder if I’ve taken
steps enough to excuse my idleness; in time
you’ll leave, and supine, I’ll take a coat of lyme
and let the lines loose

We will communicate through touch and kiss
and enjoy the full of it, pull in the harvest;
light and movies romance the **** out of me
at last, we are at the end of all things irony
Christ that **** impersonal.

—This music don’t be coming from them
that is right, that is absolutely the end of them
they just end, I don’t care, I let it be
how come you so foolish, Joseph? I don’t see
why are you so foolish?

—You play the guitar by ear and plucking
at this moment they are dinosaur hunting
time is absurd and disgusting
I don’t understand it, I’m simply saying
you played some songs I knew at the time

But how different are your songs from mine
attach your seatbelts to your right hand buckles, fine
away with it, away with them all, please
I am telling, telling, understand, please
different in a few ways, love

—Joseph, you play the drums too loud
you are a big, dumb, idiot head
they end, it certainly has to be
it’s apocalyptic, something like this, said she
such a dummy you Joseph

the movie drums its so vicious loud
the end a dumb idiot head
that’s a thing she might have said at the time
and you are given a full witness to the violence of our time
Joseph plays bad harmonica.

This is the third evening I have lived in a hush.
A thousand others like me know the feel of warm hush.

The student in the library, snug in her work;
She’s caught up in her work and the scribbling hush.

A sporting man, dressed in white, at the courts of Central Park—
Tennis courts, one next to the other, he knocks echoes into the hush.

The woman singing jazz at some bar, swaying, drunk.
Her audience of three blinks like a dumb hush.

A man at a deli sits, hunched behind the counter;
Morning light slips through his cigarette smoke: white hush.

At 4 am, two train lights appear down the track—
Tungsten lights add a brightening hush.

And I sit by the wall in the hospital’s small waiting room.
There is no one in the hall, no one in the chairs, only me and the hush.

Orange peel Thursdays and the Velcro shoes
Of children hordes
Who spider up Alice on toadstools in Central Park
Dusted psilocybin shoots my eyes through
With the clarity of ice and sliced mushroom
Steeping in stomach acid before finding blood
The kids are tripping like madmen or halloween candy
Like its time to release and give up to the nonsense
And let your young self congeal to a saccharine sludge

I don’t stroll in the park to keep my mind sharp
I’m here because it’s a riot
My head can throb to the jittery birds
And the blasts of carsong
It’s the right kind of rhythm to walk to

* *

Ketamine days and the lolling slums
To make sure the insane stay insane
And the hobos are washed with spit from the clouds
And the subway exhaust always hangs in our hair
And the old Coney Island burns again and twice more

We don’t pretend to understand what we see
In subway grates thirty feet wide
Like the earth punching out of work for a bit
Opening to you her *** belly
So you can check out the strips of metal inside
Before she slurps you down and with an esophageal squeeze
Shoots you through the turnstiles

The train squeals and grinds down our eyes
With thoughts as slow as ketamine
Makes room for schizophrenia in a conversation
We’re listening to ‘til sundown

* *

Years full of Brooklyn and the assorted pills
Makes offal fit for punks in name brand shoes
Squared off with police in the park
Being beaten for the fun of being beaten
Peacoat locals pass the days in supermarkets
And you grow up to the loony mumble
Of the woman who knows the boat
Moored at the end of the street
Mansion of the stray cat colony
You help her with her daily chore to feed them
Tabbies popping the pills of the homeless
And puking in tandem all over their house
Living off generous dying folk

I have grown used to
or at least numb to this way of living.
The rain drips through the ivy above,
hitting against the grey planks.
No water lands on my skin;
I am sprawled across the parallel lines of planks in the wooden floor.

I call this the ‘sun grotto’
because of the sundial,
now dark with rainwater,
standing in the circular clearing in the hedges
in front of the entrance to my gazebo.

Today might be a day in October.  And,
since the first drop fell,
I’ve been waiting under the grotto
for what feels like hours—
I haven’t been into the maze at all today;
the darkness on the hedges mirrors
the shadows that line the clouds.

I see no point in moving
from the grotto today, and while I wait for the rain
to pass, I remember
my first day here, a few summers ago—

The humidity at noon under
a liquid sun,
a girl in a rose-colored dress,
our August trip to the hedge maze in the neighboring county,
the laugh she gave as she trotted away:
“let’s get lost in the maze—
come and get me!”
the last I heard of her,
and a glimpse of red cloth rounding the edge
of a wall in the maze,
the last I saw.

We had felt so much excitement
and fear
pressing further through the winding paths
decorated here and there with
fountains, gardens,
idyllic cherub statues,
and the grottoes
which I now use as sleeping places
and—like today—
as cover from the rain
which pours here so often.

The downpour recedes
allowing me at least the chance to walk
through the maze to one of
the tulip gardens.

Not today of course,
but there are days when I hear
the soft laughter of children, friends, and lovers
echo somewhere in the maze—only
a few lanes of manicured green separating me
from them.  Days like those
are difficult to bear.

One day, not too many weeks ago,
I heard those sounds and I smiled;
but it came as a shock to hear
the patter of a pair of running feet, so clearly just around
the clean-cut corner of the hedge I was using for shade.
It was the first—the only—time I had heard a sound in the maze
this close, close enough to see and touch—
through the pinhole gaps in the foliage-wall
I saw a burst of color, like clothing.
I shot around the corner, I glimpsed the flicker
of pale red cloth flagging
behind the form that had slid
into another path through the maze.

The chase had failed
well before I had taken my first wild steps,
hitting the well-tread path hard
with desperate feet.  I yelled like a drunkard.
Later, I noticed the cuts on my fingers and neck,
sliced into the skin as I flung myself through
one wall of green and skid against the next.

Today’s shower is completely over.
I walk myself through the maze, and
avoid the shallow lakes that have formed
in the dips
in the paths, beaten firm by thousands of trampling feet.
Under the sparse autumn light
I collect flowers from one of the many small squares of garden
which I have come to know so well.
With a clump of black
and white tulips in my hands,
I look for a place to ****.
Life here is difficult in the winters.

I hail a cab.  I’ve got to leave this part
of town, the Upper West,
dripping with fatty money.

At 97th I step in
and exhale, revived
by the sweating air in taxi cabs.

Through the window
I see
the imposing orange
of a tall
sewer ventilator,
steaming and
ignored—

At Columbus Circle,
a corner hot-
dog stand
is slow-
ly wheeled to
its moment-
ary place—

Broadway, with
one closed bank.
Empty, in back
the dusted black,
and iron beams?
Things lean
diagonal
against the walls,
a warning—

Faster, faster,
further south and somewhere
in the Village.
The rows,
rows and rows
of brownstone stoops:
quietly lined
along the street
patient, waiting,
delightfully clean—

The cab rolls to a stop.  I pay and step out to the street.
Near Greenwich Street, the crosswalk
supports some types trying so hard
not to be doing all that much
and wearing hip clothes.

I’ll stop mid-street, look up real high,
and take in the sunlight
that’s slamming against the pavement.

Amid the *****, wrinkled scales
of cracked and weary bark
a scraggly old line leads down
bereft of any aim,
leads past the mottled brown and gray
where mold becomes a skin,
and winds a canyon’s ****** crag
which tapers towards its end.

Illuminated buds display
the flowers half in bloom,
just sparse enough to show the scar
like shrapnel-wound ingrained.

This spring, the tree bursts white and pink
like many springs before;
the patient scar still growing wider,
softening its edge—
a green-white-pink-brown checkerboard
obscures the many lost
small buds, with dead deep-green tinged shells,
who wobble on their stems
and fall, some landing in the ****
to linger and decay.

Unperturbed traffic marches down
the pleasant four-lane road
as ever, crushing scattered blooms
like victory parades—
the tree remains a safe, clean gap
away, a ten foot spread
on either side between the street
and tree…between the new
facades just built to look ornate
and scar-bedecked old tree.

Yet in the full of summer’s heat
the tree is vibrant green;
the flowers long-since fallen
and in the scar become dirt.

Amid the white notebooks dotting my desk
hides a half-drawn sketch
laying down some image of an ideal poem.

It sits incomplete, but the plans I made
surface to my vision—
a sturdy poem of stubborn build,

words, pliant, sad, and simple
deft-attached, vine-like wrapped
around bamboo scaffolds astride black steel framing.

Dangling from two pinched fingers,
the sketch has yet to display
its mid-sized trees (for scale)

and the few more floors envisioned.
It could house with ease
a teeming, drunken mass

of patients with a fear of heights
and post-traumatic stress.
The burn of my popped lighter

curves over the paper plane where the grassy lot’s drawn,
where my hired architect would stand
and plan the façade, no windows.

His blueprints would radiate the math
of symmetric perfection
found symbolic of its New-Age form.

Designers would be flown in
from around the world,
contractors would be called.

And the sheer simplicity of it all
would test their expertise
challenged at last by the spire and final stanza

which, if drawn, would only now
be caught up by the flame
casually ribboned across the page.

At the store, $39.95 is a fair canary price.
Make sure to buy a cage of taut, safe wire
with space enough for flying.

At the home, your canary requires natural light cycles—
if you must, place over its nighttime cage a mantel:
solid black, opaque to block your lights’ glow.

Provide it food and water, everything it needs to survive
in a cage: a toy or two (bells are best)
should be enough to entertain your new canary.

But you must always remember
that should you stare, hoping for empathy, at
your pet canary, its black eye may fall

on the wall behind you, which is more interesting to look at.
Many times you may want to pet it or
remind it of your care with a caring scratch or tickle—

refrain, think of its crisp, clean feathers,
butter-yellow and what
would become of them for your ruffle.

And when your idiot friend shakes it in its cage
jabbing a rude finger inside
remind yourself that it is disgusting to laugh with him.

Busriding to
the city limits,
I think of
Levertov’s Half-Way House,

lying just beyond
the city limits.
The bus ride is
uneventful—

I rest my head against
the window and count
the cross-hatched streets.
Lulled by the rhythmic

bump and shake
of the bus, I fall asleep.
In my dreamstate
self-consciousness overwhelms

me, and I am forced
to look in on my bus
from the street alongside,
and notice that I am alone
and will soon get off to walk.

uttering that tenor growl
that only we salamanders know,
I will stir from my salamander bed,
slide from its clinging preservative oil
into the eerie orange of tonight’s hellish glow.

Then we will meet at the shore
of the black stagnant puddle our home,
like a monstrous bootprint
stamped in the mud of our forest.

We’ll slink towards the woods,
slowly gyrating our limbs over leaves twigs sticks
roots and stones five times our size;
a struggle to heave ourselves before
the looming, glowing trees.

At last the heat of the ash trees,
the entire forest swirls in flames,
crackling at our feet,
engorged by the unbothered blaze.
We’ll wait a pensive moment, then take
our first few steps into the burn.

A softening of the skin, like putting up the wall.
In the late afternoon, he had her against the wall.

This is not the first time someone has lost their mind here—
Ten men or more have faded into thought, found staring at the wall.

We have loved each other longer than this forest used to grow—
What will happen?  You will change when we are forced to cross the wall.

I cannot see, but I can smell the hyacinths on the other side.
Cord-like vines snake through the cracks in the wall.

You wear all the semblances of love in your black bathrobe;
Go ahead, put on your best perfume, like some flowery wall.

At the edge of the woods, chimneys lurk behind tall leaves.
Somewhere ahead, wrapped around the bases of trees, waits a wall.

When, torpid, the sun begins to grey
In the outlines of clouds on the move
But in no hurry, autumn reaches for its full potential.
What leaves there could have been
Were shot away, we’d have paid them no mind, anyway.
There is a roughness tangled in your hair,
It’s best, I think, to let it be
And, instead, to view the wide expanse of beach,
Which marches into the frigid sea,
Debating with itself and at last achieving a landscape
Pure enough to match the temperature: 40 degrees F.

I can feel your hand stiffen and I
Too sense the tension in the afternoon,
A resistance to our huddled, timid presence; we’re nearly frozen in the process.
Drawing closer, hoods, tightening our jackets
Won’t do much to prevent the
Days from shortening and the hours’ agonizing stretching-
Out.  It’s not time enough
To take in the red and white display
Which umbrella shades act out tiredly before us.
Then the waves, mischievous as ever,
Creep up the sand to ****** at our shoes
Before they swagger back to the sea.  Love
Is lounging in the break, sopping wet
And fully-clothed—boots and all.
In the brief moments when our thoughts and talk collide, hours fit for memory
Flit us by.  Hairy swathes of weedy dunegrass
Wilt with hindsight.

Please, slow.  A rushed gaze and a blink are futility
At the shore; looking, here,
Is tenderer than you’d imagine.
Finalized versions of the day are worth one short glance,
But no more than that; you see
Too many things are
Strewn about these days; it is unclear who is
At fault for these mysteries, only that today,
At the boardwalk there are many brooding melancholies.
Silently, a hard wind licks the sand.