The stiff cold
In the air today, and
I was thinking what I might like
To become
Of me once I’m good
And dead.

There are really so many options, but right now,
I think I’d prefer
To be cremated,
Or something like that.

A starchy cotton jacket was
Such a bad idea,
Now I’m cold!
Sheer buildings leaning
Over me, on almost all sides.
Are crematoriums like that?
Must be, here,
I suppose...

But how warm I bet they are
And then you slip into death
At the end of it all and into
Those lovely, gorgeous urns.

I.
Coffee, with some cream—
Why not drink it this morning,
Like all fall mornings?

II.
Don’t pull off the sheets!
Our white legs will be exposed
And we could be cold.

III.
On Sunday morning
I feel the workdays looming
In my tensed, clenched chest.

IV.
Wake in aching light.
Groggy and still, electric
From the heat of dreams.

V.
Hardboiled eggshell flakes
Litter a clean saucer, flecked
With pale morning light.

VI.
Local headline reads:
‘Vile window graffiti taints
Pharmacy’s image.’

VII.
It’s raining; the sight
Of puddles in the grass meets
The smells of bacon.

Winter rain falls like rushed snow,
hurried free of its intricate lattice,

setting down on your silvery snow-jacket,
seeping through its outer layers, now damp—

your sodden nylon sleeves cling
to the limited space of your figure.

Look around, there are no other children
in the wide, dusk-bright park,

there is just the rain tapping against the path.
Best to go home now

before the chilled rivulets forming in the street
begin to freeze.

Our steps echo inside the mist—
A foggy midnight on some suburban road.
We plod into the pale
Light of vapors hanging on the sheet of night.
In two hours on this road, not a single car
Has passed.  We are tensed, hunching
In anticipation of some visit, the hiss
Of rolling wheels on the pavement.
Its cool and the night is wet
With a thick mesh of mist.  
“Where are we going?” she asks us.
A small shape skips by, maybe a fox, edging the road;
It kills a mouse.  The fog drapes itself across
The pines, the hooked iron barrier, the weak orange
Blur of streetlights, and our black figures.
I slide pine needles out of her hair
And, as the thing leaves its **** to rot,
Wipe traces of blood from her collar.
The glossed yellow lines curve, unseen
Into more mist and the silhouettes of trees:
Writhing shapes against the inky
Background of night.  The three of us walking,
Wreathed in misty veils, like death-hoods.

It was warm in Emilio’s backyard,
The site of their game of explorer.
Emilio cleared the overgrowth;
Michael complained.
He was bent over, trying
To have a conversation with the blood lilies,
But he couldn’t hear them
Above the soft sliding hiss sent up by
The passing snake herd.
(Past the Huano palms, Emilio could see them,
Moving like a fleshy woven mattress)
Both boys noticed
The glut of termites
Crawling over their sneakers.
Michael complained more.
How could he explore
Amid so many noisy distractions?
This was when Emilio went inside
To get his father’s gun.
Michael watched as he fired
Three shots
Into the clouds threading the sky.
Both explorers presumed it was the shots
That punctured the clouds and caused the snow;
In the surprising silence of snowfall,
The two boys trotted across the yard,
Catching flakes in their butterfly nets.

Press it to your lips, breathe in deep,
let the smoke fill the car with guitar riffs
while you tear down the street.

‘This stuff will give you a lift,’
says John from the driver’s seat.
I pass him the joint and turn the volume up.

Good hard rock pumps our blood with a wild beat
and the heat of summer night keeps us on top
of the world, the six of us, crowded

in a rusted, five-seat pickup,
pushing eighty, with the music loud, and
the backseat flirting getting rough.

We’ll pinch and tease the girls ‘til they
sink, slyly, into our arms
and enrage us with eyes begging for mischief.

So we give them mischief, and pull the car
up to a gas station.  John turns to me to ask if
I’m up to try this place.

‘It’s just right.’
We step to the asphalt in pace
with the radio’s thump, the white

glare of the floodlights hard
against the damp black night
and the shadows of trees.  I start

to review the plan, but I know it alright;
the door jingles lightly as we step inside
to rows of multicolored bags of chips.

Inside it’s cold and quiet.  John coolly strides
to the back for the drinks, and I pick
out a pack of cigs from in front of the counter.

The man is reaching, John is ready, then lightning quick,
we bolt from the store; round the
corner, find the truck; ‘Hey you *******!’

But he’s too late, we’re racing away
and flipping him off.  Our laughter
is loud, the girls are blinking in the spray

of beer popped open.  That’s just after
coming back all smiles, the victors;
flying into the truck, I sat

a girl, Joanne, next to me.  We soaked her,
freed her, ourselves, with foamy suds,
the alcohol, and young nights on the road.

There, signs and shadows rushing past,
we sing to the radio: “I hope I die before I get old!”
and drum on the dash.

Throw the bottles out the window,
who cares what happens!
Spread the glass shards, let the whole world know!

Press it to your lips, drink to the intoxicating purr of the engine.
You laugh, listening to the tinkling
as bottles shatter, one by one, on the pavement.

I think of you, washing my face
I see you in my glass of juice
I hear you, crinkling my newspaper
I think of you, reading some letters

I know you, as I drop down, sinking into the plush couch
I think of you, sitting motionless at my computer
I sense you as I anxiously turn down the heat
I feel you and look through my face reflected in the window

I feel you, tying my shoes and ambling out the door into the open avenue
I think of you and glide past a private garden enclave, dotted with plastic cherubs
I hear you as my beaten sneakers tap and skip up the steps to the store, two at a time
I think of you as I take in the bookshelves draped in rows and rows of secondhand novels

I smell you, mixed with the warm brown scent of coffee; a mild, nervous moment of lavender, the hearty wood of café tables
I see you, quietly seated near the window, two hands on your coffee, shoulders slightly hunched, smiling softly, brightened by the noon sunlight
I feel you, two hands hugging your shoulders, your downy sweatshirt, smart little hands, your perfect cheek that I kiss, those lips
I know you, careful and happy, passing me a pear, looking down with a new, small smile and showing me your reading: love poems, giving a fleeting laugh, calling yourself a sap, romantic and I drink in every instance of you, ecstatic

I hear you in the shake of bells as I open the door to leave and watch you through the window
I feel you, your fingertips lightly drumming a goodbye against the reflective glass
I recognize you in the red glow of street-market mangoes, arrayed in wooden baskets
I think of you and wait patiently to cross the street

I see you in a graceful, dated streetlight
I think of you, rolling back my cotton sleeves
I feel you in the sunlight touching my neck
I think of you, and see an old man resting on a green bench

I feel you, gripping my door handle
I taste you in a square of chocolate
I see you in my tall, clean glass
I think of you, and turn on my reading light

I took a rose out of our neighbor’s garden;
A pretty thing to take your thoughts on past
The pain.  You shift in bed, reveal your scars:
Red sickles in your skin.  I’d hoped you’d laugh.

Outside, our own rose bush lays bare, the new
Rose petals torn and stamped into the dirt—
The thorns, stained red with drying blood, jut through
The tangled, shattered stems and upturned roots.

But I’m confused; you start to talk about
Your mother.  “My own birth,” you cried, “was such
A mess! And now I have this child…” Get out,
Go to the garden, where snapped branches crunch—
I think of when we smashed the rose bush, thrilled;
How I emerged unscathed as your cuts spilled.

A little longer,
And time will be stronger,

Drafting a world where no such road will run
From you to me
—Philip Larkin


There I sat
Alone with my pie
With its perfect golden crust
And its sugary dust.

The metal fork I
Used rang clear
When it clicked against the plate
Cutting smallish bites.

It’s then that I
Think of my mother—
She taught me how to cook
This pie from a second-rate book.

I was six
When we had to move;
It was best, I was told, to leave what I knew behind
And I didn’t mind.

Everything was new
We had a very small house
Then I started again at school
Oh, the kids were cruel!

And there was nothing
Like our loneliness
I thought to my mother
Too quiet to tell her I loved her.

I hid in my chair
She found the book
“We’ll make a sour cherry pie”
And pulled a glass for whiskey.

We cooked for hours
Cutting cherries and folding crust
Neither of us was concerned
When we saw the pie had burned.

We didn’t care
About the charred
Black welts and the rock-like crust
With its burnt carbon dust—

My mother and I
Were happy, we knew
the fruit and syrup survived
hot and sour, baked inside.

It’s 30…
it’s 28 degrees outside,
or so says the rust-cased thermometer
on the balcony.

The blizzard we’ve been expecting all week
is a churning grey mist in the distance—
it is easy to see from the balcony
if I look through pine boughs.

The woods expanding below our mountainside balcony
are also home to several swanky condos;
evergreens and birch all down the mountain,
and a dusty snow falling in the valley below.

We are all familiar with the reddened barn
staring at us, perfectly opposite our balcony,
commanding a small field
on the little mountain across the dip of the valley.

But the blizzard is swallowing the neighbor mountain
in its snowy march towards the balcony.
And the lazy, drifting flakes above the pines
are shook into a frenzied dance.

A group of skiers, lost and floundering in the white
near the buildings lodged in the woods below
understand that cold, chaotic feeling I know
as the valley blurs in whitewash.

‘D’you see that?
Right over there?
Tough to see in the young grass.’

‘No, what do you see?’

‘I see
one muscular snake,
nosing cowpies by the post.
cold little *******.’

‘Well, should I shoot him?’

‘Might as well, I suppose…
Don’t shoot the po-’
Bang—.

There are too many nights in a lifetime—
hours spent sleeping through the story
between birth and death.

The images are simple:
an empty highway, blue under midnight;
the huddled peaks of spruce that line the background.

Now and then, headlights ghost past.
I have time to reflect
in the interim silence in the car with my family.

Nearly all of them
are fast asleep.  There are too many nights in a lifetime—
so many moments of calm that I forget.

Years of life full with nights roll by, headlights shining;
there’s peace in
the steady beam of headlights, streaming through the dark.

Sparse snowflakes fall through the path of light
which leads a car
around a curve in the road before us.

The wind and silence on the road and in the car
dissolve into my body like a liquor—
I am calm.

The car ahead rounded its turn,
bearing down the highway,
its headlights fell across our windshield—

I forgot the events of my lifetime, and
felt no urge to think.
I flinched with a twitch before the impact.

A tattered bird had a made a tomb
in tepid water, it was a puddle
near the framework of a half-built room—
but the soul’s a swerving tunnel

and the dead are waiting at the end:
all sorts of animals huddled at the fringe
where littered pine needles stand
and creep inside the sandy construction site,

pale in the morning light,
the tractors dug aesthetic swirls in the sand—
a culvert keeps the brook alive,
it flows into the forest, which learns to mend

its scars with the festering of its things:
kingfishers’ **** on the berries and branches,
if the plants could undo their own stink
the heart wouldn’t die on its haunches—

the morning’s dew resolves to hoary ice,
its killing the greenery,
but the sandblasters lean, arranged by the outhouse, like
a dream, the first worker arrives early

he rests against a smooth-planed board—
flood the mind, but be sure to drain it out,
its his breakfast cup of tea that stores
his knowledge of beauty

past the place where the bushes are thin
there is an apple orchard, plucked to pieces at the end of fall—
trees arranged in ranks, held up with wires and strings:
a dementia arboreal—

the smells from the orchard meet
the smells from the machines and hover
above the building-zone, mixing with the bite
of cold humidity—a cruel kind of vapor

The mine shaft’s gaping mouth
yawns like the throat of an old, useless god.
Gnats hover by the scattered rocks.
This is real not a set, or a scene,
a spit of dirt shot through the sluice, all things like
a picture cut to kiss my America expectation.

In the surrounding bush, tamaracks curve towards the clouds.
The clouds where, above the furry tips of conifers, cataracts
plummet down mountainwalls, and ask:
“afraid?” And I am, I am.  I fear the sheer
slopes of tough granite slashing the giant sky
in two; the hard-edged mountain face.  The expansive air.

And this split is brooding old and unknowable
tunneling briskly into the unfamiliar, bruising
Montana a grisly purple-red
when the sun swings underground
and shades the hot **** by the mine with cool night as
behind it, the mine appears to growl.

We’ve got sweat-slicked brows, tuffs of loose, knotted hair
Our limbs dumbly droop and we stand on the roof

Of a three story flat up in Prenzlauerberg
Near five a.m. when the night’s at its end

When we shuffle our shoes and sometimes tip the *****
From the bottles that we’ve all left scattered around

Then the beer trickles down and it spreads on the ground
And turns the rooftop tar a shimmering black

I feel through my shirt the thick summer heat
The hairs on my arm, the trees in the street

Are bathing alike in a warm morning dew
And the cigarette smoke we let slip from our throats

Catches the first red rays as the sun shows its face
Through the chemical haze out in east Lichtenberg

We face the source of the light as it floods through Berlin
Not the city we know in this tangerine glow

In this rich warming shine that is washing our eyes
Black industrial pipes start to wiggle and writhe

And their steam hits the scaffolds, whose
Metal fingers grow limber as they stretch through the street

To shake the red trees from their lumbering sleep
Then the leaves that they drop start to flee and get caught

In the stares of facades in the communist bloc
With the refusal of death on their hot, heaving breath

The parks are all built out of paper and gold
With fountains that spew streams of molten stone

Our apartment stands firm in the boiling sea
Of the scars of old days which swell, throbbing like waves

It’s the city lain out, moving, alive, and just like that
A light, filmy rain sprays a sheet on the town

We try to claw it away, but the curtain stays down
Then we stir, soaked in the sun and the rain

It’s the start of the day
And we can go home to sleep and dream of sunlit Berlin

1
The blurred light of our life, a match strike, burns wild bright
friends laugh, sing, and blare swing: fast alive; rise then die
cheap bright wine, a red flying glass splash from your hand
the beat rocks the boombox; pop and lock, fitful hop
it twirls down and smacks ground to shrill sounds, red spills out
in doorframes, with cold drinks necks are craned, loudness shrinks
we peal back the silence with dance moves gone violent,
all join in and dance crazed: tables, chairs, sofas, stairs
we fling ourselves everywhere, and shout bliss and smoke air
I seize, spin you around—music rolls, celebrate.

2
In black quiet foot taps and twigs snap to this stride
and white foxes march past, watch the dance, trot on by
the still night’s our dance hall, the cracked bark its sparse wall
but sway, speckled love pair! Do the twist, jump and jive
on sharp leaves, on damp moss that’s soaked green, on mild ives
our waltz splashes stream’s glass; showers spray gleaming rain
you smile while you pluck limbs from pines’ sides to wave high
a leaf-dressed baton wand—forest song, dance along!

3
A sharp glare through broad panes; the sun’s rays hit Gate Nine
whose slant windows’ black frames light up our silhouettes
we glide boldly, steps rapping sole glee in pepped time
on lined chairs all stiff-backed; golden pairs stare perplexed
a young boy’s worn headset and pre-packaged stale bread
and smooth-gliding walkways, duty-free shopping spree
the rust-orange light scores them:  shocked faces glow, see
our haphazard mad dance past absurd potted plants
your dress flies, behind lies a dazed crowd, we glide down
the beiged boarding ramp, stamp joyous notes, thrash the floor
‘til shafts flood the torn corridor, splashing tan light
Across grey; the crowd cheers, disappears, sings our names.

4
We grasp hands and stride out towards young couples, real haut
all decked out in fine braid, a myriad masquerade
of lined pairs in tight squares and there’s music: waltz airs
which spark movement like truth bends the light, rend the night
with drum rolls and solos whose crass brass part echoes
the slow dips of grasped hips—roll and sway, pick up pace
the sweet rhythms wind lines across lines of blind hymns
champagne clatters, cries clap: shatter that! Rattatat!
I, drunk happy, toast strangers’ masked faces, change places
with laced ladies, sweep three eight-step Balboa sets
while chairs flip, the drapes rip, cymbals crash, windows smash
the dance burns the house down with loud sound, I look round
you’re not far, but right then—a sudden roar, masks, thrown, soar
above, cloud-like hang, hover—we meet and now dance
amid vivid waves of bright stares raining down, masks surround
our close dance, the mass sweeps along past the main doors
and outside, the cool rain pours in sheets, perfect sheets

And are you also frightened
Of the monsters with nighttime white faces
Of places lined ****** with traces
Of tiger-striped neighbors complacent
Are you all so frightened?

And are you also frightened
Of the German death-expert, that phantom
Of your mother turned raucously pantomime
Of a world-wide prisoners’ anthem
Are you all so frightened?

And are you also frightened
Of the nuclear holocaust schemers
Of the cannibals’ preying on dreamers
Of the new World
Are you all so frightened?

And are you also frightened
Of poetry written in free verse
Of burning alive you foolish young convert
Of the chorus of underground screams in the desert
Are you all so frightened?

Driving down the dry road to the port
Five o’clock and soon the ferry leaves
We listen to your homemade folk
Music, much too slow
Much too slow to be on time
And still, we drive lazy all the while.

Roll past mothers’ clean-cut sleeping places
Feeling ‘round for cigarettes
In your empty glove compartment
Though you no longer smoke
Shut my eyes, smoke it easy
Taking slow and separate breaths.

I am looking through my sunstained window
A place where older trees had all burnt down
Its not far to reach the docks
But I skip the soulful song
About finding love and folding boxes
Threadbare weeds and scrub have grown there now.

Pull up to the boat for my departure
Just five minutes late it starts to rain
Find my bag and coat, grasp my ticket
As the ferry throbs to life
Run to board the rusted giant
Wave to you a hard-to-see goodbye.

Look into the Innenhof
not out upon the rain-slick street
it’s easier
that way.

Decadent hail at the window
brings the history of rain
running, dripping
down your languid gaze.

Dream important things
are taking place inside the Innenhof—
while the water rises
they choke under its weight.

More water, green and choppy
the Innenhof is undone
sloshing, wet and pure, immobile—
birds are drowning.

Out of the frothy wash
your place bobs to the surface
freed of its moorings
in boring things.

You are lucky and precarious
floating on your hollow buoyancy
waiting for the rain to quit
watching the slow clouds break.

I have enjoyed a full six weeks since I last saw her, some very fine weeks.  And two days: six weeks and two days since.  I’m checking into a nice New Jersey motel.

What a fine room I’ve been given!  See the bed wrapped in sheets, sitting stately like a throne.

Shapes of flowers are scattered geometrically across the surface of the sheets, patterned to please.

After I have spent a few good minutes petting the bed and pressing the flowers, I can breathe deep, free and independent in my grand indent of a room—

The air’s a bit stale.  Ah, but there the closet in the corner, tucked so slyly into the corner, into the wall!

A perfect closet, I have to say; a clean cube with a proud hanging rack, made of imitation…is it oak? (the plastic much more stable than wood, of course)

It’s a fine time to get settled, so I’ll arrange my closet-things: the jacket and pants on the left, a shirt and jeans on the right.

The shirt has a pale stain at the bottom, the stain must be wine, the stain must be from some dinner we… I really don’t know how to remember I don’t know it’s just another stain.

That stain is red, like lipstick.

Well!  The windows are nice and what curtains!  Tall, beige and dotted with beach scenes—very picturesque.  There, right there in front of me, on the curtain, sweet babes build a sandcastle, and build it so well!

Past the babes and through the window I see the parking lot—better not look there…it’s got scraggly weeds yawning through the pavement, and the road beyond leads to the city, like all roads.

What else there must be something else—there, the standing lamp in the corner.  I’ll turn it on now, as its getting dark.

I need help describing it, the lamp.  Only the words ‘straight,’ ‘thin,’ and ‘lost’ come to mind.  In my travel thesaurus I find:

‘Spindly,’ and

‘wistful,’ ‘withdrawn.’ It is, I guess, observant and alone, that should do for now.

Here I am, laying in bed, reaching to turn down the lamp, and I realize with admiration

How wonderfully exact a copy the room’s second bed is of my own bed—starched stiff and neatly tucked at the corners, this one with a pattern of swans swimming laid across its sheets.

The trees have left leaves aplenty
for me to rake
they curl and tense and dry
I claw them all away

Little piles form of my work—
hills to dot the suburb-waste
the bent tips scratch and click
across the concrete face

Of a faded summer’s deck
and I think briefly of her hair
the brownish tint that would not rest
but flashed like an auburn glare

These ******* leaves weigh nearly nothing
my breath slinks out in rasps
then settles on my knuckles’ clenched skin
a sweaty bead slips through my grasp

It creeps to the bottom of the handle
drips—**** my luck—into the leafy mess
into the paper pile—
I cannot look, just rake what’s left

Forming more and more heaps
of crisp and crunchy detriment
which rest, unassuming, amid the scenes
of quiet days that I have spent

While sliding into sepia
in the slim space between house and fence
which could be her house, then she could see me
and I would dive among the leaves

Of my finished mess which stands
at last, a brownish jumble
tribute to my deadened fear
collected on my lawn, as if to humble

a cold fall regret
and I look, questioning, down
to picture pushing you into it
where stiff leaves’ stems may hurt like thorns

The sun fires down, oppressive
and I decide to have a break
from my slow trek towards the West and
take a table for a drink—

the conditions being so extreme,
I prepare to indulge myself,
order pizza and green tea
and toast, alone, my youth and health—

there along the subway wall
surrounded by the heights of old cuisines,
the best of ancient cultures crawl
to beg and sell from on their knees

to me, the *** of modern times
who orders pizza and green tea,
who stands to pack his books and lines
then, rising, slow and sluggish leaves—

yet, as I resume my heat-wave march
the décor reveals itself bit by bit:
a spattering of bullet holes—stark
shards from old slabs of wall been ripped

Heat slips up our shirts, sweaty beads of ***.
We twist our clothes, grabbing at flesh, groping for ***.

The hard squeeze and pressure is scooping out the soul—
Please, push it out, we want to be left bare and have ***.

Our skin is strung together, our bodies hollowed, dry;
Blind to the heat and the mess, we’re swept up by a blissful, empty ***.

The sheets, salted with sweat, are heaved off the bed,
Pillows gone, clothing gone, here there is nothing but ***.

Gasping and shouting, we purge ourselves, we are nothing—
I am pure and vacant, I’ve rushed my blood to my groin for ***.

And moments like these are strained and stretched.
Then, release, the moment falls from us as wet as ***.

Like sheets, pillows, clothes, the rest of me returns:
Too tired to move, I listen to our breathing, short huffs in the air after ***.