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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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!

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.

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—

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.”

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.

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