How it fills!
That shapely, well-lettered word-
Tongue but forms itself upon it
And all about me rousts in imagination.
Love! O tiny swear of cream
Tall and titled, come out of me
My eyelashes, mouth, and knees all feel it
It rising up from under
Pull and bellow in the earshot
Drifts as a pool of air, balmy smoke
Yet I alone can hear it
Strung and short, it wafts a potent lap around me
Hanging, my head in a banal sink.

You must forgive
When nothing meant to do you wrong
And it did.
When the two backs
Back in at the party
To each other
The drinks don't spill,
No casual pain.
Even a nod is forgiveness.
When you fall in bed,
Out of love with yourself,
Private and sardonic
So hateful
Nobody heard you, and
You're all right.
A laugh, even is.
When you meant to do nothing wrong.
Like a new bird
Without an old bird looking,
Forego the fate leap.
No one’s watching.
When you allow the old ruins
To flee and burn
Say no harm has come.
Thread unwinding the nylons
Withering in your eyes
On a spying train
It’ll pass.
They will graciously turn away from you
Again,
You feel fine.
Though I know you sing
At night, in the back bathroom,
Washing your hands
Of black bile

If ever you wanted me, pay no mind
To poetry I write or oaths I take
Nor bother with my look, for it is blind
And what I say will change with every wake.

Don't try me, with my patience cut in half-
My hands, no good for holding, cannot feel,
And every man that's loved me once will laugh
To think my palpability was real.

Give not a violet or a sweeter word
Than “No” to me or else I do not hear.
To tell me something true would be absurd,
Since virtue bids me nothing more than fear.

But do deny me everything I ask,
Then punish me for giving you the task.

Flush-faced, his broad chest full of might
In such mellow growth so slow and sure
Abides he like the yellow moon at night
Hung sidling by in silence evermore

A flame that struggles ‘gainst the cutting gale
Then hides inside so that its force conserves
Or rather like the wax that waits to melt
For light that burns until its last exhale

Oh Love of mine, who glows and warms
So softly that he almost can’t be felt.

In the cool night of childhood
I saw the heavenly glass
Through flecks in the dusty sky
Wandered in the vast, wild wood

Climbing in the walnut tree
Lolling on the dawn's dew grass
Cloud coverings shifting by
Prayer budding from out of me

I dozed unanswerable and free
Weary, glad, and wholly good.