Murder Ballad

Rain opened wounds on the lake

and road puddles. Dawn Fine, the mid-wife 

held the baby up to the lamp. 

Everyone in the family saw

the aberration from their own angle:

the knife that was born with her,

buried in the side of her head. 

This was far deep in 

           country, several hundred years

           beyond the nearest city, where a

           natural death was always more natural.

           Villages on the edges of lakes… 

           Farms trailing off like ellipses…

           hills in various stages of pregnancy. 

    The youngest daughter with the pale

skin and freckles in her hair, shy as grass

that folds over to one side when the wind blows it, 

ruptured like a dandelion 

                              under sudden breath. 

The man who began the baby in her,

soon as he took the youngest part of her, fled. 

Hence the small, leather-handled knife

buried in his half-born daughter's head. 

The mid-wife said,

She'll die by morning

if we don't remove it.

She'll die now, if we do, said her father. 

Has to be done gently, said

the oldest woman in the room, like 

separating twins. After dropping statements

on the table

and comparing the length of them, 

they decided to let the night 

find the morning 

                     where it could. 

At dawn, they rose to check on

the baby, the knife, and the 

daughter, and saw, like sharp

outlines of a hard, new parable--

the daughter had died, while the baby and knife

had lived. 

The Plan

If the pain gets worse, we will hold it.

We will wake it gently when the night has passed,

 let birds land on it and take strings

             for their nests.

If the pain gets worse, we will call it sweetheart.

We will dance it across the room,

offer it a stiff drink and let it get some things

            off it's chest.

If, still, the pain gets worse, we will place it in front

            of a kaleidoscope and stare at it. We will

            break it into a hundred glittering pieces 

            and go deep into the center of the center

                    and never come out, but

                                    it's okay because

                                    we were in there all along.

We Were Silent For a Long Time

As the fireworks struck insects down above

Our heads she told us the story of a friend who will

Never be satisfied by any man thanks to the horrors

She suffered at the hands of her father now she is sex

Mad but then she was only helpless and the story survived

Her because yes she was alive and always uncomfortable

On the fourth of July it sounds like war if you've lived it

You won't cheer I told them I am present within the

Material object which represents me but no one

Wants to hear about that it's like planning the

Baby's funeral before it is born.

Woke up late and the dreams kept

Peeling for a stretch of soft afternoon

Yes I am alive and this means I light cigarettes

At breakfast and then go wading in the bathtub

In a state of damp indifference I put the statue out

To sea (After it has been worshiped it must either

Be disposed of at once or worshiped daily from that

Time forward) I have been to the sea and don't believe

It has a death

And At Last We Were Watching the Mountains Grow

I have all these lives
    ending in me like movie years yes
    we are the understudy amputees and don't
    the hereditary and incurable parts fill us
    with superstition with the persistent
    question

My lord you've been
     examining the ashes like an oracle
     as if to unburn and from then on
     haunt the blinked spaces from
     then on wiggle in the face of
     brutality

I am flat-handed and these palms are
   blazing I am saying do you see
   just how large
   things can get when
                   you're not watching

                   The man was young and shot
into his socket
finally said all right I'll be the corpse

      From then on we made it our mission
      to drop in often on the newly
      doomed and we not once
      took off
                 our glasses

Once they made the great trip

And will we come out of it flushed, and if so,

           is that a good thing? (People seem to like it

when someone else takes the shoestring

and makes it his own, runs with it. People like

that, like the staunch willingness to just

wing it, all in.)

            Oh, to be carried by that-

           And my eyes will never see

themselves. So who? I have seen

                      the mountain swallow

                      the man. And come out

                                   changed.

             Oh, make me an octopus

             so I may spread

                                                   and reach-

From The Black Lodge

Sitting under obsidian cover,

           he wonders

                                Where is the bad

in me?

Tugging the tight-necked

           tuxedo, clearing

           his bothered    throat

Turns to nobody he knows and says

                       I have dark spots

inside me, and sometimes

I want

            To let them grow

The Edges

This is the cost of going under. They say the Heat will win. I go reckless. Take on

rooting interests. Share them. Alas, we are not smiling. In fact, some can

no longer find purity anywhere. Instead, we trace the edges of the

atmosphere with a collective finger. And taste it. And then, trace

the edges of the avant-garde with that finger. Then, the edges of our bodies.

And then, we cut off the finger.

All material is the same, so squish it all up into a tight little ball, and see

what happens. We will have cake to feed the party.