"Let Me Put It Badly":

"I will feed them doom cakes...". Whew, what a line.
This one has a convincingly authoritative tone--calm, fatalistic, careful.
It's pretty much seamless... (and here comes the inevitable "but", which I'm sure you saw was coming): I'm not sure about that last line. It doesn't ripple out with finality. I feel like we're still waiting for a last gesture.

Burnt Fable

Little Red Riding God
Climbs out of the
Mouth of the Big Bad Wolf.

Her bonnet is as supple
As a vagina turned inside out.

Where was she going?
When she walked right past

The gaping fangs on
Either side of her, where was
She headed?

To Grandma’s House.
Though Grandma lived
In the stomach of The Wolf.

Her cape matched
Its stomach lining
Perfectly.

So much so, when she left
Her grandmother begged
Take me with you!

But she didn't.
And that's the beginning
Of the story.

Where a girl steps free unscathed,
And at her back--an old woman howling.

Let Me Put It Badly

I will vanish,

you'll see.

I will imitate the dead,

and then become them.

When the time comes,

I will bring along several friends.

I will feed them doom cakes,

and then I will soothe them.

My body has a million tiny holes;

This is where we go.

The Blight

                                 

                                    (An eye-mountain

                                                of night light

                                     Came flittering on like

                                                bats, black

                                     But bright between

                                                the spaces)

See us scared static,

            full of ample

Arguments worn like

            ugly hats on

A sea of held heads

            and used phrases

See us bite down like

            vice shine like

Don't ever let me go

            like dug heel

Refusal to separate head

            from head-body

See us flail like not

stuck on failing

see us start small, see us end up

            rich and tired, see us

            go stale

go faster, go under, see us

riddled

with sink

holes

see us shrink and shrivel

see us vexed and pestered

            see us vacant

hollowed out without

stilling

see us dig and digging, see

us harvest nothing

see us here without an offer

            see us open

see us naked

and apparent, sharing

our affliction

like lotion

see us raise the curtain

see us give an eyeful

            from the brights of the

            mountain night

Safe Seed Pledge

So deeply full

            of follies

I can't catch

            my breath

So I spin them

            through the rain light

through the sun clouds, spin them

like strings of sugar that stretch

and bend

Can you let

           these missteps

lay fallow, and just sip

           them like tasting

wine, just sip them so you

know the flavor, sip them

as the rain rushes

down, turning all sound

to damp whisper?

Like thistle, I have waited

            for the

clinquant sun jitters

            to fall upon my skin

and all the wet sounds

shout now

so all our ears can

            feel them

You see, all lost

           men can breathe

this air, but they cannot

keep it.

I know

what I am looking for,

but I will not

            seek it.

Anti-parallel

I have chains, long

            strands entwined like

vines, base-stacking interactions

among the aromatic

           bases, free

           energy from

the same initial state to

the same final state

Give me heat, the

           universe is more than,

or equal to, zero

and the adjective 'free' was

           supposedly banished

           but remains

a more accurate replacement

for outdated affinity

Volume-entropy-internal energy

Necessary stable-neutral unstable

When bodies, or systems

            are brought into contact,

part solid, part liquid, part

vapor, electrical work in

            a reversible cell,

            all reactions vanish

the diminution of the free into

a fictitious water-like substance

I am found

            by tracing the spaces,

these voids are adjacent and provide

a place to bind, the narrowness of

            the minor groove,

            the edges of the bases,

exposed in the major groove and

twisted back into the ordinary

Vital-specific-critical zipper

Sense-antisense-relaxed disorder

Like Bums To Water

Bums are ugly. They smell.
Time to turn them
Into poems

And throw them down a well.

For The Skull of Adalbert Czaptieonesz

..........................--the Mutter Museum, Philadelphia




This isn’t a Yorick moment,
Poor brother human living skull.
....Holding you
In my memory
Instead of my hand—since

You were behind glass, one
Of several dozen, part of the Hyrtal
.........Skull Collection.
When I realized with the totality of
My own hologrammic skin,

All these skulls look as similar
As I am from them,
Though when I admire myself
...In the glass
I look through to see them,

It doesn’t seem the future will ever be true.
Suicides, assassins, idiots, thieves:
Lose their heads
...So their bodies
Can sink into
The dignified anonymity of the ground.
Was the flesh boiled off
...Before the
Boneplates were polished
And catalogued with a neat biographical note
On the forehead, in India Ink?
Curiosity has its own

Eternal Return, callous for
Connection under the serious wave-curl of wonder.
Who were you? Adalbert, your
...Forehead that says
You were starving and Polish, and once
Of a certain age, desperate to cut the one
Cord tying you to the flesh:
...................Your own throat.
Is it pornographic that, reading your
Death detailed on your head, pity
Holds me to the earth,

...More invisible and
Authoritative than gravity? Rush
Of immediacy at the speed of
Gratitude, through pain-grown
Structures of flesh… your remains

Useful, briefly truthful, facing
...The full sober
Excess of what they were subtracted from.
All laid to rest
So it can upset
............The old adage:
I will have to live it

So that I can think it.
And to give the right burial, forget--
...More world than skull,
Unlike you.

Blastocyst on the Fifth Day

Unbelievable enjoyment from gloss-eyed oblivion
Fallopian observation of every single body
Going up from underneath to reach anything important
Every sound coming on like an eruption
All love in a single echo
This is the golden age of anatomy
Bones and muscles are very valuable
And think of what the ears can do
Modesty is the key to correcting each other
Growing ourselves out of myopic ground
Don't believe it, even if you want to
All of us start small
Exist for four days, then become

Night Without Rapture

All it did was rain, and I think even our feet stayed dry.  All I did was blink moment onto moment until I stitched a life out of the back of my eyelid.  The whole tired world was there---each of us thinking the next person into it.  I wondered now and then, "What is there to wait for, really?"  Happy enough to be left behind.  No such thing as alive.  Everything is, and was.  Now we are tomorrow.  Now no one outlasts anyone else.  One thousand little heads collide.   Again.  And again.  All rise first, together.

I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain

                                                               - for Tim Buckley

I am King of Second
                        Glances, Father of
Grove Tones, Halfway to vagabond,
Stuck like a rare diamond
            in someone else

I can go without. Lord, I will blind myself
           so the wrong color never finds me like

White thievery and an emotional

            sham

I would do anything to stop fleeing. I want less

and less

so I will go ahead
                            and take it all 


            Sing along with the sirens,
            this is the last time I come home.

The Family That Slowly Burned Itself Down

I know this is a dark day,
      but the sun is shining like a bruise
on a marked woman full
       of hideous light
What will be left
       when the fires fumble
       to black day ash?
An entire family can't catch
       their breath left
       the last of Odessa
for weeping worship
       of reliable sorrows
This they can hold
      and say:  See what I've
      known and
Everyone's prayers are for me now
and
We must all lift this curse together
and
All days are dark
and
all Suns will shine




  

To Texas Tomorrow

Wear horns always,
      even if you hide them

     and celebrate the
loves that love the desert night

    which is always colder
than expected

We want relief, and we
     will take it

We will take it to the party
     and share it

At least when we fall,
we will have company
         down there

The Wrong Turn of Texas

Heads together smash all brain please learn more than

just one body

You won't know we are looking at you

You won't want to

The morning light is bright

orange so you can hide in it's fruit

The night is alive and it is spitting us

back into the morning

Make a cave of this place

Never show your face unless you mean it

The hookers didn't want us Our legs

gave out and we were

broken

The Gut Racket

Gut racket in spades

Hear my shrieks and hear

My silences

Admit ill-defined

Stop this gesticulate

My countrymen

Blow fish Sunday

Light up hung up

My cave paint

Fleece covered feeling

Won't stay soft

My curses

What We All Have

I have a body that belongs to no one.  I go underwater to escape it.
I have a second head.  I'm putting it up for grabs.
Underwater, we all feel the same sensations, free from weight
and legs.  I am offering these legs to the sharks.  I am offering my soul
to the sea monsters.  More than anything, I want to be
an octopus.  I want to surround myself
with myself.

Oh, No, I Couldn't Possibly

          Come. Let us find another way

          to say              No way:

I think not. I don't want to. I know that I want to say No.

I will never. We will never. Not a good thing for me to do.

Let's not. Absolutely not. I will not. We will not.

Hell, no. Not that.
Shake the head somberly with a steady gaze.

         (The importance of knowing what you don't want cannot be overstated, ever)

Which West Was Won

One body

offered to the sea

            who said, “What?

What do you want with me?”

Face was a beard

to hide our glee, but sea

           said, “We are he!

All are we!”

The Ears

I can hear your ears. Frogs and birds can

hear your ears. Oh, unwanted sound.

                       Root-mean-square sound.

                       Left-hand-illusion sound.

The mute consonants represent the earth.

The vowels heaven.

        I can take the whole song.