On the End

Each day catapults.  And every opening, that
knock.  I saw your message, saw my
failures.  The smell of paper burning didn’t wake
the children.  I put on each
of my dresses, then took it off.

I scraped the wax off the table you gave me. My inventions
insignificant, no matter.

Let's Record the Evidence

Two jugs of milk, butter, fruit. A choice of pear, apple, or tangerine. Pumpkin pie. Cans of thick evaporated milk. One went bad in the cupboard. The luxurious candor of space. A whole room. Hundreds of books. All getting it wrong.

***

To have had a chance. To have succumbed to timidity, to easy things. To let it unfold. To care, to get in the stream of it and let it take you, your work.

Look up, you’ve been had. Those friendly beasts, jargon from the crooked fence and the ring finger tipping you to sure.

Here. So See a Man Says

The word you can’t say is “a vague
spot heaved back”. That is not to say
"more unspeakable" but it’s really less
attractive. The prospect of it. Air
coming up out of you. All of these
inexplicable cords. Imagine. We sleep
like a carousel. There, a eucalyptus.
The neighbors’ peppers drip with rain.

Mirror:

Cloth: To preserve modesty, etc. “out of respect.” The absence of more jarring over any transparent space, allowing clean lines of light over old and pure snow. Softening snow, still throwing light with that old sparkle. Consider losing your memory to find something again. The flame, for example. Here it might be, despite the serial screens and dust on our tires.

***

Cloth: Covering stacks of paper, crushed tin, potatoes in a basket, rice and beans. Dull green falling and flowering in scatters, playing ugly like a plastic clarinet, revealing single yellow flame staircase pushing down. Young shine of covering in sleeping creases.

Autobiography

The murder next door wears
to color in dreams. First
police lights led to lost air, etc.
Little dead birds were
wet and black in the grass. People
pointed, scared and delighted.
The swans were one terrible
arrow. The crows were calling, giving
up. We looked,
hoping to find live ones at our feet,
eggs to scoop up, carry away.

My dear, my lonely, my giving not mine

You dear, you lonely.  You’re bleeding the photos
of me, and not gently.
Our human bones locked our
preferences, our humors.
Not gently, we gelled differently to ‘heart’, to
dryness, to violence.  In arcs, too,
my greenness, and bodies of
water, and automobile stink.
You’re here, your face a mottled light.
My face a spring or mire.

Mirror:

Flame: The only time my body was hurt we skipped over it so lightly but now intentional noise clutters the background, if only in the brittle times. For five days or three years I wanted so badly to be awake in the presence of that the dreams were a stand in, were a loud false voice, such waste. A focal point and vestige, between the surfaces is all reflection, either up or down, but in the fire is every which way.

***

Flame: We were the four directions. Sat in sand, made a clear gift out of her center, out of the riddle, her happiest time. I wanted the water to pull me out, the water to hear me always. It kept pushing me back, back to that scar.

Mirror:

Radio: and fine ink, a resplendent sun. an object makes waves, another takes and passes them. clean sounds, then clean long ones ay ee oh all along a curve we made. they found a piece of plastic whose angles matched those of the woman’s fuselage, they found a boot heel, they found a blade. each discovery, years later, then more years. we find the layers; we’re the layers and you won’t bring her back but you’ll find the echoes of her in the double helix of a bone, or was that a turtle’s bit of body there on the beach. she sent out distress signals and the men in uniforms looked for her, checked that island off the list, missed the fire scar, missed the shell that only a westerner would bring from water.

***

Radio: The word ‘poetry’ comes from a man’s mouth. A baby’s favorite color. The color aqua or sky blue. Woman’s hair spidering out, catching on my fingers, catching on the dirt in my teeth. Once I thought she was beautiful, now I see the rotting in the mouth, that bruise beneath her eye.

so say sources of dissonance

*
sun killing size

let’s sleep in our shadows

brilliance after brilliance after roll of fat.

I’m back today & I’m a heaped arrow.

the blindness you’ve inflicted, exactly the opposite of what I thought

*
the day weary, along with
your breadcrumbs
even the loss frozen
the day lovely
don’t worry in your bird chirps
don’t regret or cycle
your slim acceptance
so nosy.

*
our private language not even

that

here beyond panic

Each ‘I want’ part of a false

parade.

*
Children were playing next to wires.
Flies were crawling on me.
Their touch less frightening than I’d remembered.
The patients must emit a smell before death,
she hypothesized.

Laura

She’s in the waist-deep stream, she’s
got her killing hairs. Hands
sadness; all the lies complete a quilt.
Closeness leaves nothing
legible. Will
I cross through the thicket.
Will I cross to you, name
red and arch, unprompt.
But her son the hill
thought motion means wanting.

Frame & Center

Muster all that all, in one
syllable increments, their borders
and jangle, and warble, too. Between
lines are ghosts of objects and
'she won't mind'. We'll slip down
into narratives of cause
and worth with just
a slight buzz to sustain.
Pipe in fragmented
relief, reminders and
tugs -- even the cliches offer
a shoulder. A mirror won't,
elastic won't, but your
gaze, you, the safety pin & fray.

subject-object talk

to a point. ouch. the numbers
assume importance. demand order.
‘I’ll launder you ‘til you cry’
said mud, something
like a tuning fork.
planets make their way to the page,
musty at sleep and new positions.
arrange your stacks, your silence
imagines itself a secret call.
every object I greet, suddenly
flaring at the tips. the pain an unmonied gulf,
allowable descent. at each moment, I can take you
or leave you. if only I will, dear reality.

Revision

Last time we arranged and arranged
and fell. The keepers brought the must and boxes,
excavation, exhumation. Every kick and blunder
opaque, still, in ink.

Chestnuts deforming on the mantle.
Scenes passed off and left as lack.
Photos of hands,
models for choice & chance.

Impossible Note, November 2005

they left us particular sky spotted
with blades, snow dreams shoved in cheap
clusters. look, theory's light indicates

chance, as glowing as any.

Mirror:

Tea, silver spoon: A verb machine. Body and vegetation extended. Tendrils, even. Twining there and there and there. But a hand picks it up, finally, makes it go. Finally is just rest, then we look back.

***

Tea, silver spoon: Crushed dried flowers, bits of dirt in another life. Silver slanting across heat. She came over crying, or maybe I should say, “came over in tears”, or almost. Came up the stairs calling hello, sat on the floor drinking tea.