31 October 2010

My work shirt is especially cold on the shoulder of the sleeve where I have wiped the running phlegm from my nose repeatedly. In movies, tears make a woman’s face sort of, shine.

I am surrounded by all of my things in my room. That is, they’ve got me surrounded.

My body appears, to someone, as a collection of bits. He or she waters them from the higher up place where he or she must is be.

When it is I who is crying, I find that I must comfort those who witness me. Just tears, only tears, I’m okay, just tears, only tears, etc.

I can press my naked hand into the back of a naked man and feel nothing. This is the magic trick of isolation.

Many things that I own are sharp. Good.

I am in agony in location A. I think about location B, and how I will remain in agony there. I mill about.

Everybody hangs up the phone. Everybody goes home.

cool retributions served tea side

One day she’s singing. 

They’re lined up for her, by law. 

Firing quad style she’s plucking strings.


She’s unreachable now, undeniable.

Arms, flung with a victim’s abandon,

don't even reach the stairs.


It’s a blue dress she wears.

Her hair’s in winded tangle.

Probably the sun sets in ten, fifteen.

It ticks but isn't but falls apart like time

She is watching the clouds.
They are ambling until they are overhead,
until the are watching her.

The world is going on, the rain
and the palm trees, and the rain and the earth
and everything.

She is opening the mail and looking away.
The window pane is sharing in this
suffering.

Rain draws the old earth smell from the ground.
Memories put granddaughters to bed
so the wise men can stay up late;
They smoke and decide.

She is writing letters of importance.
Something on the stovetop, seeing her,

is committing blackened suicide.

She is lighting a candle,
watching the flame

she would ask why it sometimes trembles.

sostenuto

if-

but. you- we;

that is,

(however)

only- well

because | else

vanished.

on occ.

asi on: mayb

e lik e

a well

ing u -

(p) int h... e

[or g {a} -

-n-]

I.

or. but.

pleNO

...ease though| anyway -

pleas ease this away

this pain away this

is. n't. a-

pparent a-p-

romise.

Dear, my

dear,

Wilma's Saint John

My long hair reaches backward in the river.
Already, now, it twines around my ankles.
Her hazel sorrows strangle me before I drown,
and I will have drowned before I'm dredged from the clays.


Their questions rain on my street and roll to the gutter
where they pick up grease and garbage and bring them to the river
so that her moans are gurgled with plastics and wire
and it is her punctuated throat music that knocks on my sleeping.


The place where he's going already has a name
so that it's like visions of him are there
so that it's only like a vision that he's here
giving him residence in the habitat of dreams, memory, and ghosts.
Just so, the woman upriver is taking my hand by the name, performing a deep water baptism 
in the salt Lethe, that we might peer through such kingdom irons.

The tintinnabulation of the river
slips its silver tongue inside my ear,
it tells me


shine water whispers
mercury propaganda that, even, from your heart I wouldn't hear,
quivers, laces, weaves


into, through, and around
threads my skeleton with web stronger
than steel


bridges plunged to the clay
holding no water
crocheted the steel rusts with you


and to me is unreachable marvel
forbidden, violators will be prosecuted
persecuted though


I have been to the river's bank, that is
I have walked the water's edge, that is I
have been drawn,


long, by the current, poured
into it, bled into it
and became, and remain, there.

Jack and Anne

what I mean is

his name was Jack

his wife is still Anne

what I mean is

Jack wore khaki pants and white undershirts, with a belt

he would bring us fruit from the trees in his backyard

what I mean is

he had an immaculate sqaure lawn

he shot himself in the head

what I mean is

we would play in the street or fight

and he would ask us to get along and we would

what I mean is

he installed a pyramid clothesline in our backyard

my mother would call to see how he was

what I mean is

Jack was happy

he had the most ample garden in the neighborhood

what I mean is

Anne wore a gown

she is alone

what I mean is,

my hand is here,

your hand is here,

what I mean is-

hello,

thank you,-

what I mean is

we are alone

we are alone

what I mean is

here are our hands

we are alone

what I mean is

thank you,

thank you.

still

glued to

pas possible

in beds my heads are musics

in French it comes, except I don't speak it

j'étais fille, mais

somewhere I still am that is

somewhere I still am.

pas possible

still skin persists

glued to

gluey mind melts

bonding words to

words, words

wither except they never were

never were

pas possible, jamais

jamais

j'aimais

j'ai, mais
pas possible

Frosty Woods in Summer

into them prematurely

his and mine these woods

not

for you.

we can make stones and put God in them

and we can make a pile of them

a pile, a pile, a pile of them

and we can make a pile of them, we can

only

make a pile of them.

we have made stones and we say

yous have made stones too and

that is all we know [of and to] each other we are ghosts

still

these woods are haunted by us

the haunting is a thing felt

my ghost, I cannot kiss you

but [or] for

I love you

in the only way love can be

piled in the river

being tender stones.

I hold otherwise the phantom hand of a flesh-man

who skips my stone heart down river

where it meets the heap

the heap, the heap, the heap of stones there

it is the heap which is the hearth of loving

the phantom heap who's lost by counting

whose reality is only

whose constituents are lonelies.

Love Letter to Emma

What might be, chère Bovary?
      Mists obscure our cities, don't they?


Ah, dear one,
     poignant facts are pointed tacks upon our floors.


Might we float, then, just above them,
     and dance, right through this life?

untitled

is for the night
and times
when

a flower, a child, the sunlight
pierces

and doubled over
you keep walking

because there they are

making you alone