"How lovely is the night"

How lovely is the night

?

Were I not terrified,

how lovely it might

be.

Spools of wire air require

I flee frightened

through

past

favorite flowering fields forgotten

folded

laying fallow

sorrow sewed in summers and come autumn harvest fears.

Now,

I take my death pal’s hand

and lead him from beneath the brambles along my unlit street

inside.

If tonight we play,

let’s play.

Tide Poem 2

I left the clean laundry in a lump on one half of my queen sized bed

on purpose.

Inherent in its lumpness are ambiguities,

one of which I snatch out of the air and apply to the thing

for comfort.

A body,

not your body, all you greedy eyes hoping.

Its emptiness in being plain

and its absoluteness in being plain

set the paradox whirring.

This hollow heap,

grain by grain

deconstructed,

haunts.

ordinary

full moon

nothing special

about it.

full moons

every month.

tomorrow,

work.

what’s more

the river

gone dull.

relative importance

What good,

I do not proclaim,

what good is it?

What purpose?

What function?

And to what degree, and how?

Here is another image from my life-

Doves, Roses, Waters, Lillies, etc., etc., or some such “beautiful” bullshit-

and attached to it some such projection of my psychology.

Because those “eternal” “beautiful” “waters”

stifle my exuberance with their arresting gag

and I am “moved” enough to “write” a “poem”

and because it is only water,

and because it is only a poem,

and because yous wander normally amid only waters,

I know that I am alone.

Nothing is more isolating than my love for these died away "moments".

My insistence on the power of

4pm light on leaves

a self-indulgent thought at 4am,

is, admittedly, a private lunacy.

I do not proclaim.

There are skyscrapers for that.

I do not analyze or press

Gods or Governments for answers to these

similarly

imaginary questions.

Her

She is rising just now,

rising,

from a cream silk bed

buttered with sun.

Every time you’ve touched me,

I’ve thought of her.

Her sheening hair,

her sincere smile,

her scathing tongue

and cooling lips.

In fact, she haunts me,

reigns my dreams.

It was your mumbled

midnight words,

it will be

your mumbled midnight words

that slide like a film

between us.

Chair People

There is a cold space           (now).

It knows.

When I was about ten,

I went into the garage.

I sat by the big meat freezer.

When the cold space looks back at me,

I have long hair.

                                             (My hair is short.

                                  Somebody cut my hair.

                                  This destroys me.)

The whole image is wooden     (now),

Please understand,

I love her.

It’s not that I let some(one)thing go.

It’s that long hair.

I told him everything.

                           (and then,

                           I told her everything,

                          and him, and     )

It does not feel soft.

I have dripped my face into it for years.

Tonight it really does love me.

I cried and talked in the empty garage,

and the chair                        (opposite)

was patient.

The sun is rising,

and I feel nauseous

from crying and not eating.

It is necessary                      (that I make)

to make these offerings.

How else will I not lie?

sing{/s}

I have sing.

I have sing, to.

I. Ple. eed. ha(e)v. ase. (n).

sing.

to.

Pl(a)e(e)(.)

s

Y-

I.

-allowed-

I have, I have, I have

sing{ed}.

to, anyevermore.

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