*
Cousin
The erotic brown fedora on the desk:
the erotic silver watch from your father's time
balanced on its thin hinged silver lid
on the Teacher's Desk:
Once or twice, someone comes along
and you stand up in the air
and the air rises up out of the air:
One leaf
then branches
stood up in the sun consuming
—Cousin, it was happiness on earth.
The Very Bad Horse
The very bad horse doesn't budge until the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones. —The Buddha
My first own home
my big green “bed-sit”
in London, in 1956
double bed green spread
sixpence coin-fed gas fire
London fog huge little footsteps
TOK TOK TOK
I knew three people
and three more at work
I knew you
I felt around in the dark for Life
and you I picked myself up by the hair
four stories up and dropped me
—Still I wouldn't budge.
Once
Once there was a woodcutter,
when he asked me to marry him
the woman in the grocery store said
You look like you lost your last friend.
First love!
When we broke up
it was as if the last egg in the house
got dropped on the broken floor.
This world is everywhere! the woman said,
You won't go unsampled!
So many secrets
So many secrets
held you in their glass
Fear
like a green glass
on the shelf
It hurt like glass
It hurt like self
Eleventh Brother
one arm still a swan's wing
The worst had happened before: love—before
I knew it was mine—
turned into a wild
swan and flew
across the rough water
Outsider seedword
until I die
I will be open to you as an egg
speechless red
Once in the nights
Once in the nights
I raced through fast
snow to drink life
from a shoe
what I thought
was wrong with me with you
was not wrong
now
gates in the dark at thy name hinge
Under the gold
Under the gold and chalk and brick, beside
the rowers on the river,
the black lines lived around my crayon bones.
One line. And then my heart shut down,
even so, inside the lines. I rode
out of the sorrowfence blue
twine-tied gate
into the river grass…
The Windows
Funeral dream
“We'll put them all down in the great book of sleep.”
“You may be dead but
Don't stop loving me.”
In memory
“Don't hold yourself cheap.”
All the windows came to him in tears.
The chestnut tree by the North River. Its tears.
Dream A bricklayer. Your father.
Dream “If you shoot someone
I will walk out on the ocean floor
and throw the gun away.”
Dream “When I am of doubt…”
Dream “Go clear.”
Go Clear
Go clear he said
his high gray 19th c.
postmortem jaw
I loved it its high grayness
go
