larger, darker and darker. The black moon.
Images of Little Compton, Rhode Island
Here the tendons in the swans’ wings stretch,
feel the tautness of their futuristic necks,
imagine their brains’ keyhole accuracy,
envy their infinitely precise desires.
A red-nosed Goodyear zeppelin emerges from the mist
like an ethereal albino whale on drugs.
One wanders around a credible hushed town.
Mosquito hammering through the air
with a horse’s power: there will be no cameramen.
We will swap bodies maybe
giving the old one a shove.
That’s an awful lot of work for you I said
and besides look at your hands,
there are small fires in the palms,
there is smoke squirting from every pore.
O when all is lost,
when we have thrown our shoes in the sea,
when our watches have crawled off into weeds,
our typewriters have finally spelled perhaps
accidentally the unthinkable word,
when the rocks loosen and the sea anemones
welcome us home with their gossamer arms
dropping like a ship from the stars,
what on earth shall we speak or think of,
and who do you think you are?
From the Hole
A horse-drawn rocket
climbs the wooden hill:
behind it two or three friends
are sharing their tobacco: their hats
are beautiful like small pieces of
coal on their heads
fostering goodwill.
I’m standing in this hole, see,
and I’m going to holler out:
“Good riddance to bad rubbish!”
and “I’m sorry if I was a menace!”
“Howdy doody, milkman travail!”
“So long buoys and grills.”
Like a harp
burning on an island
nobody knows about.
The Trap
Inside the old chair
I found another chair;
though smaller, I liked
sitting in it better.
Inside that chair
I found another chair;
though smaller, in
many ways I felt
good sitting in it.
Inside that chair
I found another chair;
it was smaller and
seemed to be made
just for me.
Inside that chair,
still another;
it was very small,
so small I could
hardly get out of it.
Inside that chair
I found yet another;
and in that, another,
and another, until
I was sitting in
a chair so small
it would be difficult
to say I was sitting
in a chair at all.
I could not rise
or fall, and no one
could catch me.
Twilight Sustenance Hiatus
The relentless confetti of dollars!
I’d prefer to kiss that silent chipmunk
on the roadside while a tiny ocean
of dandelion seeds arranges a gray
throne on his ear! I have no “final”
vows to take tonight, though your hair
might be floating down the Ohio.
Chameleons can march around a small room
if they want. I could sell gasoline
on the desert, though I would miss
the grass. Or I could even get your name
tattooed gingerly across my wrist at dawn.
There is so little news fit to print:
yesterday a moth caught fire.
Today a lost school of astronomers
came back. We only think tomorrow
is called “The Finished Gem.”
Tomorrow is called … come on.
The Wheelchair Butterfly
O sleepy city of reeling wheelchairs
where a mouse can commit suicide if he can
concentrate long enough
