The Cage Walker 78
Addendum 79
Epilogue to the Opera of Dead on Arrival 80
Blues Chant Hoodoo Revival 81
from I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head
Unnatural State of the Unicorn 87
Touch-up Man 88
How I See Things 89
The Thorn Merchant 90
The Thorn Merchant’s Right-Hand Man 91
The Heart’s Graveyard Shift 92
Boy Wearing a Dead Man’s Clothes 94
The Music That Hurts 96
When in Rome—Apologia 97
The Thorn Merchant’s Wife 99
The Thorn Merchant’s Mistress 100
After Summer Fell Apart 102
The Brain to the Heart 104
Audacity of the Lower Gods 105
The Falling-Down Song 106
The Thorn Merchant’s Son 107
I Apologize 108
1984 109
Dreambook Bestiary 113
Jonestown: More Eyes for Jadwiga’s Dream 115
Landscape for the Disappeared 116
Good Joe 118
In the Background of Silence 120
For the Walking Dead 121
Child’s Play 122
The Beast & Burden: Seven Improvisations 123
Ambush 129
Monsoon Season 130
Water Buffalo 131
Le Xuan, Beautiful Spring 132
Please 133
Camouflaging the Chimera 137
Tunnels 138
Starlight Scope Myopia 139
Hanoi Hannah 141
“You and I Are Disappearing” 142
Re-creating the Scene 143
We Never Know 145
A Break from the Bush 146
Tu Do Street 147
Communiqué 148
Prisoners 150
Jungle Surrender 152
Thanks 154
To Have Danced with Death 155
Report from the Skull’s Diorama 156
Boat People 157
Missing in Action 158
Facing It 159
The Plea 163
The Man Who Carries the Desert Around Inside Himself: For Wally 165
Rocks Push 167
When Loneliness Is A Man 169
A Quality of Light 170
Gerry’s Jazz 171
Boxing Day 173
Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage 175
Blue Light Lounge Sutra for the Performance Poets at Harold Park Hotel 176
February in Sydney 178
Fog Galleon
Horse-headed clouds, flags
& pennants tied to black
Smokestacks in swamp mist.
From the quick green calm
Some nocturnal bird calls
Ship ahoy, ship ahoy!
I press against the taxicab
Window. I’m back here, interfaced
With a dead phosphorescence;
The whole town smells
Like the world’s oldest anger.
Scabrous residue hunkers down under
Sulfur & dioxide, waiting
For sunrise, like cargo
On a phantom ship outside Gaul.
Cool glass against my cheek
Pulls me from the black schooner
On a timeless sea—everything
Dwarfed beneath the papermill
Lights blinking behind the
