crouch among the chrysanthemums.
Do I need to say more?
Everything isn’t ha-ha
in this valley. The striptease
on stage at the Blue Movie
is your sweet little Sara Lee.
An argument of eyes
cut through the metaphor,
& I hear someone crying
among crystal trees & confetti.
The sack of bones in the magnolia,
what’s more true than that?
Before you can see
her long pretty legs,
look into her unlit eyes.
A song of B-flat breath
staggers on death row. Real
men, voices that limp
behind the one-way glass wall.
I’ve seen the legless beggar
chopped down to his four wheels.
Imagination
There’s a deer no gun
can bring down like a big
woman in the grass sinks
to her knees to pray
in a white slouch.
He stands at the sunlit edge
of a snowy woods. Can you make him out?
An owl from its hiding place
spies on the buck.
Quails settle like a quiet
disturbance. The deer
stands more perfect
than man, like a slab
of half-gray granite
strong as midnight.
Precious as lust.
Eyes sharp & wild.
A wolf’s scent makes him stagger
As a hawk sails, powered by a hint
of day. One morning this deer will fall
when nothing or no one can nudge this man
awake. Where eyes cannot meet,
silence is a song, old bones
stashed in a decayed nest
in the ground.
Ghost Chant, et alii
Daydream the old Indian medicine man
who boards the Greyhound
at midnight outside Jackson Hole
& sits next to you,
the fat belly of life,
a lilacbush in May,
the smoke that curls
back up to eat itself.
Daydream a mongrel dog
who yelps at the footsteps of your sister.
The coyote-goddess’ lonely hill
to climb with the moon,
a stone vase
with a copperhead inside.
Daydream a mountain lion
riding air—to dismiss
the half song
of this machine’s forgetfulness.
A white ceramic Ferris wheel
surrendering sacks of grain,
the eccentric black book
that gnaws off your hands.
Daydream the viper & Easter lily.
A fifth of Ronrico
on the poet’s night table,
morning’s empty bottle,
a grunt-song that spins
itself from flesh
at the top of a spiral staircase,
the talking drum
the center of water.
Daydream a mermaid
peering into the four windows
of a lighthouse, the fandango
like a rooster struggles out of golden grass
with its head cut off.
Faust’s old greed & sick hair,
a gas leak
with twenty padlocks on your one door.
Daydream lies rot in the mouth,
a black Mercedes-Benz
& brass knuckles,
an old man who has seen too much
in a dark alley, the killer’s face
in seven mirrors on each wall,
hemlock in a silver chalice,
the shadow of a grave
beneath your slow feet.
Passions
Coitus
Ah, pink tip of sixth sense,
oyster fat of lovepearl,
dew-seed & singing leaf-tongue,
lizard’s
