Where sweetness comes from.

It is not polite to mention blood at
The dinner table--

Not because it disagrees with our conditions of eating;
But,

In the fixity of our pursuits we
Too

Are the sweetness to a circling venture--

What circles stops at the table
And rests

Unable to speak--

That guffing breath caught up in its throat,
As though who we are could so easily and

Handily be mistaken

For what we taste like, no longer fixed to
Outrun

Says it all.

Distortions.

Is it a song or a memory?

I know a blur is coming for me,
But it is disorienting and blue.

And all things at a natural pace
Look alike,
In motion.

Like the mirrors decorating a haunted
House

Our eyes meet:

We prevail, at once, to ask.

Written under the 33rd street tressel.

Written under the rail bridge just prior
To its crossing the Allegheny
Is a certain expression
Of uncertain direction.

Like 'Do not enter' or 'Host to the angels'
Words reveal the historic
ache of people between places.

Hopes deride, the language sustains,
Direction...

You approach, it's there, a debauched welcome.

Appropriate response.

If it was appropriate for me to dress
In dresses I would.

I prefer cartoons to real life
And pictures to
Conversations.

I like wallpaper
Above nature

And, forthrightly,
Lied when I likened your lease to a movie.

I've never seen one.

Objet.

A picture in wood and steel has
No place to go.

Viewers tense up
And critics turn to softer matters to
penetrate

And pronouce. Though

Back they and the sun
All hustle

When continuity and flesh
Regard the business of what they really are:

The gentlest polish.

Pays.

This is the last place I'd have looked
For intelligence of a basic kind.

There are no brainiacs or miracle
Workers

No one unkind enough to suggest
Not here, though here,

As a way of leaving the exterior virgin

And the interior compounded by

Incest.

The sterling perimeter.

I am willing myself to sleep
With a purpose.

First I want enough space to
Imagine this thing;

Oh, and I'd like to add a few
Ballsy statements,

Things I'm too afraid to say
When I am up.

Most of all I want a place for the
Gaps to matter--

Silver and half-lawless.

Tin.

No dream deserves to survive like the
Ones we wake up and lug.

What a lavish rainbow.

What a lavish rainbow to waste on the
Easily brought to tears--

As if one rainbow or another less
Hard worked for would produce

A din in each heart.

We need them now.

I wonder if it will take long now to untangle.

Distant points clutter with kids shaving
Spears in the dusty nude.

It is frightening.

There is no use calling for help--
It would only curb our defenses, waste rescue time--

Aggravate the--

--we need them now.

I wonder if everything's come to an end.
The other day it was

A disco in ruins on tv.
The girls were unfazed.
One looked right past the reportage into our eyes,
Saying, Ss kay for parties.

Reckless aspect.

Once but not for long
Meetings were held in the basement.

The aggressives launched
Bake sales, took up collections--

The weakers gave,
Bought muffins--

The motion was raised to erect an obelisk
To anarchy, have its lurching shadow divide

The walk to town.

It never happened, people stopped
Showing up--


A hollow toll pealed across the duck pond,
As early rain droplets and bread for the birds
disrupted the purity of evening

And the anticipation of planned disaster.

A life of excess.

The first thing I remember
After a dull arrival
And a little spell of poor digestion

Was the routine commotion of
Educators and other kids' parents
Whittling down the possibilities
Of succession.

Here were evidentiary collections,
In our schoolyard,
Boxcutters and drunken tortured animals.
The faculty from our

Parents' parents' days attended,

One
Died reading aloud: First names, then, gloriously, offenses.

An empty chair.

Our class was raised
against a levee of time and
Melting ice adding up;
The air was anticlimactic.

And being alive stuffy and familiar.

We have been at it for so long,
And though we are opinionated, we wait for
An additional character, yet,
A supplement

To be coaxed from neediness
With surprises.

The other roses.

Right now there are no openings
In the fragrance of corruption.

Be vague enough when picking an alternative,
Landing nearby
So that when the wall buckles and breaches or,
Light blossoms on the surface

Your tack is plotted,
Your cudgel and head
Down.

Unfinished movie.

It is highly discouraged to use the phrase
"I sense a theme", unless sense
Is what you mean.

Be particular by the light and score,
Cite examples of what worked
With the last director before

He took his own life
And the cast decided to ad lib
The rest, and leave indeciph-

-ered

The inclusion of a blurry
Birth sequence.

The completion of a disappearance.

An obituary for Patricia Travers, The New York Times, 3/6/10

It can be said of prevailing airs and lesser
Disturbances that force and grace

Lie in tandem.

One grunts for the grist where
It gives way to skinning light.

The other, because it was asked to do so
Holds the camera,
Explains:

So grievous a bow born to a child's wish.

Desperate sleep.

All the living lions remain hungry
And the only real sleep is desperate sleep.

Sheep, here, remain ignorant to these things,
Which is precisely why their purpose
lies in the explanation of

Adding--or subtracting from
Our tumbling hearth.

Another formulaic mystery.

Starting today I'd like to suggest we discontinue the use of
Cobwebs and butlers-for-hire.

Go ahead then and unplug the inclement weather machines
Sunken like glands along the drive.

Send back the bats and phony atmosphere,
The reasons we came and the clothes

In which we came here--

Pay the servants severance and the doctor standing by
Get rid of these piling up adaptations of
The Moonstone; Get rid of the poison, the ample clue

Feathered in a sigh.

Take this buried knife out of me, and resume calling me
by my real name, I'll go back to dressing as I did.
What we missed dissipates, how we dressed

What is led to, if recursive or imaginary.

Real animal.

Then--as now,

You would have heard it drag its limp along,
Barely ahead of its own shadow

The hobbled pace gave way to
Tumbling, invisibly,

As the music of disappearance disappeared.

If in a book it corresponded to a name, an illustration,
A theory of origin at least we might know

What next. Now it emerges

So stunningly unknown that anything short of
Attack must be irresponsible

Or, in allowing such attacks, irresponsibly patient.

The tempest--pt. 2

Once you awaken the ocean
The difficulty in taming

It or for that matter
Anything

In its grasp
Will be revealed.

But that's the nature of
Our greenest dangers.

We run until it's too dark to see.
Then, meeting the smallest waves,

Descend

And hope that one reckless propulsion
Intuits as does
Another.

This child of Satan.

The hour passed and reproaches
Passed too.

With sunset came forgiveness,
A levity never felt on Earth.

The blue air of dew drew down.

Silverware came to a rest after a lifetime
Of spinning around the room.

Attic doors acquiesced
And all memories

Atop the stair would have to stay there.

Elsewhere one was being born,
One dying,

Since not here.