Beauty is a thing of the past.

I am rewarded to crouch behind a new mask,

A bracingly ugly crutch--

One as much I fooled around and found as

I pieced together and made.

If it lows it must, in monstrous notes

So beautifully track to transpose--

This thing has a rat's unceding heart,

And follows a dog's unerring nose.

The things we must never forget once they have begun.

Resisting is the watchful part of love

That insures certainties.

There is no membership card you get, and beyond casual scrutiny

The unaccredited sunset is simple-mindedly let in:

Here you are...

The gulf you find might just as easily have brayed out in the

Elbows of the real-life lakes, the fingerlings--

A gulf that, as if itself presuming,

Imposes its own full depths purely as an example of

the murky religion of its bathers, its opinions of the sun

Strobe with light--as if charismatic,

Dismissive.

A season begins.

This air we replenish--

It was never in danger.

Moths plump on the dust in our closets.

We were eaten away from, but we were never

In danger.

What words you could find if you searched where

Displaced bits of outer space await.

These bite marks represent the fabric we risked

And in the course of a season folded--

But we were never in danger.

The curse of the smoke and the music.

The climber was formulated in heart and purpose to

Find the mountain;

Color was bred into the sinew to disturb

Love.

Each impression governs its source, and resembles the

Parent glance.

Sometimes when you speak--above the curse of the smoke

And the music,

I feel I should cover my ears. I don't want to disrespect you.

You have spoken. And I am living in the

Wish to lie empty as if you'd never but still could

If you chose to.

The lease on this place.

Old boughs fill custodially with the cost of living;

Get a tattoo so it's clear that

This lot was you.

The occupancy of a bone--were it like an

Apartment is divided in thin wall--

Sinews of growth strewn in pulltabs,

And the wall cracks where the surface

Suffered years of focus and a smile's sag.

So few things truly happen in a vacuum anymore.

So few things truly happen in a vacuum anymore.

The cultures are interconnected--and every spice

Of humankind

Heats their beds when they're gone. They have shared

Damp bath towels--

Too bashful to shower as one.

And they share the tried estimations in their eyes.

Invisible always, visible.

If in creasing it flirts or flatters to enhance

Your beauty then invite it--dignity too.

But, woman in a hat, now,

Does it enhance you?

Written words in public, there, they--aren't you?

Ducks crossing the atmosphere where you work,

Your venerability growing rich with lines--

Invisible always, visible. I only came here

Because you roused my suspicion and I looked--

My question was loud and ceaseless in the quiet of the

Ford's dream--its watery flue.

Wealth.

Put poise ahead of fortune. Even the

Idle bodies draw gazes from eyes too alert to

Rest.

There is a make believe destiny that

Follows lazily the fingers,

Counting.

(Imagine what they could touch.)

Out of the garden.

"I only intended that you need never be content with nothing."

-God to Adam upon the Expulsion. Par Lagerkvist, 'The Eternal Smile', p.65 (trans./ed. Hill & Wang Pub., 1971)

The purpose of a white curtain is to remind the fortunate of

The wind that visits the window.

And to the displaced, there is a cheery friendship in the pleats of

Rain.

The mechanics of breathing and getting used to it have only ever failed me

Once or twice.

Drum beat.

We're not so fortunate that we can claim to have known

The guy who invented marble. Or

The woman who invented an open book in the grass.

She must've been there looking at herself. What a shadow on her feet!

What grass!

Someone--I guess, approached the table with bashful taste

And said, I don't claim to be Ingres, but I spend all my time thinking;

I invented the way I look at a girl in public.

Today is a kneeling crawlspace in the glands of the wood,

With neither cursive nor curious searcher.

And I am not going to lie, I get lost in it.

Today I invented a door to a house

Just to be thought of.

The disasterette.

The lips I remember pickled when she smiled--were too shy

To just bite into a raw onion.

Her teeth were small, and her palate drew from the scud of

Childhood.

I want to impress on you mustard, mother-of-pearl.

The garnishes borne to the fragrant curd of

The curb--

Our blueberries are bulging with noxious wine.

By my apartment.

Before you were beautiful you were informative and you were wise.

The herald of moonlight owed you all its money.

I miss the flutes of columns I've never touched

And the wild you.

The end of summer.

At the sound of gold we rush forth.

Autumn is nearby and our forts

Lie in ruins,

Blushing and smoldering.

The you.

The footsteps of a hurricane fall to Earth.

Her cousins in the rain cry as they too

Fall to Earth.

To succumb to gravity is to be humbled in the most primitive sense. And

Her heart flows across me,

Mass, drums in ceremony, the need for an article when I call out

As we flood--beating.

The carriage of being.

A point in space waits just like any other--exposed.

These ex-wives we can love and call pillows...

Play.

Handicapped with gauze across your eyes,

Or the jinxed air of a rumor,

It's no matter.

The scud met your tender shoulder, and--green though it all was,

It'll always hurt.

Dear girl.

Purpose, what a match you are for delicacy and the turbines of color.

River.

The snow that has fallen on the breast of this river

--long after I've forgotten it,

I'll never know.

The eminent culture.

First I wanted a life in architecture. I saw the wimpy

Bank--in spite of robberies and recession, its

Place and its parking lot stood.

Other ideas built over that one: Law, heart surgery, nameless thing with

A backpack in Europe, eyes wide with detection and

Eyelids for a bit of a rainy hood.

I was aphoristic when it shut down and the weeds began to bloom.

I was young and stupidly Jeffersonian. I was standing in the room.

On occasion the gulf of serenity has adapted its coast to fear.

Whispers.

There are people I've come to know strictly by their whispers.

They starve--their sayings, when they speak, begging for a squeak

Of a rhyme, the mint of rhythm,

The time that buddies up to washed-

Out time.

I know the surfeit of their graves;

I know what the graves they build will look like.

The pattern of chaos.

Everything real is incorrigible. Just cast a glance

Out and see what a mayhem becomes the light!

I don't mean to defend the bully,

But I grew a green wood and decent rhubarb in his shadow.

I balked at discovery. When I saw I pretended he was

A rose due for us all.

A breach of practicality and effort.

Poverty is a state like no other; it has a way of drawing itself into focus when slack inches in the eye or heart. It isn't as simple as so I go without money, or so I go without food this morning. This state is so I go without comfort to adorn the senses, and with threads of peace and none to spare. The most humbling and humiliating conflict is uncertainty: Who's to blame? Who, too, might breach practicality and effort to refresh the field?