A short-lived custom.

Each is
A reflection of his light.

Each is spelled
As is his name, spelled out:

Purposefully, plainly--in curves aloud.

Look how each bird writes:

It is uncommon to trust the sky with anything so
Fleeting. Look,

It bounds.

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.

Sleeveless.

Is it a jacket or an organ
You're turned away and hidden in?

It is, at any rate, ruined
By roving torrent
It is pulled across the wrest:

And it barely covers you.

First I hoped I would capture you naked,
Startled, and folding in.

Are you so certain to lie hidden from me?

My fascination slips out,
Buoyantly.

From the breeches.

Had a better direction been taken
And conditions prevailed
In our favor

Then perhaps this emergency might
Be a celebration.

We have, under the circumstances,
Been blessed

With all the silver of Heaven.
And the tears of Adam...

They too made the journey.

What wreckages of lines do we find drawn
On the distance though.

What I'll miss the most.

Reminders are scattered
All around,

Insentient and therefore incapable
Of change:

One you might see lies in smart
Girls, their eyes pitted with
Bottomless questions.

Another bats between fading buildings,
Their shutters shed, their privacy and
Style...so long.
Eventually we will forget where they are.
They'll just be gone.

A third reminder will be found in the wood itself,
In ash, rinds, and the wind that swifts to know us;
Nothing beyond that--nothing
In storage,

No one lone line of leftover data
Can explain the excess flooding in
Flooding out.

The past.

It was wild and everybody said so at the fire.
Kids left school with leaves of paper
Still falling...the letter grades...falling.

And your father's phone was dangling
From the desk. The voice--

Everybody left that day.

Eventually a rose
Blew in our

Way. Alternatives:

No.

(One of us would have to go back.)

Living outdoors.

History has a hidden chapter--well
Several
Of great foragers and lovers
Living outdoors.

Why we don't discuss it and why
Better biographies
Were never written must better
Be explained.

It is not as though our intellects or best
Our eyes
Failed to note... In a drainage
Ditch

For example

We found bones bleached at chew points,
Rusting golden
Crucifixes, hearts engraved in trees.
Nude land.

But what do you think--
Who was here before we ourselves gorged and
Retreated

From the galing directions?

Preposterous.

We may never pass this way again
But
What if...

What if memorization--
And
Not survival skills, dictates?

The gift then lies in the noticing.

See:

Everybody has a crotch at
Every turn of the body--

And each produces sweat,
Each encoded.

Someone loves you.

See, remember, work:

What if the path matted down is
Everything?

Huh?

Like we should alter our devious
Natural plans let alone

Alter our plans to discuss it...

Solubility.

We have two loves,
Neither corruptible:

The shape of it and
The strategy of our professions.

Look at the line going around the block,
Like shopping could

Corrupt, and therefore
Cure us of our...

The mystery of no science.

This is the mystery of no science
Ambulances,
Vacations in memory
And Seances.

Many diners love the taste of surprise,
Which, I admit, is nice.

But for me the fruit, the cadaverous appeal
The spice
Lies in the sense of skin.

It is as though, despite dirty plates
Girls and echoes,
This really happened.

Snow, 5:37 a.m..

The first gentle push of humanity found talent--
Stitch me up a curtain.
Make me a cane out of
Reaching wood.

Destroy the colony of moths eating me
Using sugar to fell their wings,
Using water, any heaviness really, that
Easiness to be--

To be.

Prevent, too, these caprices of magnificence
As what I build does not bleed,
But nor does it collect interest.

Allow for a before that I might
Return to it afterward,
Forgive my moment's pause,
My talent fights--it stutters.

You are awake I know,
And if awake means awake to me and
To me availed which though unlikely
Is ideal, then your talent is awake too,

Needing to correct,
By curtain or volition
A vulgarity not beholden to
Wishes.

The last drawn breath.

Years from now it will remain a marvel
To historians and their retinue
Of onlookers.

The cane that guides history will have
Prickled its way across the surface,
The shadow of the old man in tow
Like a caption will have stuttered.

Such impressive light will, rest assured,
Sustain. And those stories will
caress the dust, kiss
The magnificent difference.

How gasps will surround the relic,
And how restoration
Will seem superfluous to that fumbling
Sight:

-- the unbearable, or bearable..

Love.

The vine is alright,
Knowing enough about survival
In the humidty of the thaw

To thrive.

Even modest observation could tell you it rises at the source
And moves in each direction.

The rhizomic blur it leaves has devastated
Followers.

Now, there are groups who meet
On Tuesdays

To talk about
What next.

And truly--
They quiver and know not what--these denizens and
Desperate addicts unite
And want.


Their numbers of attendance indicate
Your menace
And that unfurling Color.

Honeymoon.

On the bare table was bread and some mackerel,
Oily and sunlit. Behind

The progenitor's portrait you found
A room.

The family, in turn,
Watched though his carved out eyes
How visitors took to things.

I don't mean spies, I mean progeny of the Firmament.

The palace.

The long table reached each end of the room.

I thought the grapes might succumb to the heat and spoil;
I ate nothing.

The curd of appetite stinks,
But in stinking hunger blossoms away
From the senses--

To finitude.


And what they hang on their walls, and what they hang on their walls

And what they hang on their walls.

Blight.

Immobile
Piece of it,

Adorned with V's for
Fives

Annotated,
Written down and
Cared for.

What did you do,
That only people, hiccupping cameras, looking to
Escape
Care for?

Device.

See the hem of evening,

How, in
It
--steadily and fast,
Everything melds,

Consequently slurs.

One can hope that the ripples of the hardened land echo
The ink,

Or that waves interrupt an otherwise safe
Passage.


If not we have surely promised in act
Something that in writing we must have been presumptuous to say
We could justify.

(You know, we don't build Love for a sprightly air,
Nor even for how it will look in seventy years--though we hope.

We build
It
Based on how the moment dictates, and we're only that strong.)

Wide-open spaces.

Likely an engineer could take a look
And control this water.

We should be wearing mitts, goggles,
Sunblock.

Luckily, mules are stupid and don't mind
What we bemoan--and cars
Don't feel a thing.

Grapes.

People were treated to heartburn, grinning,
Dinner was over.

The cat spread like a stain.

Neighborhood boys wrestled til the shutters were jogged
From the nearby window
And bathing moonlight crashed the bloated
Recovery.

Whoever might argue with American Gothic
In hunger

Could not
Lift a finger now.

Fortune cookie.

What parade you march, may it be made of cropped memories, corrosive batterings. What parade you march, might it endure you and never you and the rain it: Dubious flowers and of perfect colors bleeding their fortunate ways across your grasping hands. Those too, in the parade you march.

Column I.

Built in the fashion of a tower--
Perhaps the first ever.

None conceived a touch could exceed the treetops.

Suddenly there was an air of hope,
Confident surges and a creative passion inventive of color--

There came new light in the original shadow,
It too devised by human hands,

Reaching not for the nearest rungs of heaven
But fanning in provident mid-stretch
To curb the Sun.