Just before sunrise, outside Carlisle.

When words failed him, he coughed--
But those plegm yellow sounds got the braille

From the lungs so the tongue could be read aloud.

He did what came natural, next:

Shot a white eye into the pond's air, and watched it
Over the stock divot, disappearing in flapping ink--

The indentations rose to places where they

Could recite their iliads in clouds.

(He thought if only his wings would touch the infinite watertips.)

The maple.

There are certain words that spook me to say them.
When I can convince them to come out

They arrive, smarter and tauter than I could imagine.

I say to myself,

ouch, I do not belong here in this old pill-colored palace.

And the heft and the pine in my voice summons the past.

A compliment.

Dance.  I'll remember you differently.

There is no platonic research, no rehearsal. Nor,

Can you come early, nor respond
afterward.

I have the flu,
I'm old

I was never right beside you.

Gloomily, I turn a weak faucet on my feet.
The suspense of my steps thrills me--

But I see them as they are, one as conspicuous
and unclear as the next.

I know which step follows the right after
so long--

And you,
Are so strange to everyone for whom

We dress and wish.

Infancy.

Wise things are coercive--
Blooming in fields lost to sons, bell-casters,

To battles.

The flowers on the blue curve are a sign of a season
Shortening, having colored

Now, already
Dull.

The pink inner thrills on those
studious fingers feast on the
Over-abundant sun.

Such a world of lies--just listening will
Stop your heart.

Last season a fat baby rose from his cradle,
The lava-folds of his tender back to the field,

Unfriendly to the hands that made him laugh.

The subject is the rain.

A fat poet reads,
Playing with the hair in his belly button.

The subject is the rain.

Who among us would follow him down that road?

Think of the mud and
Humiliation.

Think of the agreement in his smile to which none of us could ever be faithful,
Drying off.

It copied an older form--one to which we do adhere, actually.


And these rainy plums are black and sugary.

Narcissus.

Our

Welfare has armied numbers going on.

So quarrels dip boot-high, and fill with smoke, 

and, too, fill with wandering.

But
Civility is cleaner and has reason on its side--
And the grave greens and the algae blues pollute
It. Look at this fleshing ebb, here,

Where the Allegheny slurps under a bridge.

The swimmers
Go unnoticed, returning almost,

The fun progressing in their heads.

Dreaming of home.

Occasionally, you get someone like Glenn Gould--
A human.

But here we are, where memory is stronger
Than art.

Morning observation.

Dawn passes through the heavy curtain;

People are happier than they seem.

Swimming haiku.

The balm of the Moon's
White eye on swimmers below--

They work tomorrow.

The losing party.

Who may I hear singing?

Though the tune gets so incautiously lost in dynamite explosions!

In peppermint; I taste it!

In breezes, in ease.  In thrift.

In curtains forlorn for those who might but haven't parted them.
Listen to the leisurely red crackling and then in laughing,

Re-cackling--

Listing, as the idylls
of vertigo
found in stacking
Things up to
achieve
the hilarity

of toppling.

The air upon them calms me, which is why I find myself
Asking.

A losing party cuts sentiment in final stone--not so much in conveyance as in tone
Neither theirs, nor their own,
While

From the dim lawn and hapless crickets
The rich fingers of a harp are most

Sweetly and hungrily heard chirping.

What I tell you is a secret.

How sincere are the gladdest fingertips!

Most refrain, 

--or never feather,

Or never are.

But pointing at the scribble tails of salamanders in the soil,

Or enlisted by the cupholds of (so much) music

The initiative to look weakens.

Take this glance of darkness:

It stretches past the orange morning

And the humor.

And the gallows of smoke that get produced:

And the purview of that smoke we inhale,

And the purview of secrecy.

The heritage of angels.

So what is it?

Is it the distress of form,
Or the dilution of color?

Is it less than the neat grass knots I tied and hair-parts which
Have gone through great lengths to be
Puzzled for, and looked upon?

I think it's a cloud of yarn.  I think it's an impressive cat--
And not human at all.

I mean, look, there are its teeth, and too, its sharp, peach-lidded eyes.

But what else.

Because something determinate must address our misfortunes with
The future.

OK.

Some of these hornets
Don't sting--prop bees.

They belong to the set
Of Nature.

And when swept up,
With trees and seas,

They'll go away.

Okay?

The birds squandered in flight.

If once a baby then always a baby--

---and to

anyone.

Go up womb.  Go up word.

Only smoke and birds in flight know more.
And you know, it's a potion
Of air.

No healing.  Not in my sky.

Marvel, sunny.

Marvel, sunny.

It is a bicuspid war, and a toes war,
Nothing less.
It is not here, however--not on this particular shore--

Has been declared with pawing paws,
Is in all
A virginity war.

Go between the letters, seas, the phone calls

And the utter lack of yesses.

Run, if you must:  For Shit's sake crawl!
Go to maybe, now, with eyelashes
To fend off the marvelous sunny tresses!

Every restless thing is a vessel, a home--

A fortress to patrol for a
Hat to fall.

The scurrying drops of blood in the wild.

TWINS (n.).  One was shrilly determined, while the other was buoyant--of possibility, and guessed at.  Can you tell which from which?  By the way each roams?  By the kinks specific to the hide, or the trail of scurrying drops of blood in the wild?  By the possibility that one may secretly be the other?

Imagine the wish of arms that surrounds you.

If it was both pathetic and marvelous
You'd dislike it,

You'd be uncertain about it--
Let a foot of snow fall on it,

Humble it,

Without skin.

Your fingers would ply absently in sting and misdials
East of your belly
And simple human truths would--without ceremony,

Gravitate to another.

Sheep drift peacefully across the field, and the yarn

Makes a pattern.

The walk is sacred.

If you came here hunting a dream,
Or a cosmic pale blue dot

You are lost.

The aegis of corruption
And

That of our satisfaction are identical in one stern
Regard:

They humble the sticky tarred stone for Good and Evil
As each travels
--and as each. is humblingly busy.

The spiritual histories.

Peter Paul Rubens- Jupiter and Callisto (Flemish 1611-13)

To grind is, yes, please,  to eat what has humbly fallen,
And ground in the kinks of a grinder.

These goldless histories, Dear Light, are
Spiritual histories.

And this and me and
Gold are not skin--

They are spiritual skin.

And you,
You are not who you were when I saw you.

Yes.

At the wheel,

Turning around,

To say yes.

A recycled effort.

The curse blooms in wild kisses.

Breezes dream from everywhere--

Without courtesy.

Once was an archway, or a wave dismantling the shore,

Singing, insignificantly,

"I have hurt you, my Sister, have I not."

Lake shed.

I have been asleep for so long where

Mosses drench the brush--

Their sopping residues cotton the shade lying

Beneath me as

I am upon them:

Meanwhile,

Or eternally, an orbital task is asked of circles on the lake waters

Just once, and is

Expected and expected

And stalked,

Not so

Much as many times or often,

The surface storms, but when the

Equidistance returns

And the mirror is gradually, confidently

Retroubled.

Poverty is freedom.

What in the riches of our resources

Stays us to the course

Liberates us,

When liberated of our resources.

We are free.

Knitting factory.

Desiderio da Settignano - Young Boy (Italian 1460)

For Oliver Wright.

Everyone has a shell with which to call,

So call! And everyone looks preoccupied.

Upon each sprawling earfall it causes,

the beck is thrust eagerly against

The all--

You were named, and measured lengthwise

In inches--a trout, a record-breaker, a warm stitch--

Apparently it's important,

In the execution of a maiden shawl. It is yours to crave,

Its bay of toys and anxious others from which to cast

A growing shadow

And draw--

From this, little burstling, let

Innocence invariably recede, and your impending

Goodness resolve.

Look up.

When the world opens up to beg

You buy sharp things

And you open them up to beg back.

And what you harness in the incredible fear of others you lay warmly near

The heart of love.

(Look how it barely squeezes by when it moves past what it fought to subdue.)

The fairest leagues.

It takes supreme patience--

Are the fairest leagues

Ready?

Have the random kicks of trunks been devised?

Are swimming thighs and splashing shoals--

Even if dangerous, been apprised?

Could the recreationists possibly be that wise?

Just blushing and just

Blushing

And

Sinking coldly with the purpose of drowning

Out of high school

Only to rise,

The creased gangly few

Nuisance youths who, new, know mermaids

And guessed, and wished, and

Made mesh of their ebb-

Capturing chests--

Them, I mean, those few.

On waking up.

I have exacted from Wonder

Everything I need.

And my living limits are dented

By bullhorns.

The Gods.

My eyes were traditional and young.

In the white glarings of the creek

Between smooth stones the colors of clay and

Blueberries

And bloodshed,

I grasped the coffee of the Earth.

Immobilized by the relationship of ones I

Loved and ones I tolerated,

I met my friends, who are Gods.

Tower, spring.

How safe the bell must be to ring.

Each cloud is near enough to capture that

Song.

The setting sun leaves a place,

And the moon is there. And it

Leaves a place.

Shower.

There are disciplined times

When I have nothing.

I draw your face in the steam

And press my tongue against the

Idea of where

maybe, et cetera.

Inamorata.

Life can be found in the smelting pots.

It glows in union and stimulates what it must endure. Slag.

How pitiful.

Salt.

There is a far lesser kind of wisdom dividing people--

Deeper and abandoning people and misused.

Some must forever be encouraged,

And some never.

A grain of salt is a measure of learning,

Worth no less than its

Weight in salt.

Holy color.

Tim McFarlane (recent Philadelphia)

If we follow subtle odors we will reach

Subtle rewards.

First, you could say, we will have holy color.

Holy shapes--

Teenages,

Cleft away from adult time as if meaningless

To the future.

The thrifty life.

Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres The Head of a Girl (French 1813)

The thrifty life you have was never dreamt of in ignorance.

We all knew--you, and I, and of course they knew.

But pick away at your shoes, at the veil below them--at the blossomings of

Me and others here, seeing you.

There is only one thing dividing you from the apple.

Seance.

Every once in a while it's like a ouija board--

I have the layout in my head.

There's the table.

wonder and I want to speak up.

The chandelier rocks when the girls from the past speak--it is

As though a baby had been born and was to be cared for,

And was the spirituality of

A delicate prank. The Song goes:

"I wonder..."

In the waves.

Nobody can say, "I must," before the waves.

You are free.

This translucent ocean before you is free,

Its decisions and color,

Its frenzies of prehistory

Are free.

Your genetics and memory steep in vaults of black tea.

Tour tongue has tasted to be there,

Your arms have swam to stay afloat.

Such a reward, saline and crippling.

Inamorata.

My children, who are a part of the sun, mine embers to be yours.

Acutely known

--or unknown,

The fluted heart is felted in damp green fur--

The cat gets around.

Isn't it remarkable what slender ledges welcome this little thing,

Asking,

"What next, Dear Animal, when my hands fall to my mossy sides?"

And what is like the things one does when finally free?

They're bundled in the Earth,

So coercive when called upon.

Sleeper.

Chemicals meant to cure sick people have been

Detected, mixed in the blood of dancers--

What there in desperation seeps between the waterproofing

Cup of fingers

Clings to the gentle sleeper

In marbles of lazy sweat.

Each divoted inch of skin is a burden to the touch.

Pittsburgh.

Leave it to the ingenuity of complete strangers,

Gravely eliminating the past.

They drive while their stranger passengers throw

Tapestries from the blue windows,

Insisting, "More beautiful!"

On all they derange to pass and

All they cover...