you can say you love me
but it will pass through my heart like wind

you can stroke my flushed cheeks and say
"beautiful"

but i won't recognize my own face

and every time i don't believe you
i need you to tell me again

it doesn't stick, nothing sticks

i'm not falling apart
i've just never been put together

you're not the first that's tried
you're not the first that's failed

down
  down
    down
      down
        down
          down
            deep
              below

children of the caves will let their
secret fires glow
~~~

An explosion of birds
Dawn
Sun strokes the walls
An old man leaves the Casino
A young man reading pauses
on the path to the garden
~~~

Bitter winter
Fiction dogs are starving
The radio is moaning softly
calling to the dogs
There are still a few
animals left in the yard

Sit up all night,
talking smoking
Count the dead & wait
’til morning
Will warm names & faces
come again
Does the silver forest end?
~~~

December Isles
Hot morning chambers
of the New Day
Idiot first to awaken (be born)
w/shadows of new play
learned men
in Sunday best
we’ve had our chance to rest
to mourn the passing of day
to lament the death of our
glorious member
(she whispers secret messages
of love in the garden
to her friends, the bees)
The garden would be here
forevermore
~~~

Mexican parachute
Blue green pink
Invented of Silk
& stretched on grass
Draped in the trees
of a Mexican Park
T-shirt boys in their
Slumbering art
~~~

-I fear that he’s been
maim’d beyond all
recognition

He hears them come &
murmur over his corpse.

Street Pizza.
~~~

funny,
I keep expecting a
knock on the door
well, that’s what you
get for living around
people

a Knock? would shatter
my dreams’ illusions
deportment & composure
The struggle of a poor poet
to stay out of the grips
of novels & gambling
& journalism
~~~

A quality of ignorance,
self-deception may be
necessary to the poet’s
survival.
~~~

Actors must make us think
they’re real
Our friends must not
make us think we’re acting

They are, though, in slow
Time

My wild words
slip into fusion
& risk losing
the solid ground

So stranger, get
wilder still

Probe the Highlands
~~~

Bourbon is a wicked brew, recalling
courage milk, refined poison
of cockroach & tree-bark, leaves
& fly-wings scraped from the
land, a thick film; menstrual
fluids no doubt add their splendour.
It is the eagle’s drink.
~~~

Why do I drink?
So that I can write poetry.

Sometimes when it’s all spun out
and all that is ugly recedes
into a deep sleep
There is an awakening
and all that remains is true.
As the body is ravaged
the spirit grows stronger.

Forgive me Father for I know
what I do.
I want to hear the last Poem
of the last Poet.

I want you
                  to know that I forgot
the memory I wanted to expound upon here,
                  the tears I never cried make it difficult to dryly
blot the pages.
                  I suppose you know I never loved you, but
more meaningfully, I hope you now see how trifling and hollow
love is. Like a warm Spring day, love means nothing but the
nearing embrace of a dying star.
                   I want you to know what I'm referring to
in this line. It's called "astronomy." It seems to hold the
attention of other mystics, such as her.
                   But I want you
to know
                    that it's just about gravity and
luminosity and
                    what our star hasn't got, but
others have.
                    The wind blows my page as I'm writing this standing on
my porch, and I fail to
                    Look up. My hand holds down the dry, decaying
tree pulp in an attempt to stabilize the
                    metaphor for
Life
                    your absence has become.
When the dead leaves of last Fall rattle, I can see you there,
running past the chain-link fence containing me and the
tennis surface.
                     It would be weeks before sweat dripped from my nervous
head as we jumped up and down while others slow danced.
                     And then I wake up in my new apartment in a city
you've never been to and remember jumping was only me. It's been seven years, but
I still have my diploma from that early graduation--
it's above my fridge so I can ignore it every time I
reach inside
                      To drink the cool water and
remember the things I should have learned
and the time I ran fast, back
                       to your host parents' so I could use the bathroom
without you knowing, because my stomach was convulsing.
                        And maybe what I meant to say is that the earth's on
its yearly sojourn which brings me to that place-- that group of folding chairs
and the endless line of cows dancing slowly past the podium with nothing
but a piece of paper that tells them "you were once here."
                        It takes me on the highway, past my father's farms to that
man-made reservoir that irrigates them. It amuses Nebraskan farm boys
that the girls that ride along seem to know the way
                        better.
                        But you weren't from Nebraska, and you only knew the way
in water, in the bikini I helped you choose at target-- I don't remember the hue.
                         Your skin looked amazing and warm
                         transplanted, prairie-grass nestled gently on your supple thighs
under my grasping hands which held on firmly yet
were knocked off with the jolt as you spurred our gas-powered sea-horse, laughing
as we both sped off from our island rendezvous and
became oblivious of my self.

Coffee and blankets
Cold quiet winter morning
Come closer darling

I wish that you would say
Lovely is a perfect word
That shoots its way across your mind
Every time you think of me.