Virgo

the stars gather under the window

and worlds spin among the shelves

as the leaves brush the glass

the sun falls over my legs

as it fell over the running-boards

and the vinyl, and drew lines

between the aspen--sharp

the fabric on these cushions

is rough and soft, as the burr of

an old guitar,

it's case bleaching by the window

the dust and dew and fabric

the plywood shelves--are dusky

and sweet as smoke blowing back

through the gap

and the road running along beside

endless restless motion, and crumpled maps

sprawling across the carpet

dirt and light--singing, rough and sweetly

and the smell of late afternoon in the summer

--things flawed and grimed with use

and the window left cracked open

Humboldt

I remember you
all across the rounded mountains
where the sun blazes soft in the grass
and shadows carpet the slopes

where the fog hangs heavy in the inlets
where the country breaks free
of the highway and fences
and the houses hang low against the sky

far from the temerity
and tangled stands of buildings
the sky scraped and bruised
the canyons and their jagged wash
of houses, the angled rivers
and all their gleaming refuse

where the sun dives clean into the water
instead of falling, flailing into the hills
where night comes without dying
and things pass into each other unbroken

I remember you are the light, flickering
out over the water
licking the waves and rocks, together
if I come some cold northern night
to the damp sand beneath your beam
what I trace--will you light it?
when the tide carries it into the dark

broken buildings

the weary memories

trudging in the shadows

rustle, under the leaves

--I skim an hour

as the breeze rests

lazy across the walk

water frozen in the cracks

spring rushing, in the gutters

ten thousand small tragedies

cracked off my jaw,

gravel of the mind

between the dark rise of the future

and the desire for things

that have slipped between my fingers

--I dream a better kind of want

so grim

I glare up into the fronds

eyes like an unclenching fist

to catch the starlight

this soul is weary of walking on rubble

of perching hunched

on the bare framework still standing

of hoarding pieces and ends

--I would if I could fall slowly

light beyond the shadows

not reflect coldly

on far-off skies and broken buildings

geese

for you--I think the geese in winter

would suffice

fat and scavenging at the edge of the ice

the only birds to weather

that bitter season

... (xxxii).

... and the cup of life is short indeed

and thin and sour the greater taste

of each small portion

like all who live, I am in love with Fate

but while I live, I'd bewilder, baffle

and make her wait

while I go out, to sleep with Fortune.

... (xxxi).

when you walk the sidewalk like a plank

why trust to

the doom creaking along your soles?

why fear--why worry?

when the sky can weep for you only

and in one valley

when the clouds whisper

impending benedictions--across your eyes

when you can shadow the palm-trees

with your palm, thrust up to grasp the sky

the world is large--

but what blurring horizon is greater

than the span of your arms?

--when you can cast your shadow

farther than your breath

and no fist can come closer

than your face

--when you words fall as dust

unseen, below the feet of others

burnt to ash--

from ash and dust man is made

... (xxx).

with the terror that falls down

upon you

in glistering sheets

like the Word from Heaven

the bushes burn every evening

before night comes

--they speak the fiery proscriptions

of the dying sun

the exegesis and apologia

of shadow caught in their branches

sliding from your shoulders

your feet mark the flood-line

--the light on your face warns

that you may be drowning

--but I felt the first of the rains

prickle my forearms

I smell the mountains in the air

--give me a God like a mountain

and I will worship it with my lungs

weather

if it had rained

I would've stopped by your house

on the way home

and dragged you out into the street

--you should take off those wet things, shouldn't you?

but the rain never came

and the dry lightning forked the sky

and I hurried home

alone--just this side of terror

for the chances that never came

and the plans that never came together

for the words unsaid, the worlds unmade

flashed bright, once, then gone forever

for all the things that never happened

--I find it's best to blame the weather.

not a good poem.

you're too good for poems--you know

you'll never know how many words I've wasted

trying to capture this thing

gleam, glint, shadow, echo, etc.

so I will say it simply:

that I love you as form of self-preservation

when I was more than foolish

I flung myself into your depths

and you have yet to return it

I will always be seeking you

for that reason--

around corners and at line-breaks

in crowds, fields, squares, halls, etc.

I will make you the measure of all things

for no other reason, than I will wish to find myself

if only in pieces--long after you've consigned me

to scrap,

monstrous thief--to take not my heart but my eyes

terrifyingly mediocre--like a claims adjuster

you don't know the measure of what you hold

between your fingers

who you'll kill when you turn your head

echo (ii)

the echoes are my name

you make me remember the many shades of black

the lights gleaming like lesser diamonds

glowing below the eaves

spilling over the steps

haze and glint and shadow

under the moon, half-full with promise

rolling slow down from

your dark and shadowed ranges

you--yourself--draw my eyes

to the crest of the ridge

you return me--weary traveler

who learned nothing, going

but how to return home

rolling down slowly

from the depths

you don't know--but

I have traced myself

in the glyph of your shadow

and I have traced

the shadows across your face

with the corner of my eye

and I have embraced you

with the back of my neck

wrapped you in the shirt

falling across my shoulders

into your black and shadowed ranges

I have called the name of my soul

I have you carried you in the slow swing

of my steps--never be further

than armslength, never out of earshot

the echoes are my name

... (xxvix).

just a sip

--and I'd slip away

to savor a drunken moment

a taste, the barest whisper

--and I'd reel

with an all-too-steady

sense of grace

as if I carried the firelit

faces of my ancestors--in my blood

woven in bone, every moment made

with a firepit, begging flame

a hole for spirits--like an alcoholic

I have been made,

to fall at the first swallow

(by myself, for you)

to revel steady in the

company of thirst

in August

I should’ve lain down
in the fields, in August
pulled into the turn-off
and left the car, idle
in the bare dirt,
I should’ve stepped into
the weeds
and followed the faint
trail, through the
wildflowers,
crossed the grass
to the dark hedge of trees
at the edge of the field
I should’ve fallen down
under the heat and the haze
I should’ve let the sweet scent
of dusk lull me down
back to the dirt, let the shadow
of the grass fall across my face
and sunk with it, down
into blue,

on the other side of morning
somewhere in Kansas
with the I-70 thundering
toward the hills, into Missouri

I should’ve woken
with dirt in my eyes
and burrowed my shoulders into the earth
to avoid the sun blowing across the plains
and listened to the receding echo
of something throwing itself, head-long
through the night

God bless

God bless
the devil-in-the-design
              through all the lonely ages
the liars
              deceivers, misleaders--prideful and spiteful
boastful--the blind
              God bless
the stumblers--the bumblers--the fumblers
the shamblers--the ramblers
              shuddering, milling in the night
              approaching, encroaching--with groping hands
where that old star hangs low and bright
              groping and grasping--they gasp as they're passing
              crowding the roads down into
Old David's City--such pieces, the sons of man
of the work--who will speak but not understand
              when the angels sing--to crack the night
God bless the fearful--and aid their flight
              streaming past houses--quick in the alleys
to the rooms they've reserved--some broke for the valleys
                  and left the torches and the walls, altogether.
              it starts there. with the sheep grazing idle in the heather
and echoes, out--all along the gutters
              into the corners--near and far
praise the shadow with running footsteps
God bless the darkness--mind the star.

... (xxvii).

the tide of pink

and burning yellow

rolling down the slopes

--did you see it?

the windows glowing

along the crest

of the canyon

--the lights winking

like eyes opening

blinking away

the light--in the clear hour

before the shadows come

or did you sit--in the gnarled

shade of the oaks, the banked

shadow--of the eucalyptus

crack one astringent leaf

between your fingers?

--saw the echos of the day's end

glancing off the papery trunks

flickering at the edge of the branches

in the deeper darkness welling up

from the bunched roots?

why don't we walk

where the sidewalk

turns to shadow, why do

I follow the pavement rising

and falling above the buildings

alone--while you sit in crowded

silence--watching the light fall

through rigid fingers?

Not gracefully...

... and not quietly, neither (pace Mr. Dylan).

---

the lasting hour--this one

we must crouch

as the guns thunder

your chest would shake

--in a silent room

at the tumult

--close your eyes

to the clicking

the hum of voices, be still as

the hills gilded by the light

of the mortars--close your eyes

--to shut the night in

descend, into the dark

fields within you, where the bullets

snap under the stars

--let them talk peace... let 'em talk it

and stand there in the white light

hands raised--and hopeful

close your eyes

and deny them

and give yourself unto the trenches

--you will die at war

salt

Sin-eater eat your sin
--dissolve it
as I lick the salt off your skin
and it burns, bitter
chalky ash of the seas
that have passed through you—your arms
have become the shores
of your desire

this is the only ablution waiting
how long did you walk
--with the asphalt melting below you
to watch the dry hills shimmer
in the heat, grass waving
in the still basin of the sky
--and I am waiting

we—have been washed clean
by our own tides, have tumbled
and spun among the waves rolling

across us—we have hung
atop the rollers—to grasp at
the sky—we
--have become strange and quiet
half-polished, unhallowed—rueful ghosts
with still-breathing bodies
--let me lick the salt from your skin

... (xxvi).

the moon watches from the corner of her eye

the night opens like a door

and the hills stand high

in sharp outline,

behind her sloping gaze

--eyes you, waiting

if you'd walk in these halls, then

you must go forward also

quick--in gleaming outline

in flashes

let us walk

through the shadows falling

off the tile

sprawled across the pavement

leaning, grinning--against the stucco

with the city padding between us

you're a simple soul, eh?

that makes you lucky

--you don't know what you can't do

no dancer--you go running

trade skill for distance

since I'm having trouble denoting "forward"

I'm taking the graceless slapping

of your sneakers--as the echo of the walls

here--to delineate the shape

of the rooms that lie before me

... (xxv).

speak to yourself

in foreign accents--repeat your thoughts

in some other language, mumble

in the words you knew--before you knew words

to the ones who came before you,

leaning out from the shadows, spun round

behind the columns, the doorways

the first one who hid--behind a boulder

from what they could not see

whisper, what they whispered above

clouds of incense, through sheets

of smoke, choking out the shapes

of buildings, and street names

as they watched the fire feeding

--etched the script across

the film clouding their

eyes--sounded the letters

like beacons, in the hanging

fog, to sound the bulk

of the lies, the slope

of the memories

and when the wind

whipped free of the hillsides

it met them in cadence, but

when the air is still--it pays

to bow your head, to mumble

under the shade and shelter

of your eye-lids--it pays

to trace the figures small

man--I'd like

them to crowd round in tweed

with the buildings soaring

like ground-bound falcons

against the sky

man--I'd like

to touch hands, man

I'd like to clap shoulders

to walk through a crowd

and hear the voices

clasp my ears like fingers

on a forearm

man--I'd like

to stride across a green

like I owned it, to stomp

across a street, like the beat

of the cars, was echoing

in my legs, man--I'd like to say

I own this, and it owns me

dismal science

man--I would jam

a sword down my throat

elaborate on

my own blood gurgling

than hear the empty air

whistling in my teeth

than provide narration for

a world that exists only in outline

man--I will not be

nailed spread-eagle

by the cells of my skin

will not be knotted

woven--the swirling atoms

threading my flesh

with wire

nah--and I won't drink it

the fading flush, the

hungry rush--the empty liquor

of desire

when a scream is just

another kind of story

and a plea no more

than fluttering hands

then I'd choose silence

for my sake--combined with violence

and--on the whole--give over worry

for a place unable to calculate,

to compensate--to back with interest

to back at all--what it demands

beggars

beggars--the both of us

it is hard to sit here

in the corner

without you to light it

to stare up at the matte gray sky

through the bamboo

to hear the blank rush

of the cars in the hills, the wind

the world seems flatter

the night seems dead

without the warmth

of your company

without your voice

to add

depth to the dark

it is hard to see

the rich colors

without being able

to catch them

to give you--without you

to return them, brighter

remember when were starving?

--and hunger was a pleasure

it filled the world with desire

when did it become

lots and alleys--

trenches gouged into the earth

and things scattered

in pieces, across the ground

the cement cold and hard

the tall buildings

catch the dead sounds of the city

in their heights

Sitting on the curb, I saw you

at the intersection

while you were on the way

to yours

I looked up at you

and you glanced at me

--I can give you nothing

God damn your resilience

--our eyes rebounded

flung past each other

were lost

we dissolved

into the vastness of the street

winter

it's good to lie down empty--in the summer

the sky itself will come down to fill you

with Draco arching in dim outline

above you

--but I saw you in the winter

when I was already full

and dark cut across us

and we stood apart

each silent and solid

under the still, thundering

dome of the moon

and the words passed

between us

like a distant echo

--I hear laughter in the night

wild and jagged as the outline of the palms

I think I wish you're hearing

the murmuring of the leaves

if I must be alone when I'm open

I'd wish the soft rustling

the spice on the breeze,

drift in the corners of your soul

... (xxiv).

poetry is the shearing away

of the bone

tonight--

the wind blowing,

quick and dry

sheared away the years

all the dead

days, thick and bony

and hard

and I saw the sunlight

on the path

and the shadows specking

through the leaves

I saw the light thick like

water, when the air

was too heavy

to breathe

and I, caged by the trunks

mourned, silently

in an empty room

and slumped against

the sides, of my skull

--but this exposure

is a crack in the living

cement of the ceiling

and the light, lively

unliving, trickles

across my face

the song of the solid

the song of the solid

is a deep and thrumming

hum,

is the way roofs

rise in staccato

is the water pooling

on the steps

falling away in descant

throws back the sky

is the wind

cutting glissando

the song of the solid

is the earth pounding

the strings

of the freeways,

as it throws itself

forward, for the joy of

moving

the song of the solid

is the road twisting

holding itself

poised in an eternal curve

the song of the solid

is the silent determination

of the gravel falling

is the melancholy

clatter, against stone

that recalls

the stone crumbling

above them,

the bitter loneliness

the fierce determination

of the rush of dirt

and rock, to seize possibility

voices rising in a cloud of dust

the song of the solid

is the vibrations

in clenched teeth

of bones arched and holding

the flesh high

the song of the solid

is the eyes glowing

bright and deep

above the sweeping motions

of the face

the song of the solid

is the song of things

that have been crushed

into themselves,

under pressure

humming quietly,

with the atoms clinking

to the rhythm

of their own

fall

all the world's for falling

so fall away, you ghost and demons

fall away--you dust and ash

fall away your fading glories

fall away you ringing stories

proclaiming the worlds glowing

burning fast

fall, fall--fall away, you all

like burning ash

and go to glow in the carpet

and fade, in the blue

the shadows, the breeze falling

through the window

to lay over the bed, the palms

rustle--let them rustle

falling over the fence

and their whisking fall

over the silence

and the sleeper--let the chains

fall and the limbs fall

across the blankets

let the world rest, quiet

in the rough softness

of the dirt--let this

room,

be the unfinished grave

Nineveh

--washed clean,

thank god--the grime on the walls

dissolved, in the burning flush

of the light, the trees picked bare

the fruit rotting on the ground

swept from the walkways

the silence, in the daylight

gleaming, on the faces washed

clean--

remember?--

the heated rooms, the burning

burr in the cool night air, the

fetid whispers hanging

in the valleys, the dark glances

in the alleys, the distant

shouting, the dusky

scent of smoke and jasmine

echoing across the hillsides

the dirt gleaming

under the hard shine

of the stars, and the sky

deep and velvet

from the lights

--stillness, now

you can hear the crickets

and jackel yelping in the brush

beyond the walls

--we say, there were always

crickets, but we used

to howl louder than the jackels

remember--

that strange night, when the cup

fell, and the slaves sat

like they're supposed to--beside

the couches--remember couches?

and the wine went seeping into the

rushes, to join the fallen meat

and the strings were whining

and moaning, and that man was standing

and speaking clearly,

remember the light on the silk?

standing there in linen

and pointing to the wall

--before the gates broke

before the streets were swept

clean, before our eyes were

washed out, and our hands

scrubbed, and our voices taught

to speak--

--I saw fire burning across

the wall

--tell me

it's easy to make a flame

but where would you have written?

if we hadn't made the walls

when

God forgive us--

this darkness, with the stars

splinters in the night

to stare up into the depths

and grimace at the fires

spinning burning across the black

God forgive us--

who cursed the sun blazing

the leaves rustling

and hissed at the ever-moving

the empty lushness

the underbrush, thick and unspeaking

the sightless green on the branch

God forgive us--

who raised our hands

and commanded that the light streaming

the flashing red and yellow

whispering, that the branches

be the rustling of a crowd

the tall trunks shooting upwards

be the pillars of the hall

--that the empty road be a street

lined with souls,

cheering, murmuring triumph
urging you home

God forgive us--

for saying that He had a name

for using it,

--but it will come

when you have walked far enough
to weariness and beyond it
and slumped against a palm tree
--not, then

but some night,
with the clouds hanging low
the doors opening and closing
the voices murmuring
through the green-blue shadows

--there will come a time

when dark is just another color

and the tumult, the fire

of the days, that fell like showers

of sparks, around you--

--that burned in your skin
when you will no longer snarl at Heaven
nor clench teeth silently
at its absence

when it will walk with you
lie alongside you
when you will lie content
with the brush of the sky
across your shoulders
trailing down

sign

man--I don't know how to say

it's been an issue of passing

unseen, of crossing each other's backs

I put out my hand

and you extend your hand

--we look down,

and draw them back

--the jet planes are always leaving

you used to rush to the airport

and come running up to the gate

just in time

I used to watch jet trails

in the sky--even when you were

there--in the stands

I think I must have

imprinted on the sign

no jets now

and no skidding up to

the gate, no running

out across the sky

--no there's no smoke

arcing, and no field either

and no stands, no I think

we'll be watching each other

forever--no, I think

that's alright, man

that's alright--

I think it's alright

to be puzzling over

the figures--with their

oddly familiar

angles, their curves

and arcing slants

--don't mind so much

going by sign

it's a language worth learning.

Beijing

I hold to

the girls with their ratted hair

clustering around the storefronts

selling cheap knock-offs--at the bus stops

refer back to

the man who used to play

his saxophone, down by the canal

while the older man painted characters

in water, on the bluish-gray of the pavement

and the man who was kicking

thighs-bulging across the tow-path

and the one shouting out the dictionary

to learn English, and the one howling

out the soprano for some Beijing opera

at five in the morning, and those people

down in the boat, pulling fish out of

the freezing murk

and the men striding puff-chest along

the sidewalk--because they knew they owned

the city, and squads of policemen

practicing Kung Fu and Tai Jit Su

in the square, late into the night

--I dodged them in the morning

when they were jogging, and

I was jogging the other way

--hold them

these streets, those streets

and hear the steps echoing

voices clamoring, breath puffing

and my own steps echoing

even now, in the desert

sifting the debris for fossils

I find myself rubbing

the fossil ridges

in my hands.

... (xxiii).

I cast the arms of my shadow

across the bamboo

all the way to the gate

I am so tall with the light behind me

the stars fell from the tip

of my cigarette

to glow on the sidewalk

oh--I am so dim

in the face of things burning

Oedipus

goddamn my eyes

--goddamn the screen

that I should be so pitted

that I should be strung out

all along the sight-lines

that I should be shot

through with the horizon

--sometimes you can trust

only the ghost

in your hands

they rose of themselves

the silent animal in them

curled it's claws

and tore out

the wires

and I had thought--this would be

salvation, when

the last of vision

faded, and ran down my cheeks

I did not think--

that those swinging, rolling fools

the ghost curls now

at the base of my skull

I did not think that those

easily distracted--so foolish

to chase the colors

--every damn sparkle

I did not think that they had

for all their chattering

had preserved me

from the purposeful

silence

of this strange, and alien

animal, breathing with me

in the dark.

the distance

next time--

when we live again

for the next time

this trouble

will have subsided

don't wonder

that I will lose you

in all the tumult of souls

--my friend

when we live again

this near and near

impenetrable barrier

between us

will have fallen away

I expect to be all hand

--and won't we hold

each other

with all ourselves

and drag each other

forward--into

the time again?

my friend--

for now we walk

hands empty

so let the distance

make us dextrous

and difficulty

make us strong

--and don't despair

the distance--this one

is for kicks, this one

is for broke, for kicking

your heels, hands in your

pockets, this one

is for grinning out at all

the whole world, who have nothing

have lost nothing, and the time

comes--will come, for sharing

the glint between us, and the

world left starving

gears

the bikes go rolling
past the window
--and a stream of people
passes back and forth
in front of the counter
and I--
--I remember a dark, a night
that I passed beyond the window
into the shadows on the plaza
and across them, and the parking lot
in the heavy, sweating heat
and sometimes with snow
in the top of my boots
--and sometimes limping
and sometimes bent
under the weight of my bag

I remember skirting the light
pacing
and smoking
I remember twirling and jumping
around the planters
sometimes thick and green
and sometimes brown
and frozen,
with ice dripping from the eaves
and water dripping from the eaves
as the ice fell, glistening
in the fickle, capricious heat
of Spring

I miss
them, who saw me silent
who saw the first
faltering
words, mumbled
the creaking
and flaking
of the rust on my soul

burnished, has been blasted
to a dull gleam
along the tempered curve
of my back
now the quiet churr
of my moving
the slow clicking
of the gears
and axles

please, think that
--I
that I am thankful
that if I move
down strange avenues
head-bent and wander
down unfamiliar streets
that I--
remember the place

--where I sat under the window
while, you passing
and moving, while your breath
--then
slowly cleaned
and refitted the scrap

I did not want
to grind, like I did
to a halt
--not my intention
to carry the memory
of reassembly
nor, to be remade
by unfamiliar hands
from what was lying on hand

would not have chose it
--but as I move, friends
I carry the unmistakeable mark
of your unintentional work

... (xxii).

... sometimes--you just get a little frustrated.

Bah.

---

I don't want to hear your thoughts

or what you think of love

to me they're just as much

less--than the whining of the doves

I don't need to hear your dreams

they're about as near here as the sound

of the whurr and churr of the tires

grinding on the ground

and possibly a "pop" across the valley

I don't care for all the things

to which you've clung as best you're able

are as crumpled, as forlorn

as the wrappers are on the table

and across this space, your needs

in all their endless thronging

they fall down like an echo

air dissolves your longing

and you wonder how we're come here

this dry and silent space

and fearing, you throw time

as chains--to hold us both in place

but the years fall soft as the chimes

around the corner

and the world is moving brightly

on--behind your face

I hear you as you say

that you're frozen and on fire

and as I listen--all I pray

for is the turning of the hour.

Claim

I'd like to think of all of you, as little points of light

that if I see the sky glowing blue

and the sky-scrapers wreathed in haze

if I hear the chimes echo in the dark

that someone else watches

the light play across someone else's cheekbones

in a dim garage

where they're making music

and another smells the fresh scent of cilantro

rising out of the thin plastic bag

mixed with the sharp dampness of the night air

as they are walking home from the grocery store

I'd like to think that at least one

is thrust into delighted awareness

of the exhilaration and charging vulnerability

of the suicide pact we make each day on the 10

and grins with fierce gratitude

as they go jetting over the pot-holes

that someone stood on the sidewalk, at dusk

and lit a cigarette, and dreamed for awhile

until someone called them back inside

that we hold each other

as the night holds us

against the harsh light of day.

"We belong, we belong, we belong..."

--I stake my claim.

... (xxii).

the moon sucked
an ever-growing ring
of clouds, into itself
and glowing gentle and
bright as polished bone
at the center of a dark dome
in the sky
ruled the night, that night
when the clouds rested
low over the houses
smudgy and thick
soft as ragged wool

"I wonder how it does that--" she said,

and looked at me, and said, "--never mind.
I don't want to know."

I don't know.

note

let it be--that

I may have made a mistake

that's ignorance, you know

that's youth--to go humming

your own melody, softly

under your breath

and all unconscious of the clash

and clamor, when it runs up against

another--and two chords turn

upon each other--you don't know

dissonance

until you've heard it.

still--notes are strange

unwieldy things--who knows

how many, melodies are buried

in their vibrations?

how twisted, and arching

the gaps

between the pitches

that compose them?

who knows--but

I catch the echo

of a song I heard, once

much closer

--and I see that

although it twists past me

and wanders in the needles

--I glimpse it in snatches

I see that--

what I heard rang true.

lamp

the branches drooped sharp

and knife-edged

in their shadow

I felt teeth glinting

in my wake

I have walked through hell

--to come here

through the nine-hells of

my own devising

I heard the demons chattering

along the walls

I gave my toes

to the burning fire of winter

I gave my face

to the acid laughter of the wind

and turned my shoulders to its rush

I bled strength

across the hard-froze pavement

I went forward,

and going forward,

have come here--

oh--my far-off neighbor

whose house glows on the dark

hill-top

I will take your porch-light

as my lamp

I will wave no more torches

nor seek to burn the night

--as my lamp

and I will dance

down here--will no more strive

but to dance defter

here, below the circle

of its light.

ghost

the smell of smoke

and windows falling in rivulets

the streets, rushing in streams

of false-water,

shimmering in the sun

my beloved is dead

spun so furiously that

she flung herself over the ridges

and the blue shade,

rolling down the slopes

is her shadow

and the spark, where the road

turns at the summit

is the glint in her eye

but that strange, compact body

which twisted and rose

which moved of itself

that was for gripping

has flown apart

and settled over the ground

I will scatter my words,

and sing a lullaby in the daylight

with the moon hanging low

under the bristling palms

and the pepper trees dropping

their seeds in the dust.

it seems I am staring

out across the valley

from between her rib-bones

that the hazy ridges rise

under the curve of her knee

and her skin has gone

to cover the roof-tops

and what was beneath it

fills the streets,

teeming under the branches

but she holds the sky in her bones.

On York

if the streets are fear

and the sun is torment

and judgment

if the seconds are darts

and blades

separating your flesh

--then death does not come easy

and you never stride, singing

into the breach,

so--for the sake of releasing

who once saw the streets

with wonder

who once gloried in the light

you might go through

the sticky, laborious

process--

--of unpeeling your skin. you might

leave the--I--in rags

and go down screaming

weeping, as your pupils

consume you

you might go down in torment

hoping

--that you had released

it to the light

So...

so--with the drifts

of birds

winging in the soft blue

just before sunrise

flashing amber on their wings

carrying it--less sharp than the fire

which blazes in the windows

so--too

my soul, drift softly

and exult, easy

with the joy of daylight, coming

so, too--you

skreel, low over the valleys

you, go--

winging. and leave

the itchy, burning

husk--stretched and cracking

to crumble

with the dust.

Antigone

tonight, I mourn my dead

boldly

it's a bold thing to mourn

what no one grieves for

too cover the dead

the cracked eyes

with silver

to bring the stars

down

to the silent ground

blasphemy

to steal

beyond the sleeping city

to stand among

the wind blowing in the grass

the rustle

to go below the lighted windows

jingling

pennies for the Ferryman

against your side

to where they lie unburied

to kneel

to call on Heaven

"light their way forward"

the unseeing

lamps for them

"light their way forward"

the moonlight that catches the skin

some quick

and some frozen

that crackles on the sand

by this right--

I, who am the least of these

who am the least of all--

see them honored.

the long day...

morning to night and through the night

the light flooded

the room

came rushing

to hammer my eyes

thick and bitter bright

I have woken, constantly

have shivered--no quarter

light on the snow

light on the street

--I am blind, blind

city, city

give me shadow

let me forget

all the damned seasons

of waking

You

You--

… let us imagine two other bodies. And that my soul was the shadow of itself--and that yours was not fossilized, and pressed safely into the sediment. Let me imagine stronger shoulders--yes, and slimmer hips.

That I could carry you. That you didn’t want to be carried.

Where the street ended--I still remember. The desert night, damp and cool. The shiver that--

--rolled through the flesh and threw up the soul. I still hear you in the echo--

of my actions, the corner of my memory. I cannot hear a word, remember your voice, your face--

--surely only hands. The weight and the heat. I remember my own response. Only reactions--

--the string once struck

thrums, leaning against the chair. Long after the room was empty. And the neck was set down.

Fairfax (ii)

The car shimmering with ice
in Jackson
and the icicles
on the mirror
didn't melt until the next morning
in Dallas
and the roads gleaming
in the tail lights
like black velvet
soft and glistening
across dull dark grass

now El Paso
rises
out of the desert, and under
the foothills
and the desert rising
sparked
like cut crystal
as the sun fell

and Arizona is sharp
as a sheet of glass
pressed flat and gleaming
by the weight of the sun

before Asheville
I said
I would smear your faces
across the rolling hills
and the features fell
one by one

frozen
then flowing

snow in the Smokies
the air itself was
glass
at the edge of the mountains

froze and sank into the asphalt
I ran
over
the familiar counters
I went skidding
rumbling
over them, all night
into Mid-land

and when the oil rigs
plunged
I was empty

What is left of the fire...

--what is left of the fire
is a stream of smoke
rising, ebbing
a thousand ridges
raised
ravines twisted, degraded
a thousand ribbons
dancing

O, dancer--oh twirler
oh spinner--
my mind's eye
watching from the corner
and peering through the crowd

man, I have danced the shadow
of the dance across these walls
I have stomped and slid through
winter
I have bowed to fall
in spring, I flung
myself forward
in summer
I bent forward, I wove slowly
to the beat of the sun
and did it all once more
lost more than I won

man, I have whirled past
my very last partner
--the dance now done

shall I...

shall I feed you, the ghost of
grapes, coated with dust
sing you the shadow of the light
glimmering heavy in the haze
the ghost of the roses
burning white against the dusk
walk before you
one more time
to where the moon
hangs bright over the rocks
and turn
hands out-stretched
give you mountains
seamed with stars