xxxxix.

If you believe the world is your oyster
you will eat oysters every night

--if you do not believe in your knife
then you will spend all night cutting your hands.

The image of--blood and salt, on the ice,
the straw and the paper covering the table--
the fingers slipping, and the hunger
--glancing through the small windows
built for a much smaller set of souls,
or the gracious expanse of glass
--looking out onto the boulevard.

It isn't different, I don't believe
if you can hear the sea echoing
or only the rush of the traffic,
not different if you were born
for lights and alleys, or ridges
and fields.

Some weep against the world
in sweat, and the blunt calluses
are the quiet song hope
embers of rage
gone still--

When the mouth runs dry,
the brush of moving cloth
is surely somebody's song
sung for somebody--every
thing that was made, was
made for love.

the last city

I dreamed a city
          of long and windy alleys
and streets engulfed by shadow
cool still, like a masoleum:
except for the vague rustle
of the offerings.
   
they found stone slabs is Turkey
on a quiet sunlit hill
          with the grass rippling
buried in bones--I think an altar
of asphalt--

I would lay all of my
cities to rest--
               by silent girders
the mirrored haze
rising to the skyline
the reflection of leaves
--in the fetid puddles

      in some unused corner
by the steps, rest
by the trashcan--

eucalyptus

the eucalyptus swings down

and the leaf-tips

nearly touch its shadow

before the wind blows them apart

together

and also, separate

--from the balcony

I see them.

xxxxviii.

did you think you were alone--
weeping pitifully in the lee of some boulder
as the desert sun goes down?

don't you know that every one of us, every one
has been beaten, is bruised
is bleeding, from their long journey
between the sands?

didn't you know that every one of us,
every man, woman and child
has hung upon the boards
thirsting

that every one of us,
every man, woman, child
has been crucified by circumstance

either we mourn together or no one mourns.

the street is a festival of monsters
every word and note is a device
to ease the passage of the crippled

if we walk, we should walk together
and rejoice when anyone of us finds
that what was broken
has grown anew, and strange
--a tail, claw, an elongation of the ears

in the gray, dust and at the coming of night

the songs should swirl

in the wind and eastward

--cease your wailing

your screams are the ancestors
of music, from a torn back
--the suggestion of wings

march, with us the weary,

as the sun fails, you may shamble, stumble

or huddle, but as the stars rise

you must walk

songnet

a scholar in Beijing
the dead branches scratching the window,
blurred smoke and grime, was crushed
under innumerable feet, and spinning tires
and a poet in Los Angeles
fell twisted between
the hills, and the creak of the sage,
into scrap on the verge of the freeway,
bound for the greener coast

an artist in Baltimore,
sunk into the moss, like light
between the spindled trees, was
lost chasing movement in the brush,
to the sweet and rot of summer

--and an engineer in Washington,
busy wrenching some ghostly machinery
into functionality--before it failed
and faded, somewhere along the production line
--but, really, what can persist along
the great highways and the echoing ranges--
who can survive the desert in the winter?
fell into the thick beds of leaves,
and lay with them and the frost.

and a madman, least and last mourned,
whispering and mumbling, the names of each
until they blurred into one name, and then into nothing.

the relics and remnants fell, dry and tired
from his hands,

and the story-teller crouched,
and squinted quizzically at the fragments
as he gathered them up,

"...how many men died

so that you could be with us tonight?"

xxxxvi.

...this was written awhile back.

---

was walking through your ruins
           this morning, thus accused
           how can I answer such accusation?
I am dead, and have been for some
time, now.

the silent place between them--once thought
it was the smoke between the rafters,
pressing against the eaves--
                       has expanded
   it sprawls across the ground

Tess

Now, now I understand
why you left all your things--in the hallway,
and abandoned your car in a stand of pines
to pass through the halls
of accumulated sentiment, to where
the light slants through the trees
in the thin mountain air,
--the rich sent of the sea, weaving
through the branches,
I have set down my memories,
--I expected to see you
outside, because you always
return--when I leave
--but I lean on the doorway
and find I'm staring
at the path you took, clear and
leading through the dry leaves
to the shore and the skyline
above it--we could talk
if I see you again.

I will leave a note for myself
and will not
look for you in this house again.