Reckless and white as a flashlight beam cast
into some dark corner, the moon
insists on the deeper blackness
surrounding it. Perhaps it wishes
to be a woman or a window,
cushioning everything, full of itself
for the moment, yet frightened, like any egotist.
But still the stars patiently insist
on their presence, pinholes to nothingness.
When else would I walk on such a night in the world?
When a man knows another man
Is looking for him
He doesn’ t hide.
He doesn’ t wait
To spend another night
With his wife
Or put his children to sleep.
He puts on a clean shirt and a dark suit
And goes to the barber shop
To let another man shave him.
He shuts his eyes
Remembers himself as a boy
Lying naked on a rock by the water.
Then he asks for the special lotion.
The old men line up by the chair
And the barber pours a little
In each of their hands.
has been written in mud and butter
and barbecue sauce. The walls and
the floors used to be gorgeous.
The socks off-white and a near match.
The quince with fire blight
but we get two pints of jelly
in the end. Long walks strengthen
the back. You with a fever blister
and myself with a sty. Eyes
have we and we are forever prey
to each other’ s teeth. The torrents
go over us. Thunder has not harmed
anyone we know. The river coursing
through us is dirty and deep. The left
hand protects the rhythm. Watch
From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
alone and more than alone
at the bottom of the well where the moon lives,
can you pull me
into December? a lowland
of space, perception of space
towering of shadows of clouds blown upon
clouds over
new ground, new made
under heavy December footsteps? the only
way to live?
HOLLYWOOD
As a boy I bicycled the block
w/a brown mop top falling
into a tail bleached blond,
gold-like under golden light,
like colors of Noble Knights
’ banging on corners, unconcerned
w/the colors I bore — a shorty
too small to war with, too brown
to be down for the block.
White Knights became brown
Kings still showing black & gold
on corners now crowned,
the block a branch branded
w/la corona graffitied on
garage doors by the pawns.
By the stream, where the ground is soft
and gives, under the slightest pressure — even
the fly would leave its footprint here
and the paw of the shrew the crescent
of its claws like the strokes of a chisel
in clay; where the lightest chill, lighter
than the least rumor of winter, sets the reeds
to a kind of speaking, and a single drop of rain
When love was a question, the message arrived
in the beak of a wire and plaster bird. The coloratura
was hardly to be believed. For flight,
it took three stagehands: two
on the pulleys and one on the flute. And you
thought fancy rained like grace.
Our fog machine lost in the Parcel Post, we improvised
with smoke. The heroine dies of tuberculosis after all.
Remorse and the raw night air: any plausible tenor
They pay us time and a half
and don’ t dare catch us
drinking: we don’ t insist,
don’ t pass a bottle, but each sips
a private pint, all sitting
in the narrow room with our backs
to the center, each facing
his work — router, stain tray,
buffing wheel, drill press —
and with that sweet taste echoing
in our bones, we watch our hands
The lords of life, the lords of life, —
I saw them pass,
In their own guise,
Like and unlike,
Portly and grim, —
Use and Surprise,
Surface and Dream,
Succession swift and spectral Wrong,
Temperament without a tongue,
And the inventor of the game
Omnipresent without name; —
Some to see, some to be guessed,
They marched from east to west:
Little man, least of all,
Among the legs of his guardians tall,
Walked about with puzzled look.
Him by the hand dear Nature took,
