Way Out West
As simple an act
as opening the eyes. Merely
coming into things by degrees.
We Are Seven
— — — A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
— Her beauty made me glad.
“Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?”
“How many? Seven in all,” she said,
And wondering looked at me.
We dollhouse monsters
dine on disco balls and starfish,
our jowls crashing
like cymbals,
while my baby brother takes out his eight-ball
left eye and squints his right
to line up his shot
on the world’ s smallest pool table.
Mother has a camera for a head;
it flashes uncontrollably
though she claims to have run
out of film a hundred years ago,
when father’ s penis,
We Have the Technology
By the sparklet of certain ciliates cesium
practices its cricket song.
Am I supposed to be impressed? My smoothie
comes with gps.
Take a left at that crustacean. You — yes, you,
with the crisis Isis eyes.
By Odin’ s beard, this is snowier than usual. We can
always burn the first folio.
Go bug a dandelion. You’ ll have
the elephant of surprise.
We Have Trees Now
So much sky
Because we canbecause we can
a new kind, our new people
this is us now
we didn't know we were here
we don't know how it happened
we flew out of their arms.
We Never Know
He danced with tall grass
for a moment, like he was swaying
with a woman. Our gun barrels
glowed white-hot.
When I got to him,
a blue halo
of flies had already claimed him.
I pulled the crumbled photograph
from his fingers.
There's no other way
to say this: I fell in love.
The morning cleared again,
except for a distant mortar
& somewhere choppers taking off.
I slid the wallet into his pocket
& turned him over, so he wouldn't be
kissing the ground.
We Real Cool
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
We're driving in our car
We're driving in our car,
We're driving in our car,
Brum, brum, brumety, brum,
We're driving in our car.
We're stopping in our car,
We're stopping in our car,
The lights have turned to red,
We're stopping in our car.
We're driving in our car,
We're driving in our car,
The lights have changed to green,
We're driving in our car.
We're Human Beings
That's why we're here, said Julio Lugo
to the Globe. Sox fans booed
poor Lugo, booed his at-bat after
he dropped the ball in the pivotal fifth.
That ball, I got to it, I just
couldn't come up with it.
Lugo wants you to know
he is fast: a slower player
wouldn't even get close
enough to get booed. Lugo
wants you to know he's only
human: We're human beings.
That's why we're here. If not,
I would have wings.
I'd be beside God right now.
I'd be an angel.