uuuuuuuuuu
uuuuuuuuuu
uuuuuuuuuu uuu ray light morning fire lynch yet
uuuuuuu, yester-pain in dreams
comes again. race-pain, people our people
our people
everywhere... yeh... uuuuu, yeh
uuuuu. yeh
our people
yes people
every people
most people
uuuuuu, yeh uuuuu, most people
in pain
yester-pain, and pain today
(Screams) ooowow! ooowow! It must be
the devil
(jumps up like a claw stuck him) oooo
wow! oooowow! (screams)
Whatever city or country road
you two are on
there are nettles,
and the dark invisible
elements cling to your skin
though you do not cry
and you do not scratch
your arms at forty-five degree angles
as the landing point of a swan
in the Ohio, the Detroit River;
Down at the station, early in the morning,
See the little puffer trains, all in a row.
Here comes the driver to start up the engine,
Puff! Puff! Peep! Peep! Off we go!
Puff! Puff! Peep! Peep! Off we go!
Puff! Puff! Peep! Peep! Off we go!
Down at the station, early in the morning,
See the little puffer trains, all in a row.
Here comes the driver to start up the engine,
Chuff! Chuff! Toot! Toot! Off we go!
Chuff! Chuff! Toot! Toot! Off we go!
Chuff! Chuff! Toot! Toot! Off we go!
As down the burn they took their way,
And thro' the flowery dale;
His cheek to hers he aft did lay,
And love was aye the tale:
With "Mary, when shall we return,
Sic pleasure to renew?"
Quoth Mary-"Love, I like the burn,
And aye shall follow you."
The message I found on the Post-it note
went thus: love truth; expect to be found out.
Kid-style capitals proved I wrote it, but
left no clue why I'd swelled into a fat
clause no editor could edit; then, an entry
on a shrink's list of patient slang for sex —
her desk Norwegian teak, the mug of tea
on which she had affixed her Post-it notes
hot against her knuckle, their lips of stickum
loosening... And yet, I knew the note
to peel away at hour's end would terminate
our sessions — cool as the draft her linen
They are skimming the lake with wooden hooks.
Where the oak throws its handful of shadows
Children are gathering fireflies.
I wait in the deep olive flux
As their cries ricochet out of the dark.
Lights spear the water. I hear the oak speak.
It foists its mouthful of sibilants
On a sky involved with a stillborn moon,
On the stock-still cottages. I lean
Into the dark. On tiny splints,
One trellised rose is folding back
Its shawls. The beacon strikes the lake.
I set out from the Port of Acapulco on the twenty-third of March
And kept a steady course until Saturday, the fourth of April, when
A half hour before dawn, we saw by the light of the moon
That a ship had come alongside
With sails and a bow that seemed to be of silver.
Our helmsman cried out to them to stand off
But no one answered, as though they were all asleep.
Again we called out: “WHERE DID THEIR SHIP COME FROM?”
And they said: Peru!
After which we heard trumpets, and muskets firing,
For near is where you’ ll meet what you have wandered
far to find. And near is where you’ ll very likely see
how far the near obtains. In the dark katholikon
the lighted candles lent their gold to give the eye
a more than common sense of what lay flickering
just beyond the ken, and lent the mind a likely
swoon just shy of apprehension. It was then
that time’ s neat artifice fell in and made for us
a figure for when time would slip free altogether.
I have no sense of what this means to you, so little
“The writer. It’ s a cul-de-sac,” you wrote that
winter of our nation’ s discontent. That first time
I found you, blue marble lying still in the trench, you, staked
in waiting for something, anything but the cell of your small
apartment with the fixtures never scrubbed, the seven great
named cats you gassed in the move. I couldn’ t keep them.
You explained so I understood. And what cat never loved
your shell-like ways, the claw of your steady fingers, firme
from the rasping of banjos and steady as it goes
In prayer:
quiet opening,
my artery is a thin
shadow on paper —
margin of long grass,
ruderal hair, sister to this
not yet part of our bodies
your lyric corpus of seed
in rough drafts of pine ash,
chaogao or grass calligraphy
in rough drafts of pine ash —
your lyric corpus of seed
not yet part of our bodies:
ruderal hair, sister to this
margin of long grass,
shadow on paper,
my artery is a thin
quiet opening
in prayer.
