John-O was given a key to the apartment. The deal
was this: if Phil died suddenly, and John-O heard,
he would rush on over, enter the apartment, leave
unseen with Phil’ s brown suitcase, and secretly pitch it
into the mounded deeps of the city dump.
Simply, there were things that Phil didn’ t want
to hurt his family with. Do you have yours?
The morning after
my death
we will sit in cafés
but I will not
be there
I will not be
*
There was the great death of birds
the moon was consumed with
fire
the stars were visible
until noon.
Green was the forest drenched
with shadows
the roads were serpentine
A redwood tree stood
alone
with its lean and lit body
unable to follow the
cars that went by with
frenzy
a tree is always an immutable
traveller.
In you all deaths gather, all
the broken glasses, the sere pages, the derangements
of thought, they gather in you, guilty
of all deaths, incomplete and guilty,
in the wake of every mother, in your wake,
motionless. They gather there, in your
weak hands. The apples of this market are death,
these poems retreat into their grammar,
in the hotel room, in the hut
of what does not join, souls without rest,
aged lips, bark ripped from the trunk.
They are dead. They gather there. They failed,
— Pretty Shield,
Medicine Woman of the Crows
transcribed and edited by
Frank Linderman (1932)
All night I am the doe, breathing
his name in a frozen field,
the small mist of the word
drifting always before me.
And again he has heard it
and I have gone burning
to meet him, the jacklight
fills my eyes with blue fire;
the heart in my chest
explodes like a hot stone.
Had death not had me in tears
I would have seen the barges
on life's stream sail.
I would have heard sorrow songs
in groves where the road was lost
long
where men foot prints mix with other men foot prints
By the road I wait
"death is better, death is better"
came the song
I am by the roadside
looking for the road
death is better, death is much better
Had death not had me in tears
I would have seen the barges
I would have found the road
and heard the sorrow songs.
Nimble, preserved together,
milkweed-white rears upturned,
female tule elk
bowed into rustling foxtails.
Males muscled over the slopes,
jostling mantles, marking terrain.
Their antlers clambered wide,
steep as the gorges.
As they fed, those branches twitched,
sensory, delicate,
yet when one buck reared
squaring to look at us
his antlers and his gaze
held suddenly motionless.
Further out, the skeleton.
The tar paper it seemed to lie on
was hide.
Too many are leaving
usually they greet in sleep before dashing
as in today with this gentleman
(awkward not to type his name)
when yesterday in the shower
I remembered his face in Aardvark
something about NWA but not about them
just a played reference
There were newspaper clips
all police brutality, all framed with snow
& I vaguely recalled something
about Uma Thurman & the Menils
when the guard ushered me out
for touching the African sculptures
I waited in the lobby for hours
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.
Soon I will make my appearance
But first I must take off my rings
And swords and lay them out all
Along the lupine banks of the forbidden river
In reckoning the days I have
Left on this earth I will use
No fingers
