Life Choices

Would you believe it, I got lost again
And all roads led to Rakestreet. Which was which,
The short road or the long? A girl of ten
Behind her counter, drew me a thumbnail sketch

Hard to reach, so you yank your clothes
getting at it — the button at your neck,
the knotted shoe. You snake your fingers in
until your nails possess the patch of skin
that’ s eating you. And now you’ re in the throes
of ecstasy, eyes lolling in your skull,
as if sensing the first time the joy one takes
in being purely animal.

I cut out the “Heart with Snowflake”
Myself but it is not mine, Forget
This bloody coat bloody shirt, I
Think it is the writing that makes
Me sick, The scores and scores of
Incidental music, this nosebleed all
Spring all wet, I’ m positively angry
with the Impertinence of it! I’ m
Sewing up the kinks in this film, I’ m
Trying to! I’ m trying to burn a light
Between, There’ s a light and I cable
my voice on it but it rips when I trace
Anything! WORKS ON PAPER, THE SHIP
OF DEATH “Oh build it!” Sings the

I dated mostly police.
I hated coastal solace.
In navy posts I flourished.
I inflate the cost of polish.

I restrained my nest-egg worries.
On planes I tested patience.
I prayed for lusty follies.
I betrayed my foster family.

In ways I lost my malice.
I craved a cloistered palace.
I dared say the feast was ghoulish.
I became a tourist: boorish.

Unswayed by mystic knowledge,
I raised a frosty chalice.
I was upstaged and roasted: English.
I obeyed a ghost who’ s tall-ish.

I

When in a farmhouse kitchen that smelled
of old rinds and wet cigarette butts
I hoisted the shotgun to my shoulder
and aimed but did not fire it at the man
who had just taken my virginity like a snack,
with my collusion, but still —

Today you find yourself guilty
as the rim you split
an egg against
You press charges
You spell out your name
like the letters are medals
for good conduct in a bad war
The night moves in with you
into your room
until even your sleep
is not your own
Through the window
the grass tells you
to give up
and you are trying
but on the other hand
things keep you:
the moon, the cars, cars
You undress yourself
more deeply down
like this is the way
to get to the future

(there’ ll be days like this.)
— The Shirelles
These folks ’ bout to respect me into the grave.

At eighty Mama said, (mama said)
“People think you change when you’ re old
but you still got a girl inside.”

We’ ve come back to the site of   her
conception. She calls it why

and cries all night,
sleepless, wild.

It seems the way is always
floating and the goal —

to live so the ghosts we were
don’ t trail us and echo.

I think we are inside a flower,
under a pollen of stars vast as scattered sand.

The air pulses with perfume,
flowers calling to flowers and the ferrying air.

But my eyes are thin and elsewhere.
I am thinking, maybe

There are fewer introductions
In plague years,
Hands held back, jocularity
No longer bellicose,
Even among men.
Breathing’ s generally wary,
Labored, as they say, when
The end is at hand.
But this is the everyday intake
Of   the imperceptible life force,
Willed now, slow —
Well, just cautious
In inhabited air.
As for ongoing dialogue,
No longer an exuberant plosive
To make a point,
But a new squirreling of air space,
A new sense of   boundary.
Genghis Khan said the hand

I was involved in the serious business
of ripping apart my own body.

I’ d run my fingers over it,
seeking but never finding

the right point of entry,
so having to tear one myself,

though midway through
I’ d always tire,

and let night enter
like a silver needle,

sewing my eyelids shut.
This was not an original practice,

but thinking, for a time, that it was
felt like being able to choose

when spring would arrive:
engineering an April