Living

The neck
of the flask
pitch black-getting bored
jacked
also madness, insidious
intended ghost
(days late)
I cross green & white flowered seas
Valentines, May Day

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

Life in
unbridled

collapse, Let tuneful praise ascend

Not a single line

out of step with my band, aboard

the riverboat
when the sun
shown red

and especially dark upon my room

In a year the nightingales were said to be so loud
they drowned out slumber, and peafowl strolled screaming
beside the ruined nunnery, through the long evening
of a dazzled pub crawl, the halcyon color, portholed
by those eye-spots’ stunning tapestry, unsettled
the pastoral nightfall with amazements opening.

(Bubbling and spuming
as if trying to talk under
water, I address you thus:)
Must I pretend not to love
you (in your present bloom,
your present perfection — soul
encased in fleshly relevance)
so you won’ t believe me
just another seabed denizen
vying for your blessed attention?
Some of us (but not you)
are so loosely moored
to our bodies we can
barely walk a straight line,
remaining (most days) only
marginally conscious.
We stagger and shudder
as buckets of   blood or sperm

How long and thin
she seems today
a field of mustard
smiling up at the sun
it draws her eyebrows
together in a little pain
I don’ t think I ever
saw calligraphy of geese
like this overseas
oaks and pines
pretending to be asleep
not quite dark yet
as it is at home
poor people, midnight

The whole country
in a courtly dance
its tiny mouth open
I pour another cup of wine
and falling, rising
the children remove their toys
around the small apartment
to their bunk beds
not quite dark yet
early spring with snow
on the wind
the woman across the street
bent like a sickle
collecting bottles and cans
knocks, goes on
I wonder where she lives
and the stars shining
on her greasy clothes

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 —

All hail the crumbling stone monument
to the Battle of Bad Axe, the wooden helve

long rotted and burned, the short walk to the river,
where we can bathe in its brown,

where a steamboat ghost huffs out
a stream of bullets. We are invulnerable

to their spectral lead, descendants
of fur traders (beaver, ermine,

skunk). Our lungs are clean and pink. Let’ s visit
the saw shop, the greenhouse with bluff views,

the pines and stacks of firewood,
the Blackhawk general store, named for