Living

Not long ago, or maybe I dreamt it
Or made it up, or have suddenly lost
Track of its train in the hocus pocus
Of the dissolving days; no, if I bend
The turn around the corner, come at it
From all three sides at once, or bounce the ball
Against all manner of bleary-eyed fortune
Tellers — well, you can see for yourselves there’ s
Nothing up my sleeves, or notice even
Rocks occasionally break if enough
Pressure is applied. As far as you go
In one direction, all the further you’ ll

listen mother, he punched the air: I am not your son dying
the day fades and the starlings roost: a body’ s a husk a nest of goodbye

his wrist colorless and soft was not a stick of chewing gum
how tell? well a plastic bracelet with his name for one. & no mint
his eyes distinguishable from oysters how? only when pried open

This is what our dying looks like.
You believe in the sun. I believe
I can't love you. Always be closing,
Said our favorite professor before
He let the gun go off in his mouth.
I turned 29 the way any man turns
In his sleep, unaware of the earth
Moving beneath him, its plates in
Their places, a dated disagreement.
Let's fight it out, baby. You have
Only so long left — a man turning
In his sleep — so I take a picture.
I won't look at it, of course. It's
His bad side, his Mr. Hyde, the hole

I was 6 and
I lost my snake.

The table shook
I can do better
than this
and shambled
to the kitchen
to the scene
of the crime

I was green
I put my sneaker
down, little shoe

I felt the cold
metal tap
my calf

moo and everything
began to change.
I am 6
turned into lightning
wrote on the night

At 6, I was feathers
scales, I fell into
the slime of it, lit

Night, the fat serpent, slipped among the plants,
Intent upon the apples of his eyes;
A heavy bandoleer hung like a prize
Around his neck, and tropical red ants
Mounted his body, and he heard advance,
Little by little, the thin female cries
Of mortar shells. He thought of Paradise.
Such is the vision that extremity grants.

Now he has silver in him. When sometime
Death shall boil down unnecessary fat
To reach the nub of our identity,
When in the run of crime
The skull is rifled for the gold in teeth,
And chemistry has eaten from the spine
Superfluous life and vigor, why then he
Will show a richness to be wondered at,
And shall be thought a mine
Whose claim and stake are stone and floral wreath.

The sun is folding, cars stall and rise
beyond the window. The workmen leave
the street to the bums and painters’ wives
pushing their babies home. Those who realize
how fitful and indecent consciousness is
stare solemnly out on the emptying street.
The mourners and soft singers. The liars,
and seekers after ridiculous righteousness. All
my doubles, and friends, whose mistakes cannot

As simple an act
as opening the eyes. Merely
coming into things by degrees.

Because I must walk
through the eye-shaped
shadows cast by these
curved gold leaves thick
atop each constructed
palm tree, past displays
of silk scarves, lit
silhouettes of blue-bottled
perfume — because
I grip, as though for the first
time, a paper bag
of french fries from McDonald's,
and lick, from each fingertip,

i.

In a courtyard, in these stacks of chairs
before the empty stage — near are
we Lord, near and graspable. Lord,
accept these humble offerings:

stacks of biscuits wrapped in cellophane,
stacks of bone in glass: thighbone,
spine. Stacks of white saucers, porcelain
circles into which stacks of lip-worn