Northwestern

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

People, don't ask me again where my shoes are.
The valley I walked through was frozen to me
as I was to it. My heavy hide, my zinc
talisman — I'm fine, people. Don't stare
at my feet. And don't flash the sign of the cross
in my face. I carry the Blue Cross Card —
card among cards, card of my number
and gold seal. So shall ye know I am of
the system, in the beast's belly and up
to here, people, with your pity.

You are the kind of  person who buys exotic fruits
leaves them out on the counter until they rot
You always mean to eat them sometimes you rearrange them
rousing over the bowl a cloud of tiny flies

&

All those poems I wrote
About living in the sky
Were wrong. I live on a leaf
Of   a fern of   frost growing
Up your bedroom window
In forty below.

I live on a needle of   a branch
Of   a cedar tree, hard-bitten,
Striving in six directions,
Rooted in rock, a cedar
Tree made of other trees,
Not cedar but fir,

Lodgepole, and blue spruce,
Metastasizing like
Bacteria to the fan-
Lip of a draw to draw
Water as soon as it slips
From the snowdrift’ s grip

It turns out there’ s a difference between a detail
and an image. If the dandelion on the sidewalk is
mere detail, the dandelion inked on a friend’ s bicep
is an image because it moves when her body does,

even when a shirt covers the little thorny black sun
on a thin stalk. The same way that the bar code
on the back of another friend’ s neck is just a detail,
until you hear that the row of numbers underneath

I don’ t buy it, says

the scientist.

Replies the frail

and faithful heart,

it’ s not for sale.

Full of strength and laced
with fragility:

the thoroughbred,
the hummingbird,
and all things
cursed
with agility.

A lizard does not make a sound,
it has no song,
it does not share my love affairs
with flannel sheets,
bearded men, interlocking
silver rings, the moon,
the sea, or ink.

But sitting here the afternoon,
I’ ve come to believe
we do share a love affair
and a belief —
in wink, blink, stone,
and heat.
Also, air.

This is not a fable,
nor is it bliss.

Impatience,
remember this.