my mouth a cunt in reverse and my guts, nuts.
I nose the dark nursery, belly for my dick spurting ink at shit.
Fire. Arrow.
Water. Shadow.
you know no kid’ s name a word, but some shit-to-do.
no kid ain’ t shit but a map to its folk
traced by its folk to where they buried their folk.
took that shit that made me to make me make myself myself,
rolled in on papa’ s red nuts like they a fucking chariot.
•
these days my guts stay aching. my head an empty crib.
pigs prey to piggishnesses. get ate from the rooter to the tooter.
I’ m a hog for you baby, I can’ t get enough go the wolfish crooner.
the gust buffeted porker roll in the hay or laid down
in twig rapine. let me in, let me in.
Sound of the rain so I know
there’ s constraint
sound of the train
so I know commerce
has not come to a standstill
now they raise the barrier
now they set it back in place
What coats the bottom
of the surface of the sound
when the swifts come in
when the clerks come home
who will bathe the children
who will bake the bread
when the luff is tight
when the mainsheet
starts the boat underway
whatever you do don’ t
let the tongue slip
from its moorings
I am walking through water with one of my sisters,
the river banked with tiger lilies, the sun
like having a lemon juiced into your eye, our senile dog
ecstatic behind us,
and I am yammering
about my discovery —
a chest deep pool, sentried by trees
that caterpillars were killing
with their yearly carnival tents.
Mortal oddment, there’ s no wish in the blood
But beat, but stay gift-strong, but make demands
To keep within veins this ore’ s diffuse gold,
These voices that know without being known —
These voices that riddle thought with herself,
Ridicule thought in her flimsy eternal
Gowns a child can tear in half with a breath —
That chorus arterial, unbribable,
Blowing song through self as a child blows
A dandelion apart —
All those weeds? —
The conversations of the French
Quarter mules in their stables
after a full day of pulling
tourists and voters over cobble-
stones is not espresso witty
and in their dark no TVs feed
them news of the ends of mules
elsewhere in the Middle East
and West. In our stables the ends
of others are a fact of atmosphere.
The yoyos on the mystery island
nextdoor are revving familiar tools
in backyard now gripped by failure
first of electricity than of
a meaner something that’ ll grow
To invent the alef-beit,
decipher the grammar of crows,
read a tangle of bare branches
with vowels of the last leaves
scrawling their jittery speech
on the sky’ s pale page.
Choose a beginning.
See what God yields and dirt cedes
when tines disturb fescue, vetch, and sage,
when your hand dips grain from a sack,
scattering it among engraved furrows.
Fighting a losing battle
lives next door
to a vibrant woman
in her 30’ s.
When he talks to her
sub-mediocre takes over
in a big way.
Zombie-ized by the big eye
she even sleeps with it on.
Just sign me: concerned.
I think it is interesting
though not exactly amusing
how we go from day to day
with no money. How do we
do it, friends ask, suspecting
we really have some stash
stacked away somewhere.
But we certainly do not
and we also do not know
how we do it either.
You sure are lucky,
some of our friends say. I am
none too sure of that though,
as I wait for the winning
lottery numbers to be announced
on CKLW. Thursday in Detroit
is the day of dreams. We have
been dreaming of a place
Snow would be the easy
way out — that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won’ t give.
So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline. We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing
