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I now release from my blood the bird of   thirty she wasted
that’ s how wars crumble us

I now tell those who are exhausted from the expense
of children the secret of   happiness and happiness itself

The kiss is, strictly speaking, a passing
of of   twice: a bead from her mouth to his,
then back, ad nauseam, and the boys who lived
and died for it. The lovely girl amassing

ninety-nine spirits, and in high spirits
for consuming her highest amount. Once
the hundredth boy arrived she starts her hunt
in her haunt, a hill’ s field filled with fitting

Artemisia absinthium.
And every day they kissed to swap the bead
and for a month he waned and wans

I would drive the pre-dawn dark to stake
my spot to fish for dinner, to numb my hands in the ice
bucket, to pluck, from the neat stack, a herring,
to fit the skullcap and pierce the eye with a toothpick,
the body double-hooked, my fingertips glimmering
with the scales of the dead while the line whined free
from the reel, and the bait arced out over the tidal current
on a point in view of   the town where I lived,

What I adore is not horses, with their modern
domestic life span of 25 years. What I adore
is a bug that lives only one day, especially if
it’ s a terrible day, a day of train derailment or
chemical lake or cop admits to cover-up, a day
when no one thinks of anything else, least of all
that bug. I know how it feels, born as I’ ve been
into these rotting times, as into sin. Everybody’ s
busy, so distraught they forget to kill me,
and even that won’ t keep me alive. I share
my home not with horses, but with a little dog

We’ re all pagans and shamans and clap your hands now we won’ t stop the beat

We believe in divine healing and we hate to see that evening sun go down

We know when the sight of our women dressed in white each ritual night, is touching, hypnotizes

The animals blush and split for us as revival, as revealed to themselves

These are triumphant women.

Even Sister Fame hiding out in the alley turning tricks and singing verses from the undid scripture, is touching

As we sat at the feet of the string quartet,
in their living room, on a winter night,
through the hardwood floor spurts and gulps
and tips and shudders came up, and the candle-scent
air was thick-alive with pearwood,
ebony, spruce, poplar, and horse
howled, and cat skreeled, and then,

When we talk about when to tell the kids,
we are so together, so concentrated.
I mutter, “I feel like a killer.” “I’ m
the killer” — taking my wrist — he says,
holding it. He is sitting on the couch,
the old indigo chintz around him,
rich as a night sea with jellies,
I am sitting on the floor. I look up at him,
as if within some chamber of matedness,
some dust I carry around me. Tonight,
to breathe its Magellanic field is less
painful, maybe because he is drinking
a wine grown where I was born — fog,

Eros scrabbles to rose and rage
to gear or gare, as in Gare du Nord,
where I trained in to Paris from not
smoking pot in Master Mad, I’ m sorry,
Amsterdam, with its canals
called grachts and clocks
that bonged my homesick hours
at different times. Which is smite
for you violet types, a flower
that says “love it” if you listen. Me, I do
and don’ t feel it matters that evil thrives
in live, that we tinker and smash
everything down to bits and then
try to patch a path back home, it’ s our lotto

We keep trying to kill it, split it, hack
It to itsy bits. We suspend it
On the wall where we can see it
Passing. We hang it around our necks

Or wrists, laying pulse next to
Pulse as if each might like
Company. Ba-bump, etc. Rising
And setting has everything to do

With it. In the afternoon we feel so
Lazy we try not to close our eyes
And jerk awake, wondering what has
Passed, and where did we go

For that suspended hour,
And could anything keep us here.

They took my body to the forest
They asked me to climb a ladder

I did not want to climb a ladder
But they forced me to climb the ladder

If you don’ t climb the ladder
we will bury you in the foamy mud

I had to decide: should I die
by hanging or by burial

I climbed the ladder and they wrapped
a belt around the thick limb of a tree

And then when I could no longer breathe
they tossed me into a stream

And I floated to the edge of the village
where someone prayed for my soul