The Accident

Last night's crash was yesterday's poem. I am home today recovering my spirits and courage. I woke feeling I had just sacked Troy. Today's poem begins soon.

Radio Jazz

This is the most depressing song I ever heard-
Sophistication what a word
drums with no dire, trying to rise up
to heaven without heat, scales and lazy arpeggios
--just cuz I'm stoned
don't say I'm stupid. I found you

jazzing here,
spiteful as a girl--there isn't piss enough
to tell your story. The walls are a-crawl
with the sound of solipsism. The hills
of New Hampshire are jive.

Anonymous email says she's
got your husband now. He's
a skunk. She's a leg trap.
Blow his head off
and don't get too close when it
hits (P U)
home. Seems they're playing that
same old song. Big finish.

[OMG this is tied up too tight...I hope I get past this cryptic phase!]

The Farmer Takes a Wife

The Farmer Takes a Wife


What seeds have you started, the gardener
asks the gardener?
The kids down the hill shacked up, dogs and
snow-shoes. Long mornings heaven
on earth then, and the woodpecker with his bright cap
tips his gaze, contemplates abundance,
suet in a cage and off he flies in snowy air.

A certain friendship ends
when to apologize would be to admit too much.
She did so mean me harm. Seed
of my discomfort, stone in the shoe, rock me
down snowmelt, boulders rising black furnaces
storing nuclear heat of space, fields shrink back revealing
bare ground of blast site. What I lack

in subtlety make up in violence.
Snow-fields glaring light on such
a dark day. Black cups of soil, under bulbs'
fluorescent urge, seed sprouts root hair
that splits the rock
upending earth, oh what have you
done this time

Fool's Prayer

For of pure presence a moment
is all
needed--oh, given!--this
say what I want and have it --scares away -- doubt
the world knows.

Poor fools crying we don't
live forever when most of us don't even want
to live today. The morning a cloud chamber,
snowfields sublime in wet air, scarves unwinding
to heaven, pure
matter ascends. Tug Hill erased,
edges smudged in cloud tops. A crow coughs, tubercular,

then three racing geese go making sky
palpable as they approach and flash into
vision and out.

All night night held me in her arms and cherished
breath I gave away. Freed, I am not needed
here--it's all just offering. If spring
comes, it will be for love.

Watch This Space

This space is being reconfigured and started up for NaPoWriMo starting on April Fool's Day!

Foundling

Foundling

"Renunciation... is a piercing virtue."
Emily Dickinson

But to be the one renounced
In name of virtue--that's a bad joke,
A taste in the mouth like last night's garlic.
Sweat it out. Comes the pain without the honor,
Like the martyr soldier's horse!
Insult to fibers moral and connective--
Do I shame you? So I do. --
Contamination borne in the blood.
Your secret's showing, not to be
Spoken. Hushed, refused, this applecart
Upsetter, homewerecker, mark of sin.
The hills above the city are scarred with infants' bones.

To the Muse

To the Muse

It isn't about men leaving.
Not my brother's gun.
I feel like shit
Most of the time
Thinking I forgive you but I don't
Understand you.
Only in the bad times,
The worst places, I find you in me.
Black juice of joy rant and storm
Surge of pain; this is the blood spring vital.

Your ghost screams in pain.
I can't believe I wrote that.
Your ghost screams in pain.
Biting itself, shredding its tongue,
Shredding its ghostly arms
With nightmare claws. Wake up now.
I'm writing this for you.
Everything is for you, these forget-me-nots,
These chocolates, this glass of gin, this rage.
The car run into a snowdrift, bottles of pills,
My crimes, my sacred enemies, lockdown
Ward two west and meds call.
What have I not given, endured?
I am faithfully yours.