Why happiness is a warm gun; or,
there are no basements in New Orleans
She’s in heaven. She’s in the ice
crisscrossed with stars. Today
because the ceiling cracks,
that’s a part of her breaking
up. I feel like a barometer. You may, too.
She’s not in the attic
or in the cement. She’s in heaven.
She’s in the ice
crisscrossed with stars. There are lampposts;
there are dark children.
There are no basements.
She broke a step coming up and saw chalk,
debris, darling bulbs.
She wanted to get out of there.
She taught me this song.
Know me your boy-arms to a flying horse
Show me your good side without speaking first
Go down the levee show me your hearse
Your good side, your good side
She went off on a beautiful train.
Stalking the Famous Poet / Of Mere Being
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
Later on, a box holds up the ground.
A woman moans in it. She takes
weeks to rescue. I am her tormentor. I say
one million to the phone. I have drugged her
and am breathing onto her small breasts.
It is serious business. No one listens. There is
no one around. No noise. I have drugged
her and am breathing onto her small breasts.
It is serious business. I say one million
to the phone. I am her tormentor.
Anything can happen.
I see the faint cries she makes shake out
from a tube, in my hand. This hollow reed, this
rubber hose. It is serious
business. She breathes through this
thin tube, this rod. This is how we
communicate.
I want to buy her a bird, a pretty one like
in the back of this book, Wallace Stevens,
The Palm at the End of the Mind.
She’ll love it. I’ll read slow
and deliberate. I’ll make tiny holes.
She’ll want me to read it all of the time.
I’ll make tiny holes. This is how we’ll
communicate.
From the present they can take no routes
a possibility he hadn’t expected;
an unsatisfiable fear or premise
shaped itself by the post. It quivered
and rose, it lay on his bed.
It waited. She came
to glean. Whither thou goest
I will. Sorrow threshed,
threshed back—
on her, the thrust of a new God.
May 2002
On looking back at the last year or two
there is no breach in the wall,
no bomb. There is a leg, there is a
pulling panic.
There is an ephemeral sinking,
like one sought after.
There is a wan face it knows.
There is a blue thing and a rug, and grey drapes.
There is a milk-pail and a shovel.
There is a wall but there is always a wall.
There is a white plate there is a plane.
There is a glove a hand but there is no signal.
They had it nailed, the grey prawn,
in our minds.
from 55 Stones
(”manic echoes”)
First, never requite me. Take your
sad hands off my happy hands. Believe in
sweaters and sit on the fence,
the porch. Sleep with me in the window-
screen, behind your TV. Don’t look
at what you wake to. It’s perfume,
it’s hills. Be red. Be moving,
landscape like a morning-
blue jacket and sock cap. (When you go
I think I’ll need one. Cover me. Cover me.)
Put your stride, your whole toe
in. Break the bank. (The bank.) Sing
“Tirra Lirra” when you go in, in the water.