home--
wilted flowers
greet me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      in the dark     a child sings
          crickets     chant

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

vietnam--
a nodding head--
father fought--

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

god is but a joke
  nothing in the idolatry
    of itself
      and death
        but circumstance
          without reproach
what transcends culture?
  malnourishment
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

say one thing that
    we contextualise
everything, love

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

myth undresses before a pool
to clothe itself with a step
into a blue now black
with the sound of light
  the wind is hair
    oils knot
            the snow is slow
            the tree is patient

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing is ever what you thought it was
and what you think it is--
Whether joke retold almost never funny
enough to sell the soul
assumed the prodigal pith of wit or worse--
The barnacled heart squeezed tentacle-tight

by the mind and aware of none of it--
What you think it is
sells shy and rises contorted--
Obscure and sublime and stupid as any thrush
thrashing in the underbrush
before its dimune heat pools upward--

Black eyes glint and it is the world afire--
Nothing bartered and little burned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my sixty-seventh year,
my wife's servile dogs refused command--
Fine, I said--
Leave us this brushpile of cobweb and moth--
Go flank the winged mare
who split the womb from which you dropped--
Thank her, for your mother's cloth--

They called among themselves Lamplight
of the Noon of Noon--
Horse and Cataract and Fen--
Fine, I said-- Call to yourselves
what you are-- Call what you will as well--
Go dumb and lame and far--
Do not return to us the moon--

Do not carry us over bridges of bone--
Over rivers of fat--
You bring my wife no sprig of bloom
to place upon the pallor of her head--
Fine; leave us this room, I said--
Or I shall offer you Death,
and of you Death beg nothing more--