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Moebius Strip

Frontiers are explored in a mirror; sharks contained in their appetite. The skin occludes all but the pen, harvesting love from any field. The clock is a compass leading to the corridors of sleep. The borders that will be crossed occur as we sit alone in our rooms. An island is waiting with the promise…

Catching Fire

Everywhere gutter musicians with rare saxophones rise in the air like snowy egrets. The night wolf drifts on a coffin nailed with stars. A man in an alley unravels the feathers of a woman’s body. From the firmament above the rooftops a hand rockets loose, catching fire in the snow. The one window, steam-laced with…

Sign Language

           An Interpretation of the Paintings of            Robert Rauschenberg            for Ray Kass      There is a bird in a box,      the wildlife caged                  but all around,                  the life of the painting,                              wild      wild,      painting with disordered letters,                  the ordering      the dis                  ordering,…

Protocol

I wanted to begin with perfectly simple things, things that were indivisible, safe from analysis. Without knowing it, I tried for years to write protocol sentences. My mistake was to think that such dregs, even had I reached them, were what I had to say, its "true" form, my "real" meaning. "John joy now." "John…

Marvin Gardens’ Revenge

So there he perched, a poor sad slob of a young failure, Marvin Gardens, Ph.D., pondering in the deadest center of his ambiguities. Two years past, to the day, he had assessed his life from that identical spot – the large stuffed chair in his small study (not yet, then, had greyish stuffing begun to…

Driving America

Outside the barracks of the city & the fountains of the suburbs lit up with private yellow lights, kitchens of self, bedrooms of despair, women in white slips pulling down shades, newspaper blown down airshafts like dead souls. Inside the park trees drip green in the dark, unseen lilac flows, pines zig zag, birches rear…

The Pakistani’s Daughter

Is lingering by the door With a younger sister Listening to my music. Oh come into my parlor Blush and promise to come again Should I say, “My need is great,” Or “My father married a girl much younger,” Or, “I saw you in the Moka having a milkshake.” Oh why should I, old enuf…

Nine Country Poems

(1) A lot of sky litters my view of home — oh Missed one, lost      Helium balloons spill off the horizon            & knock me backwards Jeolousy is too easy, this easy I miss      a better sentiment, ballooning pride could accomplish      Homesick for your hands, I miss the fragrance of my labors in them: devilish…