Poetry

O I feel so free now All the doors are open & all the birds I can hear from here      are open too!

You are asleep. The ward is quiet so I slip into your room disguised as a brain surgeon. I take your pulse. We sip the stale water. I take your pulse. This is why I write to you, this is how I began to love you: I saw you on television. I enjoyed your lecture…

She thought I was too old or too knowing. Her glance fixed on John and grew soft. That afternoon at Montmartre I lost them altogether though I knew who it was kissing hotly in the shade. I writhed all night recalling how her eyes switched on as she spoke of stepping out of her black…

(for Larry Eigner of Lynn) outside the window            the Japanese pine is bentheavy w/snow      & the yellow commune-house looks lk/somewherelse here in #2 i’m sackedout on the offthesidewalk couch            brought from the old house & the house before. it’s quiet. the Salvation Army is quiet even on Sunday,            the heads in the…

An open shell, Two bone breasts In my sand hand. You next to me, Lobster red, Wild-eyed, embarrassed, Your claws empty, Our minds picked clean by the sun. And the next day our boat went down, Gulls laughing like tourists. Friends, old spongers, dropped by, Lead-headed divers, Squat gas pumps, worry Spinning in their amber…

     And so was I, the camera, instructed to pan the island’s landscape, to zoom toward its capitol city. My body snapped, reclattered and shuttered to the rapid rhythm of spent flash bulbs which left purple wisps of (MGM Exploits Standard Fruit) glassy smoke across the skies of the Northern Province. Typhoid babies sucked death while…

My hand falling As if to reach under it. My black thumb, black tongue, Tasting the tear of the moth wing.      The milk skim of my eye torn,      The thorned leg of the locust      Probing the pin of oil,      My last seeing. Knees unbending Like the last wave of ocean, Sheet of sky settling.      A…

learn to cut            hit            fade learn to look out learn to run carefully try to see in the night & scream silently they don’t care      who you are learn to need it now learn to hate learn to hate learn to love your hate

It is unmanly to be gorging a hot fudge sundae, nuts and whipped cream in the afternoon. There are only women here with their shopping. Worse than sleeping late getting up after your wife has left for work. Yesterday I recognized myself coming out of a double feature into the sunlight.