A Minute of Silence for My Arrow

I’m too long in the tooth for this game

I got nothing in my pocket like a flower

The whole countryside appears to beg

Color from my gray pant cuffs what?

Between profit and ruin some of them

Beg so ill-fatedly among ill-fated heroes

Their eyes bloom with verses yet

Unwritten words that sing of sorrows

Full of hate and despair bitter things

We don’t see how it is with us we

Wield a simple lasso for a single hope

A desire to articulate the vowel of stars

To sing more sweetly than the taut

Bow of irrelevancy in velocities of chance

Proud Singer Following What?

And besides ladies and gentlemen we have

Here such difficulties before us to be borne

We have let’s admit another time for great

Migrations profuse mysteries even with all

This quiet waiting such silence we have
Yet to fold our souls into paper airplanes

Quite so precisely as this dull answer to our

Anxious eyes the creased wings of our what?

O we know we’ll be in no shape for wrinkled

Minds like flaccid Christmas ornaments

Flak-sid? Think about that sound that

Utterly surprising utterance that irksome thing!

Who would wish to sound like that word?

Who would never get to the other side?

By What It Means to Be a Traveler

All I ever wanted to do was to go home

So here’s my heart with its odd cock-eyed

Dissatisfaction the blood of the tale-teller

Cruel and unruly and dripping on the table

Like a night rain but slower and staunched

Once more through the green air you

Promised would never come here to this

Place we call an upside-down language

This lopsided discourse O we remember

Endless fields of Indiana corn and white

Windmills more recently so stunningly there

Where we never knew such things could grow

Where we never expected the current of sexes

Adrift in all that razor sharp leafy green

The Casual Reader Will Not

Can anyone imagine a life too full for poetry?

Maybe a life so busy with numbers—which

In absolute terms we know numbers are pure

Poetry if we think about it—or maybe a life

Of action a lived-predicate the absolute verb

Perhaps that’s a life too full to find poetry

I think I lived that life when I was thirteen

And masturbated constantly perpetually

At least once an hour sometimes I jerked off

Twice an hour in those heady days of youth

In truth I had no time for poetry I lived poetry

Can anyone imagine a post-adolescent life

Too full for poetry? Don’t we want to ask

Wordless demigods what numberless canticles?

 

The Exuberant Remoteness of May 31st

Until your rococo hair is more assured today

Of its distinction it drowses on your head

As if it never brooded over a tidy childhood

And hasn’t your wild hair fallen down

At a New Year’s Eve dance more than once

And didn’t it move all my fingers to wag

Like tongues? Didn’t it drive at least one 

Fool to suicide? Your hair knows so much 
About things it surely knows presence is better
Than absence for those who love excess

O now all this music tumbles madly about

Our ears and you say can't you see how the last

Day of May taunts our hearts and oppresses us

With such effulgent faun-colored hair?

Which the Moon Has Summoned With

Where’s Waldo was our favorite book

That and the Valis trilogy we were always

As indiscriminately fleeting as our eyes

Mine a vague hazel and yours an offhand blue

Looking away like the sky changing all the time

We’re entirely particular and disloyal as night

O we’re contrary and bored once again

Life’s too sadly predictable if only we had

A matching set of gray or green even golden

Eyes!  Why should we share us? Why don’t we

Abandon someone else for a change?

We can spare a life or two and snare us

A little sleep and on the contrary how will we

Become legendary my dear? What word?

We Cease to Exist in Concerning Ourselves with Us

What say we kindred will we believe in us?

Will we let us say that there is nothing quite

So winsome as the Icelandic pony’s rage?  

Can our hearts contain such sublime cuteness?

History will absolve us when we say in our right

Mind that we are immortal that we know

One in a thousand dies of loneliness and given

The choice of two lovers we choose the one

Who never existed O we who use our bones

To scratch our names backwards in forgotten soil

Every letter a mystery every sound reversed and

Of course we envy evening and try to remember

How to set down a challenge to the stars we

Who wound ourselves against our own bones

When They Sleep They Dream of What?

Tonight all my fingers live in secret doubt

And it’s useless to close my fists my fingers

Imagine the razor that slices every tip

They know nocturnal blood that hurts

Much deeper than a paper cut and

Little bleeding mouths so long asleep set

Free and wagging their flaming tongues

They sing O they swear they say only

Words that would chill a mother’s heart

They decipher all the ancient mysteries

My fingertips grin maliciously they whip me

The mirrored bird they say fuck you dude

And it’s useless to close my fists in dimness 
To sink them in sleep so they’ll not keep seeing