I a Sinner Confess before God

Once the queen of perfect morning came to me

All shivery and shine she said I have lost so many

Blue flecks I’ve lost beauties from my eyes—O

Surely she said this before memory and far away

Like a spider’s thread or inexhaustible amazement

Dawn strictly danced to the beating of her heart

The sky was forbidden to praise thunder or to enjoy

Snow falling as it used to fall breathlessly beneath

Two old willows where once or twice I think

I kissed her and maybe then I heard a few winged

Voices briefly sing—a deliriously forgettable chorus

All of this to be sure in the nakedest of nakedness

The nudist nudity her blonde hair and those white

Shoes sculpting her as in cold marble and as sacred

Are You Asking or Telling?

I’ll decide soon maybe so take all of me take

Me by my bad elbow not the good one but

The one that hasn’t worked since my thirteenth

Summer when my brother’s knee dislocated it

As we fought in the sand pile by the 500-gallon

Propane tank Dad got filled every six months or 
So which was about how long it took the doctor 
Who never looked at the x-rays finally to admit 
It wasn’t a pulled tendon and by then that pig-
Headed joint of mine just wouldn’t go back

Even after another doctor yanked and yanked

And yanked until he broke it and stuck a pin in it

So it would stay together and I sported a cast
For a year O take me by my bad elbow my dear

Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman

He swallows once or twice and then 

His blade flashes and down

Fall the burning tops of seven candles

I’m nothing like Ichi with his cane sword

Though sometimes I feel like a candle

Standing above its flaming head

Longitudinous and Affected with Stars

Is that you whose eyes try something new

When night—deep-sunk and damp—invites

The fatal moment youth decides to stop

Returning your phone calls and you watch

Magnificent shadowless lilies bending still

Believing transformation is possible in this

Trampled garden on this muddy ground

Where fatigue stops to smoke a cigarette

Where you say you never know when night
Begins until you barter joy for comfort

O you say the awful thing in life is this:
We all have our reasons and all the plans

We make take on air and finally sink

Leaving things just as they’ve always been