All Day Long to Sit in a Window

The moment to do something has come!

I am finished with all my work so I head

Up to the roof as usual thinking christ I

Fear being a mere you know merely

Being here watching the rain and thinking

That happiness has got to be more than

The avoidance of misery I am thinking how

I could be an honest-to-god Parisian cat

Lying on your lap ignoring your entirely blue

Gaze I could be a thought bubble moving 
Slowly above your sleeping self and I’d be

Swearing a lot O I could be fierce and

Unflinching like a French newspaper

Whose impulsive ink runs when it rains

Beneath a Sun that Blood Offers

You’ve lived long enough

In the desert of a stranger’s mind

You walk through a yellow door

And enter a garden of seven wells

There is a lavender meadow

Where mossy pines dream

The silk cheek of a valley

There is an off-kilter sky

Of lavishly carved clouds—

Smoke thick from the heart

And there is the white 

Desert of a stranger’s face

The scarred rim of his mouth

A hole in the air between you

A hole filled with the mute

Sulfur of stifled words

Maybe you will pour

Your moist voice down his dry throat

Maybe you’ll invent a lipstick

Like Chinese poetry when a leaf falls

Toothless Roots That Chew the Mud

When finally you come to my place dear girl you

Will notice how sincerely and utterly Mississippian

These sad trees are that mark my property line

These wet and wounded laurel cherries that I have

Yet to drop one by one and drag piecemeal down

To the street and stack in a log-and-brush pile

For the city dump truck to carry off somewhere

Maybe down to the river for all I know this havoc

Of comic hopes I call my place where a luminous

Cloud lurks among the branches like a lethargic

Shroud of moths and neither of us will know if it

Is going away or waiting nor at what diaphanous

Moment it will stop devouring silence and start

Whistling and the trees will tremble and groan

Alone Again and Night at Last

Let’s be mythological figures with ill-fitting heads

Let’s take off our meaningful glances one foot

At a time like stockings labeled as artful hints and

Why don’t we dangle them out the window

And drape those mildly frowning socks over

The nearest branch—you know the one I mean

The oak where you said there are no impossibilities

The oak where I said how can anyone fail to be

The momentary smile of down-dappled sunlight

Remember how you named me Gerrymander

Happy-shins when I said that and I called you

Irrepressible Joy That Fits and then we looked

Up and saw the flying shutters of an enormous

Yellow city the air becoming air before our eyes

Write Largely You Say God Lost His Bifocals

Here amid the stone corridors of a cathedral

Where it is rumored and I’ve heard it said

So many of your transparent selves—panting

Melodramatically—move toward the white

Wedge of a window through which they glide

One by one into a garden of some very curious

Magnolias and—listen—here in this garden they

See wads of blustery pink azaleas here where 

Your several selves cringe at the feral smell

Of ruined innocence here where deep laughter
Drowns in damp shadows and mice gnaw skulls  
Of careless cats here where white cockroaches
Chew the fine bones of hateful hummingbirds

Here where what burns in the sun wants to stop

My Shadow Over the Immediate

Wake up O slumberous lady of the dawn!

Put on your magenta pout

Your daisy skirt your thick-healed

Go-go boots the color of desire

Night ends!

Lemons and oranges live in these parts—

O paradise—they await your eyes

In the swelling orchards of the city

Decipher the names tattooed on the sun

Translate the hidden song of toppled shadows

Conceive—O daughter of a yellow land—can

You conceive such an unaccustomed music

Amid the vertical stones of the suburbs

Solitude listens for your arrival

A timelier silence cannot be imagined

Throw off the sheets and open the windows

Listen to birds search for clarity

An offering

Receive it so quietly that I lean close nearly

Kiss you just to see the veins of your eyelids

Breathing softly in the first light of morning