Walk Away

I know what you said.

Your father saw that fox

Again; that white dog

Crossed the road,

And he swerved.

He looked the other way

And swerved.

I know what you said.

It was always the end,

Always over with me and you,

Like a pop song from 1982.

Now you’re just somebody that

I used to know, that

I used to know.

You never cut me.

You didn’t have to cut me

So clean and deep.

I know what you said.

Sing that old song

We used to sing.

Sing that old song

Your mother never sang.

Admit that I am wrong

And go home, Girl.

I know what you said.

You showed me what I was

Running from, and I sang

Like Mumford & Sons,

Sang like Arcade Fire.

I sang like day forgot night

And foreswore dawn.

I sang like you

Forgot the way your father wrote 

Your mother’s name

With a Fourth-of-July sparkler 

At the virgin face of night.

I sang as if you knew your mother’s eyes,

As if you knew your father 
Never did a goddamn thing

Worth writing in a history book.

Oh, your folks were worth all

The candles you

Lit for them.

I know what you said:

Charlie Boy, don’t go to war.

Don’t go to war, My Boy.

You said, Don’t hang your head.

I know you said I wore a uniform and played

A bugle, that I raised my hand

And held a flag, but you didn’t say

The news was bad, My Boy—You didn’t say

You knew I tossed my rifle down and ran.

I know you said

That I didn't fall,

That nobody falls.

You said that we all run a trail

Like a beagle runs a rabbit in a wide,

Wide arc back home again.

You said: 

Don't let anybody say

That you can't go home again.

Home is where you take it, 

And it goes where you go. 

Home has to go with you

Because it owns you. 

Home's tied to your hide, 

And it weighs you down 

As you circle back,

Trying to get away from home again.

I said:

Go home, Girl.

Tell your folks

That I love them

Even less

Than I love you.

What She Said to Me

She said:

The line
breaks make
all the fucking difference.

She said:

I'm so sick of poets
extolled for standing still
or doing nothing
with such great skill.

She said:

Don't worry 'bout me,
baby.

I got nothing to give.

She said:

This ain't no down
the throat drink
I'm asking for.

She said:

Merry Christmas,
bitch.

Buy This Rare Edition of THE BATTLEFIELD WHERE THE MOON SAYS I LOVE YOU

Seattle, WA & Fayetteville, Arkansas: Mill Mountain Press / Lost Roads, No. 7-12, 1977.  First Edition. Softcover.  Very Good +.

First Printing. A Very Good+ 
copy of Stanford's magnum opus,

published the year before he committed suicide.

A 542-page stream-of-consciousness poem,

written in one sentence. This copy has a section

torn from the half-title page, as if to write a note

to Stanford himself! But it is gently read.

(Oh, that all our spines would be

gently read as this copy of Stanford's magnum opus!)

The spine has vertical creases and there is something crossed

out in marker on the inside rear cover,

but overall (and despite the flaws)

the book is in very clean, collectible condition.

A cult

favorite

among poets and slowly

gaining broader recognition after the 2000 reprinting.

This book is quite scarce and rarely comes

(or stays)

on the market.

Additional photos available upon request.

Shaking the Candy Tree

The girls jumping rope sang

I had a little bird.

Her name was Enza.

I opened the window

and influenza.

When my mother took sick

I wanted to crawl in bed with her,

but it wasn't aloud, don't you see.

Billy Sunday sang

Let's pray down this

epidemic of sin.

And there was fun in that for me,

until it became too painful.

The mailman brought the flu to our town.

Momma's fever rose so high

her hair turned white

and fell out.

I kid you not.

She opened her eyes,

and it was daylight.

She opened them again,

and it was night.

Better to do the wrong thing,

my father said,

than nothing.

When my mother died,

the shine went out of everything.

You know this epidemic,

though you have forgotten what to call it.

Jimmie's not here

is what my best friend's mom said. 

Where is he? I said.

Let your mother tell you, she said.

For the first time

and forever

I understood that we are not safe.

Nobody is safe.

You know what I mean,

but you don't remember its name.

Author Reading 

Strange Matters Regarding Which the Contrary of the Truth Sometimes Is Believed

               “For they are concealed things; none of them has been

                set down in any book.”

                          —Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed

Our dark sayings are a well, the waters of which lie at a great depth

and cool, a text for understanding obscure matters. This, too,

is literally what we say, may our memory be blessed.

There is a drowned pearl, but we do not see it and do not know it

is no longer in our possession. We dropped it down the well.

We tossed it as a wish into the water. May we find our wishes—

words fitly spoken—waiting for us in a parable of many words, 

not every one of which adds  to the intended meaning.

Maybe some words embellish like filigree traceries. 

Maybe some do not. We understand this well, for we cast 

our voices across the waters, and they refer to other words 

in the great complex of words. We know this.

We drape our words in the attire of a wily-hearted harlot,

riotous and rebellious, her perfumed bed, her alluring speech

and lips enticing husbands from their wives. The outcome

warns against pursuing pleasure and desire. The proximate

matter resembles the proximate matter. How can we

submit to our words?  Sacrifices of peace we owe ourselves?

This day have we paid our vows? What subject do we sing

by our words? We have decked our couch with coverlets,

but our lover is not home. If we admit our spoken words 

are typically adulterous, yet we do not inquire into all 

the gestures of such parables, nor should we wish to find

significations corresponding to them. Sometimes it is enough

for us to gather from our remarks that a given story is a parable,

even if we explain nothing more.  

Do not hasten to refute us, for that which you understand us to say

might be contrary to our intention. Rather, thank God—oh blessed

name—and be content with what you have understood.

Hey, Baby, There Ain't No Easy Way Out

Tom Petty & the Heart Breakers knew
the distance between heaven & hell
is in the handcuffs of the hanged suicide.

The voice of America rings out loud & clear

in this unique anthology of great

American poetry

is what I read to her

the first night we kissed.

No shit.

Somewhere, somehow, somebody

must've kicked you around some,

& so on.

She stole a bottle of her bruised mother's best

Patron, and we tipped it under Crockery Creek's dead bridge.

We listened to Tom Petty & the Heart Breakers

on the 8-track in my old man's pickup.

Oh, Jesus Christ & Holy Ghost & God Almighty—

we got down with that music.

Ravenna, Michigan, was cold & wet that spring.

Going home past midnight, the pickup kicked

& slid down muddy Rollenhagen Road.

Oh, sweet Jesus,

the washboard roads of my youth

gave me a school bus hard-on twice a day.

Each morning walking high school hallways,

I held my books across my zipper

like the groin-protector I wore

years later patrolling alleys in Iraq.

She wrote things in her diary

I can't think about right now,

but she wrote things

I read after her mother found her

hanging in the garage.

I saw her dive

naked from the high banks of Crockery Creek.

I saw her dive

& kiss that destiny.

Don't come around here no more.

Hey.

Give it up.

Stop.

Don't come 

no more.