The Day of Exacting Craft

Was it I who said that one becomes what one

Forgets? how ridiculous! now it’s the moon-hour

And cold and here mopes Death the thirteenth

Card of the major arcana waiting quietly for a

Cadaverous countenance to become youthful

And comely again O what catastrophe of logic

Or lust made Death the most misunderstood

Card of the Tarot? there was this sharp thing

That happened to the ruined naked face 

In the marbled imperfection of memory but

Nobody remembers anymore what or why

The sword was driven so deep the hilt so rusted

So much absence in those eyes one imagines

There the rubble of sleep the moment of love

The Day of Body Language

I had just finished typing the last words of my brief

Disquisition on God's dark humor when you said

Hey mister put on a pair of pants at least and

Maybe a t-shirt the fancy pajamas just won't do

And that was so aptly you sister so stuck in the habit

Of thinking about things and now it appears to be

A door I stand before cherishing these reflections

But wait wait a while the door keeps murmuring
Eventually your knocks it says will be answered

Apparently I have reached the exact center

Of my life O fugitive particle of time furtive fleck

Gone quicker than a sidelong glance now
My body hums with these few words your fingers

Dance on a keyboard I can’t see can’t hear 

The Day of Intensity

One's instruments cannot measure this 

Feeling in the space between two bodies

Lacuna of desire embodied in a clicking

Tongue to count one’s footsteps down

Streets whose names are changed whose

Houses all are rearranged O the same old story

One knows this tired tale the selfsame props

A dead man reads a newspaper an onion slices

Itself in equal halves and go ahead and laugh

If one feels that way for this is on one’s mind

Until forever or until the mathematicians quit

Applauding and one thinks a good deal then

Of the casual fistfights of youth the bloody grins

After and what they might have meant