When Breath Goes Home and Sleeps

These fat clouds hang low

O watch out!

They fall on you

They fall onto the deck of your boat

Where I left my last chance

You spitting molten candlewax on my stomach

You singing French ditties outlined by throwing knives

You flossing your white teeth with a long hair

You plucked from a pony’s tail

How fortunate the 21st century quietly winnows

The surface of your mind

Only your keen ear

Especially this day so serenely marshmallowy

Only your ear hears the sad shore

Slip whimpering under water  

Should I now that a sound travels farther than time

Offer an open hand to prove I do not tremble?

Should I say I understand the boredom of leaves

Shifting briefly with the sibilance of a voice?

The water’s just as disturbed as it ever was

Your up-from-under look   

Your naked foot rippling the water of silence

The odor of divinity

Becomes you

Passionate for the Appropriate

You are the exact moment

Noise becomes music

Your voice

Makes you visible

You are the lingering note

The last syllable of the last word

A sound that protects against any thought

Your voice and face

Become used to each other

You in front of a mirror

Putting sentiments on your face

Cleanly and precisely

What animates you

Also obliges you

To paint yourself into life

You are what no art

Has yet allowed to be imagined

I believe in you

Despite those too

Intelligible features 

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