Hissing, Spitting

I've got a factory
on my block—It's
beautiful, with brick
on brick construction,
bits of metal clinging to
the sides, with no
apparent use. I love it,
Smokes from the smoke-
stacks. But now, as if to
place the final straw on
breaking back, it's condos.

They're tearing it up, and
each time I walk past,
there're fewer windows.
No beautiful grate of the
Modernist's preferred grid
(somehow finding use for
itself, not being so universal)
but clear glass; plastic
fittings, covering the edges
of green glass.

Fewer walls too, when I
went to the grocery. And
workmen, in the concrete
levels, playing music
loudly.

Elegy on Nietzsche

O why! did Nietzsche
die before that horse?
A subtle end, whether
by the hands of syphilis
or inner doubt. —so
caught my heart with
beleaguered tenderness
by hands of the canker
that brought him to his
knees, there in the street.

"Can someone help my
daughter; she's ecstatic."
You see the liquid leaking
into a sweet pink pool,
feel the static of impending
low front. There is a gutter,
it hurts as much as
mulching dead daises.

How to Buy Shrimp

Should you buy it
frozen? You don't know
how much it's been
sitting around. Fresh
caught, or frozen, juices
inside of the head will
start to macerate down.

I love this stuff. I
read the fine print.
I eat the pan-fried
with butter-crisp Shrimp.

Where're the eyes. Where's
the monger, so wary of my
cooking.

Pail

The anodized aluminum
pail carried over hills, and
through valleys grows heavy.
It's faceted surface reflects
no face plainly. But cuts it up
into rectangles, squares of
face colors. Darker at night.

And it carried to you by the
children of the world. You, not
having child of your own.

carries with you, the animus
of water. Who loves you like
a brother, while sloshing. So
cold, of that more silver metal

What

is a racing game
going backward

like. The so frustrated
manipulation with too fat
fingers the fine things

paint not yet dry
sticking. Move more
quickly, fail anyway.

the Object of My Affection

Only practicing,
it atrophied. The
lead; mount up.
The flank plan
fled, though who
inhaled it lost
as sand through
fingers—them &
lands in slowly
growing ovals

Idly pushing 'round
self-same, the light
out dim or absent—
matters not

throwing mess of stuff mal-
content with utter context
of ugly body, container
container-holder ousted.

Your sins have never
left this house

We

moving slowly
in the summer of
our agony.

The first made
memory more
vivid

than the marks
in wood no
deeper excavated

The easy mood,
followed the grain
drank mead

follow the swallow
of reeds moving
limpid from

their stems, their
roots beneath
them. Agrestic

motions, fade
and grow;
flow the way the oceans flow.

Dark night felt
deeper after fire,
moved, but went

nowhere. The rifts.


Soft tee-shirt not
bought, but found
later. Swim in it

for no reason, but
wet cotton
on flesh.

The great wake
up, hungover it seemed
then without drink

and no sense
of additions, no
medicinal herbs,

no primrose. The
black tie, tied too
tightly, replaced or removed.

the Reverse Compatriot

(for Updike)

If my revulsion of
repetition brings out
the old work
institutionalized. I'll
live with it. Or die
anyway and not
begrudge
proliferation.

If a prevailing wind
turns up, does not
hit the sail but bends
and moving backward
pushes other boat: What
all is movement.

What round and hard
thing, pin-striped suit
worn—not so begrudgingly

holds still the switching
switchback until all
godliness returns to.

Interview, a life left.
I know you better now
without caring. Bridge
over cleft hill going

Sapling Growing Cold

Not for lack of anything
or for some necessity is this
sapling

a thing so small and lovely,
growing in a field of knowing
less.

whose fey protest is growing
less effective. And on the
middle—bottom of

hand-printed list on paper:
"be implicit less," "seem to
disappear,"

but don't. I love your slowly
going, out of sync maneuvers,
stolid conversations.

Your "Here, please hold this."
Shivering in cold outside of lust.
distinct

mistrust between us. Large
black felt pieces holding on to
bits of fluff

and covering up with two coats
of paint, as opposed to just picking
them off.

And this forest of fluff may've
burnt in a mind, but the future's
enough

that's discouraging
for new growth.

Too Plump Cherry

This line here is very
abrupt. As a cherry
that's too plump
for the picking

This is always how
it was. Is always the
over-ripe fruit on the
vine that's old growth.

[Huff off, left out wading]

Huff off, left out wading
pool. The silent slipping
sounds of the dew; "is
so humid." Lights hung

out cautiously, but awkwardly.
Drooping a little around the sign
of my party.
No even numbers between
the rungs; listing, but
calling them anyway,

Here, watch them come
running up hill. Sun down
beyond them ravishes
the edges of their silhouettes.

But they're ugly when
come out. In the way
all real people are ugly.
but it fades. Noxiously

someone brought boom
box and's playing Ace of
Base. Your golden locks
tossed raucously in end
of night, and blades cross'd.

No, trust to the old
spice merchant, the
stuff of splayd tentacles,
bubbly curtains, hung low.

We've got books, and
when one finds them
a sound of falling books
is let off inside the house.

Knocked over barbecue
grill, by the garden hose
makes a shrill ringing sound.

Two playing ditch
who know's which

Hard Luck Brothers

Even for him this choice
is an insufficient measure
of design. "I'll not say it
again, We aren't wind-up toys!"
All while I
am an unrepentant broken leg.


When the serpent grew
podus, 'else that in
reverse, whose the mid
-dling link
hobbling on little nubs?

I feel broken inside of the
torso. Not like fey Sebastian,
but as something physically
beaten to death, or like Job so
there's no punctures, no dribble
of blood, just a holder of broken
stuff.

I am fluff
I'm the, too, unrepentant
caprice of this stuff floating.

I am crimson, anyway
I am bloody, bloody thrush.
I am brothers sit-
ting on the couch.

Hard Work

Holding out the
antecedents of a day.
Found lacking and
righteous anger
in the recesses of some
texture,

made in for
the hold onto.


New Captian, be handed this
new blunderbuss, of rustic
Victorian, with sprockets and
trusses all sussed out.

the Quiet Collective

This snow arrives here as surprise, and
carries what in dimming distant sight?

How they flitter and shake coming down
as I dance stilly inside of my house not

for the loving it. But for the nothing else.


The green converges in a glass, and
blown itself the damn thing out. Trans-

parent, opaque...Any other condition or
make has seen a measure. Seen the time

to time of earthy pleasures in remembrance.
The lusty hold-back of some collectors,

their brokers. Has the wandering followers
in lines, and strains both growing longer

of the quiet collective. This lonliness to each
as flowers grown, but still ungerminated.

This path, it seems, though tended is
denatured, and well-trod.

Holes Darning

Somewhere holes in dire
need of darning, growing.

[This house we live's]

This house we live's
a velvet trap. I swear
it: what the rats eat when

why is all the trees
can try. It's leavings
growing stolid higher

as a silver bulb of lowly
liquid when its hotter.


Left with all these leaves
as evidence, enacts a
ceiling lowered.