LAST NIGHT THOUGHTS
(for R.L.S.)

Caterpillar, mirror or tomb--
You're a brand-new sky
To hang the stars upon tonight

Idiosyncratic & particular,
Like language itself--
Your ashtray is full like my heart

Guys my age
Ride bikes for health--
I drink 40s in my car

Your DAUGHTER passed a semi- going uphill
At dusk, into a blind curve,
Double yellow. Me strapped in back. Motherfucker!

Aetherial spirit bright as morning
Water blue as November dawn--
I are not a 42 year old (un)/happy poet

The deer on the hill
Console me. I'm behind
In my life

What is patriotism but
All the good things
We ate in childhood?

Music on the car radio,
A river in the distance
Marked by a line of trees

Do I dare
Disturb the Universe?
Rabbit-proof prince...

The legendary stardust cowboy,
"Paralyzed"--a festival of
Unmade beds, a tub with rope handles

Pink stucco, traffic, broken
Loveseat. Weight bench, notebook,
Robin. Plants in sun. Robin. Robin.

"from READ WHETHER (in-progress)"

to say, telephone or the coffee
or endless conversation. pure
serendipity, beautiful & divine,
like a Tulsa honeymoon or like
advice, like: "Descend with gravity
and doubt removed, the Moon
don't run on gasoline, the planets
creep like spaghetti on a lampshade"

Achtung! gamma rays, hydro pickles, a sort
of chromatic doorknob of the heart,
always present. roof. kerplunk. armstice.
pickle. pickle pickle pickle. it's
like it builds a hill at the base
of your brain. sometimes it rains.

BREAKFAST SONNET

The temple of your volcanic kiss is burning,
Edges charred, smoky air, submission
To an unfinished heart. Such comeliness
Flares cobalt blue, lemon, carmine red
Against my dull tones, fog and sand.
What night fenced in is poised between us,
Towering above the rest, above your
Curtained air, above my giltless charm,

River-daughter, real as you are real,
Hitting upon things--the chair, the cup--
Behind our studied loveliness, a flame-
Hurling devil angel, not unwelcome here--
Buried certain fathoms beneath the earth,
And above, down the abandoned heaven to us now.

NO AIR ON THE MOON

Late at night he hustles wine,
Believes in things--"Baffling combustions
Are everywhere!" In my backpack,
In Heidi's sweater, across town off Garland Ave.
In my x-girlfriend's goddamned spice rack!
In this Friday slush I stride through
Off-balance and stern.

Four walls mean something (others have noted this),
We make love to pretty girls when we have time,
Otherwise stomp Lyrically across the wet & purple day
When on fire, like now, pregnant w/ mandrakes
& making "vast apple strides" toward the ice floes.
Caught up in the talons of a gigantic eagle, a really
big One, the biggest one of all!

"It is winter. We are here. AND THERE IS NO MONEY."
My dream a nest of light & heat, the 2 a.m. quilts &
Rain at the windowpane & Love: "real as keyholes,
Real as affadavits"--

The trouble with comparing a Poet to a '64 Mercury
Comet:
Comets don't develop scar tissue blazing across the
sky
At 2 a.m. like a remonstrance--

But you will.