MERMAID THIRSTY

In the tidepool of memory / flooded, the salmon
hover, gills moving in the still clear water,
subsisting on scraps in a distant room--
Regret is a series of sadly foregone /
Conclusions / a cold isle in a northern sea--

[Now] here I am at my
Desk / driving along the winding shore road
in search of : Melody Ritter, Katie McCauley,
Wilma Shively, Patty Warfel, / Carol Rhatigan.
Even Maefern Shroeder! Dolores Sneathern! Helen Tidmarsh!
[loudly:] Where are you girls? I am alone in the wet &
purple light. / Plodding through the sand / Loose
sand & these lousy goddamn shoes--

Whose wet swimsuit there by the tree
And small damp footprints going
Out to sea

ASCENSEUR POUR L'ECHAFAUD

but first one perfect twilight
in the middle of the river of
sunday april 15, 7:29 p.m.
(the Poet lives in the slums
of the reader's imaginary city)
it spreads out to the north & west
all green & gold, cold
in the fading light--there is no place
that the past can take place except
in the crosshairs of my big poetry gun

I rebel against the tyranny of the calendar
The muses count onetwothreefourfive
Daughters of Time, count the sun
in the green limbs what do you see?
leaves like trembling jazz notes in a nightclub
you heard once, smoky nightclub air,
you were supposed to be somewhere else
that night what happened?

But you weren't. Life is what happens
while the girls circle the pier looking
for dropped bread crumbs for gleaming
silver fish scales the waves surge
up against the pilings wetting the legs
of the waders, kush
kush.

LOVE-POEM AGE 37, 26:III:2000

a desire now to go out into the light,
wobbly, blinking, trying to remember,
unshaven, to take with grace long breaths
of chilled blue morning air, like wine--

replete, somehow, sinew'd, girt for the
labours ahead: a desire to be of use, in
short, to the actual exercise of innocence
in a complex situation little aided
by theory.

LOVE, GONE AS LIGHTNING

so pick your terrain with that possibility in mind:
a million times over, to be born in the
silver light of the midnight moon, standing
among waterweeds, head cocked
benightedly

i would return to the sea with you
(possible even on the west coast)
on top of which, i eschew godly wisdom, thus:
"O my son, rise from thy bed / & work at what is wise"--
pfui! so maybe i don't wanna be wise!

CONFESSIONS OF ALEXANDER CALDER, 1898-1976
(confession #1)

beneath authentic pink honey Buddha
lighter than air, worshipped beneath
eternity, chanting like enlightened
demons eating the sky
& licking the animal sea

my dream is to be
present when near
some still enchanted happiness
Burning drolly, upon some more
unquiet spirit, attentive to
me alone
here

Jesus, red roses!
Would you think I'd want two?

THE CATS IN ANNIE'S ALLEY

the cats in annie's alley / annie who
broke the blue jeep with freckled hands /

down her alley / in florida i guess
where one sometimes goes "i wish i

were there" / or had gotten just one
pearly kiss / for the jeep

BASEBALL IN THE DARK

The girl downstairs & the girl in Indiana
& the girl across town--green, past enchantment--
she isn't "in love"--Jack & Ted playing baseball
on LSD in the dark (1993)--after a party--
last beer the whistle of the ball in the dark--

Little blue pills the color wheel the bare shoulder.
I have $8 & some change they turn off the gas tomorrow.
We are living in the Future it has a slightly metallic
sheen. I cannot date my checks it is all a little
wobbly, & cold too

All those old letters. Grain of salt! Points on a curve!
Flat beer & a book of wet matches I had the flu & couldn't
Church on Sunday, Bible & prayer book in red morocco with
gilt edges. Cold supper in the evening And I almost felt
like crying myself just because he was crying

A drunken cheerleader peers through her fingers
Her boyfriend knows everything he has ever known
So do you

SHE STAPLED THE WING BACK ON THE ANGEL

I swing the words, electric around the Gotta life
toward the syntax of your smooth thighs & Summer knees
dancing, flooding the room with light

candle apple breasts & the slightest
hint of blue lace panties; this salty decade
my ruins, broken stone, like a postcard found in an old book

paperclip pretensions: real as you are not real, enticing--
(the biological bureaucracy files its damned charts)
formless summers, a book of wet matches, flat beer

outcast on a cold & distant shore

GARDEN FULL OF CHARM

They are very shallow people who take every
thing literally / but not us, *we* don't!--
Fiddle tunes in our sandy hearts! / Whiskey,
my girl! my men need whiskey!

Let the music from the kitchens ruin my heart
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl
If I come away with salt in my beard
As dark as the hours we have tasted,
I remain: alive in my old black boots, car keys,
Harry Smith records, keenly anticipating

The curve of your thigh on my couch /
Pale in the pale moonlight

POEM FOR 3 WOMEN

deadheading roses, withered petals cut away--
dark eyes, perfect criticisms, big ecstasy
settled, bill paid, put away, almost forgotten--
surprise! but no autobiography ignores crucifictions

were you trying to paint over shadows?
the wine & mediterranean arches
like a coal kept banked for morning,
pale in the pale moonlight

my delightful emperor is like cool rain,
a crazy uncle wanting to get laid--
(I touched her bra-strap when I hugged her goodbye,
my hand tingled for 1/2 an hour)

thse longings surprise me: promiscuous fireflies!
a river, one arbitrary red barnacle on the hull of old memory

LENTEN POEM

Fat Tuesday Lent has begun
Here by the bottom of the rainbow, like
A cast-off shirt Across town
She is in bed with aflame and
Fun 2:27 a.m. She mentioned
mentioned despondent this guy She
Called like I really wanted to hear about
Called despondent this guy At
The bottom of the rainbow Tonight the
Stars are like a crowd of faces of faces
Faces lips pressed tight Across
Town Lent has begun Like a
Cast-off shirt like an old suitcase she
Can just drag around Her legs
They ought to be on stamps Across town
She is in bed with a coffinful of angel
Wings me I don't fly too good
Anymore The butterfly on the
Wheel across town across she is in
Bed 3:00 a.m. the best time to listen
To NPR cool sibilant voice like sangria
An old suitcase she can just drag
Around Be my icon she said
Tuesday the canal waters of Fayetteville
I cling to my paddle watching the
Mermaids swim past endlessly
Across town my candy heart snaps
Across town she is in bed She is in bed with
Go she said:
Go down and peer among the fishes
she said Lent
has begun.

SHE WALKS IN DARKNESS LIKE THE NIGHT

She walks in darkness like the night--
Bumping into the furniture a lot,
Fumbling for her glasses, frightened
By the mound of laundry shaped like
A dinosaur--but also: A sky of diamonds
In the moonless dark, grass wet with
Dew, the hum of traffic in the long distance.

571-4309

Look, my dear friend, look:
Situations arise, despite
Our least intentions, of
Which I was one,
I guess, doubtless.
Still: I love you, a constant--
Please someway understand
The passing nature of such
Eternal Call Song &c.
So: again, I'
m home, so
call

BALL LIGHTNING

The telephone keeps ringing & ringing--
Love comes in a sort of sly & winking way
& goes, the wooden clack of pigeon wings
across the grass & past the bluegreen hedge.

Ha-Ha it's so fun to run out on the long front porch
The winter moon (the cat's-claw moon) & she,
slamming her car door & bounding up the stairs--

Thank god we're living in the future now,
everything has a kind of metallic sheen
to it, did you not notice? That's how you know
it's future now, she never understood that part.

Boss Poet, stumped by her cold balk--
I may be the fool she limns each night
(our pillow talk) yet if it's so I remain
Happily poised.

She squeezed the universe into a ball
& then pronounced its lack. It isn't her world,
She's living in her own future now--& besides,
She said, I don't read Poems anymore.

The telephone keeps ringing & ringing-
I can't believe you're 37 she said again
(Well Christ, I thought, if it were just
a matter of that)

BIRTHDAY POEM FOR SABRINA 3/11/00

I wanna roo you from two til four,
Until your seminar. I know it's hardly
Fair: Me Tarzan, Heap Big Intellectual--
You Jane, Full of Mysteries--I know you
Put on socks & hate Wal-Mart (& shop
there anyway) like everyone else. But you are
Bubblicious, Buddy! I light a clove & watch you
On the stair, your legs they ought to be on stamps!
My bounty in other words is boundless as the sky,
In the land where they have the Big Sky; or the front
Lawn of St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church, the one
You enter thru the steeple, up below the Crescent Hotel--
Shady & full of squirrels.

So: I'll water the fern, I'll read your kid to bed--
Dig thru the books for something I've not read,
Doze on the couch til you get back.
(Your valentine candy heart said, "Be my icon,"
It was *mine* that said, "In the middle of the
River of our lives, the long sounds of trains
Reach to us across the silent moving waters."
I like yours best.) And now your footstep
On the stair comes like a piece of dream, & in
Their windowbox, the bougainvillea
Shift their roots in keen antici-
pation.

LETTER FROM SECTOR 7-G

One hen; two ducks; three squawking geese; four limerick oysters; five corpulent porpoises; six pairs of Don Alverzo tweezers; seven thousand Macedonian soldiers in full battle array; eight brass monkeys from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt; nine lyrical spherical old men on roller skates with a marked propensity toward procrastination and sloth; ten poets.

TOP TEN PIRATES OF 1794

1. Edward Teach
2. Wm. Kidd
3. Stede Bonnet
4. Mary Reade
5. Cheng I Sao
6. The Dread Pirate Roberts
7. Henry Morgan
8. Capt. Hook
9. Jack Sparrow
10. Long John Silver

TIBETAN LOVE SONNET

I'm still on the mountain,
Kept away from you by
Avalanche, snow leopard,
All manner of time & space--

I love the very idea of you
So right, the cricket in the corner
Of my tent beside the lantern
Sings your song.--

The sherpas speak of you
In whispers in their tongue
Of Shangri-La which I do not
Understand,--

The midnight moon which shines
On me this evening shines on you.

POEM TO ABSENT FRIEND

"O my love across the river
Of days your name is
Like a catfish, rolling above
The wake of the riverboat
Of sad detail, which is gone
When I think of you!"

(from "Red Weather, pt. II") (in-progress)

But not so, & here I now am
Outside at night, surrounded by
Chaucerian groves of greenblack trees
Chorus of night music, Brahms & frogs

If nothing happens it is possible
To make things happen; a binding
Together of the real between us,
Commanding large fields but cultivating small ones.

What stranger are you living for?
It is only amateurs who feel keenly
The loss of the sky, that gloss upon
The surface of sin.

Full moon out tonight,
Dance on the patio in its light--
Forty-one years old,
Feeling all right.

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF QUIXOTIC GESTURES
(after starting Tender Buttons)

wet sand in my skull, I wonder
how all the gestures here, and
the light of Bohemianism,
in window you cast about
in the genius of energy:
a mouth to fill it?

go, like a fly
jangles its route,
our being as we live thru them
the kinds of the window
of time, yes a cold glass
of energy, a street closes but me.

me, up with a girl in the
cycles thru knowing the cold,
open sea (it is yet the
tombs of human talk,
the quiet shatter of
things more important than cynicism)

not to lie to rain Christian terror
down from the kitchen floor
a state with a clock also
what do if I do it
would be here turns everything pure,
as I let it makes us hope.

I AM WRITING

I am writing at the table on the porch--
A beauty will be finally formed
From the train, the crow, the mrrr of passing cars--
Rising and falling like the tree,
Moving against itself into the wind.

LOVE,

your
face
the center
in a series
of rushing
water over rocks
in the stream-bed
of my real morning
awake 1/2 dressed
sensibility
where
you now
lie glinting
in the cataract clear
and pure as I mug at
my reflection and love you

SONNET FOR MATT

a mode of energy our being
as we are, above & outside
postcard collection floating
melodies & riffs on now
too familiar themes we are
but they are ours,
you know? and we live
thru them the cycles & thru
knowing the kinds of things
more important than
cynicism (not giving a
damn can carry the day
only just so far):
only sometimes it's hard.

BEHIND THE ELF HEAD

magnolia limbs framed in window
you can cast about in your mind
without inhibition without seeking comparison
a mode of energy, a soda pop
verdegris morning birdsong
wind sough, blue broomstick

SONNET AFTER JOHN WIENERS

The poem does not lie to us. We
Live under its law. The morning sun
On the window reflects it on the
Motes of dust in the air. The smell
Of the coffee and the sound of the
Passing car. Somewhere a dog barks.
It is too easy to sit here and wonder
Why I do this. The dog's bark is
More meaningful than mine is.

The coffee gives us hope. The dog
Barks because it must, that is
Its job. It punches a clock also.
The motes of dust make their
Own days as they coalesce together.
I hide a poem under my tongue.

POETRY BURNED ON TABLES

Beyond the window of ink
Bitter campari & a sheaf of
Confederate notes coeval with
My state--Maine? Rhode
Island? Providence is a state
Of brown-on-black with a cold
Open sea. It makes a difference
Having the ocean right there close that way.

Now I walk through light of mother-of-
Pearl & God emerges in a minor
Key to coax me out, now, my
Ordinary life. No wife. I always
Thought it would be more some
Other way, less like this. Dumb clarity.

Everything magnificent & tough,
Pale December sidewalk light. I rise
Each day from the tomb of sleep,
Captain of my fate, knowing we don't
See that much. Some things are really
There. I try to do it right.

BLUE THIRST

patterns of time
a cold glass of milk and
the moon's bright
falling towers tumbling

ice rattling late against the
window panes and, and
a passing car shushes
things made out of human talk

the quiet shatter of light
patterns of time flowing
colder than ice
in the night kitchen

POEM

To wake up with
A girl in my bed
Flickering like a
Green candle flame
In the sheets
Bare foot exposed
Pink tipt naked

Kiss me down
Into your memory
Beauty I wasn't
Born high enough
For you

AS I DRIFT DOWN

as I drift down
your presence
spectrum blue
ultimate blue ray
which is you
or minha percepção de você
of you yourself,
the whole skein of things
and lives

today wild green parakeets
on the tree-shadowd deck
screaming
love in the trees
on tv
I make the gesture
here, and elsewhere
carved in runes indéchiffrable
all trace out your name

SONNET AFTER BERNADETTE MAYER

As for me, when I saw you
You have the balls to say
You will be with me
Come be here my baby
And I'll take you elsewhere where
So many things--passion, my heart
Pushing its way back into my body
After we talk,
All in the present
Measuring itself
After so many steps
As you bend down to
Make something happen and
I rise like a moth to the light.

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

A clean sweep, bereft of all posturing--
Ill-paid & surviving on nothing
Ultimate love testing always
Modest home in New Hampshire
or Eureka or the Big Island,
Eddie Murphy as Gumby,
Alcoholic Pokey,
Cops visible down at the corner,
But me, up here on the porch,
Inside my force field,
Thyroid children milk:
*That's* what I'd do
If I won the lottery...