The Palace of Eight Pleasures

After spending three years to get there,
It loomed just across some final alleys,
Then a few coins to the boatman,
And an hour in the pushing drift of downstream.

I put my foot on the first steps of the dock.
At the ascent I took off my shoes,
And walked barefoot over the green and cypress lawn.
This is the custom.
The marble and blue and gold lettered estate
Grew from the distance of miniature
To the only thing on my face.

After these three years, I was let inside
To spend a month in any time or room.
The Eight Pleasures washed my feet,
And perfumed my shoulders.
I was carried from one villa to the next.
Endless dinners followed by other endless things.
There was no reason to end anything.
In the morning they opened the windows.
From the long beds you could watch
The servants tending the grounds.

When I left all of my things were gone.
I wore a robe on the walk to the river.
A different boat pulled me back upstream.
My shoulders were still perfumed in that boat,
And my feet had been washed clean.

I thought of the pleasures.
There were eight of them, yes.
They mingled in the rooms until you were sure
You had slept with them all.
They pushed and were jealous.
But there was time enough for all things.

As my feet walked over the stones of the alleys,
I knew I had been mistaken.
In the berths of all the pleasures,
I had never found a joy,
But came closest in leaving and smiling
At the neatly planted rows
Of nameless flowers.

Another Epoch We Reached

The car bucked once
Over a railroad track where
The road was not:
An accident caused by our drunk.
And I, in a heroic way,
Came to in the passenger seat;
Felt that we were
In the cradle of a ditch.

My arm, not broken, opened the door.
My foot, not broken, dropped a splash
In two feet of water.
And briefly,
As I circled the heap,
Thought I would push it free,
Until the twelve feet down we were
Counted themselves out in threes.
I sat back down across from her
In the bucket seat.

We looked with slow eyes at each other,
And hid laughing for a second.
Some time later, our throats cleared.

She, in her car
At the bottom of a ditch
Thirty feet from the viaduct we missed
Feeling the heat
Of still being alive,
Cried.

I reached for my rum,
And returned to my ways.

Then those days later,
When we were still alive,
Spoke of the thing
As a thing of not to speak.

It was just another zenith
(pronounced with a soft 'e')
Of summer.

I imagine cool moonlight
On a yellow car
As it crests the zenith
(pronounced with a soft 'e')
Of railroad,
And sinks into the shallow.
Then I step out,
Not a hero.

A Hole in the Lexicon of Filth

After breaking out (from the treeline that
Stalled our ankles in briers of mud)
We fell to elbows and guts,
Swinging carbines ahead of our heads.
We slow swam on a wheat field
Until it broke against a gray stone wall.

Were this just a river
I knew in Iowa,
It would break on gray stones the same.
The tall dog, Tingo,
Would make his splashing
At a nest of geese, and be
Rebuffed, though barking.

This is no Iowa with mines,
Though in farmhouses they offer wine.
The vines are burned.
Cattle already eaten on an advance.
A skillet warmed at midnight
To cook two eggs.

These lagniappes they say and give

Are nothings when we die.
But the gray stone walls
The gray stone walls
The gray stone walls
That crowd and deny me
Dinner and home and
Children and cleanliness
Afford as they reach
A country of more briers and mud.

Errors in a Caliginous Time, Then to Sea

It was the dull of morning
When I stepped on your hand,
And you, from sleep, uncurled
A string of upset letters
That jumped towards awake.
Unpleasant sounds continued
While you stumbled into the neon bathroom.
I knelt in the sudden terror
Of the living room refeeling
The crunch of fingers beneath me.
A steady stream of implications,
Like red hawks, stared in the window.

Each world ends when it breaks
From the nightdreams that hold it.
I broke this place, and went to
A smaller island
That hugs the seamless vast
Along the Spanish Main.
Sea winds curled over to obscure
That I always wanted
This unseen thing.

A Combination of Losses, Then

In bitter clicks of day,
And not yet over a cough,
I walked the foolish dog
Through a burst of mingling snow.

We cut the first prints of feet
Into the deep white chill,
And saw the land so plain:
A skirt on the thigh of the earth.

We walked our steps along a berm.

At the age of twelve,
I charged here in a staggered run
(this they teach you early on).
An ash limb carved into
A battered M1 Garand,
I dove upon the crest to aim
At ranks of other men.

But now at thirty-one,
I know civilian works.
This berm's the crumple of a church
That burned down years ago.

Thirty-one years, and yes.
The same pre-Christmas chill.
These easy ways of normal sin -
A glass of scotch; a telephone call,
And a woman I don't love
Will come to me tonight.

Our chilly toes will touch
Outside the withering sheets.

Amid this world - so many things:
The railways, Europe, vineyards, and steam.
All these things that haven't seen
My steps upon their neck.
While I'm just here, and creeping away.
But what would myself redeem?
As if away would save me yet?
To go, and then be went?

To go, a way wherein
Unknown are paces of the wind.
Where the strong new storms are brewed
In seas that cool, and swell, and turn,
By a logic all their own -
Not just the nodding of a whim.

untitled #18

i learned some
thing to

night just

now actu
al
ly

jackdaniels is not
a very good

by itself
dri

nk

theres a reason
for

the add
ition of

coke

though from
per

sonal experience
are-sea is

the best
mix

ing cola

Just a One of the Way

Not knowing what she wants,
But wanting the dreams to stop!
Crawled into a medicine chest,
And opened all the bottle caps.
She downed her happy nights.
Swallowed the ill mornings.
She ate her clock of birth control.
Swallowed a Sunday of pain.
She even took the pills she saved
For the party next week.
Then from the edge of the tub
Put her light head on the sink.
One elbow beside her shape.
One elbow in front of her eyes.

In dreams they pulled her hair in handfuls
Like she was someone's mom.
How was she restored from this?
They were served a broiled horse.

She stood, but couldn't, and heard
A name inside her head.
Her name was Lisa still.
Wondered how a boy could love
Those bony ankles of her feet.
Those thin white legs of hers.
Wondered why she loved them back,
But knew she never did.

In dreams her hand was in a box
While the car ran through the woods.
Jammed from tree to tree, and quick,
Then went and smashed an oak head on.
Forced her face through broken glass,
And made a bad turn of her arm.
They ate the broiled hearts of palm.

She might have slipped onto the floor.
A side of her arm on side of the tub.
Thin fingers waved the end of life.
Our Lisa looked like a seizure,
And did not fight at all.

In dreams she walked upturned inside a stream.
Walked on her hands with day above her chest.
In drowning could not reach the air with her lungs.
She had to move so slow.
A move too quick; the turtles would spook.
They ate the broiled turtles inside a shell.

Lisa lost her name sometime,
And was no longer loved.
When two days later they opened the door,
No one could love her anymore.

Ashokan Farewell

On a moaning towel, between the dune-grass and
Dunes, behind the rock with a shape cut from it:
Her.
Reading romance on the beach without shame -
As woman can.

I walked past her four times. Twice going there,
And twice coming back.
My last return she turned
Over showing the backs of her legs
(Oh) to the whip of the sun.
Doing so tilting her song
Sideways across afore mentioned dunes.
Under those dunes may be cans
Broken glass dead pelicans
Even the USS Monitor maybe.
I would have joined them to be beneath:
Her.
She was all a man could want for a night.

I've tried to drown
My ears of her sound.
Taking long strokes to the diving platform,
Holding my head underwater, and deep,
Until my ears pop. There still hearing it while
The diving platform swings.

That was summer and a little fall
Twelve years ago every day.
I moved inland.
I have not returned.

That song jars me together with
The shards in my skins, the stinking
Dead pelicans, the rusty hull.
We married two years later.
She left me last spring.
(Oh).

All the caring that I can

You were safe, but almost this morning
left the cloudy Europe anyway
for a want of me.
O' your arms were forming
my shape around your other pillow.
But could not make yourself to go.
The buildings and streets
did not smell like me
you wrote in your long letter.
You switched from cab to cab
and the subway stations
and small restaurants and coffee places
looking for a thing like I was.
Not found.

Now in this hour an unlit room.
Saying you cry cry.

Amber, there's nothing I can do.
I don't love you or
your long letters.
You have the teacup of the world at your lip.
Your boyfriend is rich.
If it did not break you, I would write
songs about the shape of
your neck, and the light, and
it hides in your hair.
But I don't love you.

Stay in Austria another season, and I will
go away.
Learn the hills, the names
of rivers you don't know yet.
Grow your children between two languages.
Don't be here when I die.
Austria - the clouds comb the mountain edges,
and I read that it snows.
Amber, I'm not a thing to leave
and come back.
Shared we never
the same space same breath same hour.
Only it was me making these
thoughts in your head. And now
the other me
making them leave.
Don't be here when I die.

although brief a thing

in the even now evening
when beautiful is away
you have stuck to
your story of flowers
as if it is the thing to save you
like a jar of your breath when
a gasp
is all that is mustered

your flower story
a story about a field in the other country
when the May month droops
a cloud to impress
the ground with rain
they all without names but flowers
a field of flowers in
a bursting
of colors like whites

then your speaking
as if it will bring the otters back from their brink
the cottages will not be repaired
with your mouth words alone
the season is such that chastity is fashion

and you gasp lies to lies
as if they didn't break when
though brittle
you shake them across the counter
their voice speaks when they snap
and that is all there is but
the sound of snapping
no one listening
and you

fowndpoemz

To transfer
Conf 3
Last 5 digits of phone #
Listen for ring
Conf 3
Rls

circ-desk 40472

Record Activity
M-F 6pm-10pm
&
Weekends on
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fact: 1

just ate
an apple
the core
turnedbrown
so quickly
the juice
randownmychin
&intomypalm

scattered

im sorry
must be

so hard for
you watching

you

r moth

er di

e from
stagefourbraincancer
it killed us
dead

broke us a

part shards scatt

ered like dust
an exp
plosion that

ripp
ed me to shreds

picking through
the wreckage&aftermath

looki
ng for an answer tha
t makes sense

im so

rrythat
it didnt workthewayitwas
suppos
ed to

Crow

Crows aren't dancing anymore
they fly in opposite directions; one to hut the other, one because it hurts
Crow tastes bad
I've eaten it too many times
Rather than stand around
waiting
to be put on the front page
I'll fly away
Crow tastes bad love
Real bad
Feathers, beaks, rancid bony bastards

Scatter and Went

Approaches its end all
Our time
Kingdoms etc...
Creation becomes its changing thing. Hours
Create the next hours when they turn.
Our mountain nation no more -
As if the world's rest caters to it.
Going like dreams dreams swifting away.
Remember.?

Comes future in its infinite.
The names that greet their new faces
(Which I will never know the it of it
For my own) never know my woman at a birth.
So my future ends within.
But America America,
Our wet mountain nation,
Come to terms with what is becomes.
Looking into your within
Until the tired ticks of universe
Disperse
For species and our breathing ways.

Trivial Giants

Having no cares for you, but thoughts
Of your pretty white straight teeth
(and where they will cinch me)
Are comfort
Like the ghosts of the smell around you.
‘Hello’ – thinking that I
Would tell you ‘hello’ first
When I touch you next, then
Busy myself saying other things
Before moving into not speaking.
I want to smoke
In bed with you,
Then burn again.
Sometimes I’ve had too much of this –
Not now.
I have wants only.

So?
When will you drive
Your vehicle to me?
Before you slip out of my mind.
Not replaced:
Dismissed and an urgent forgot.

Gleaming Des Moines

If thoughts were donkeys
-no wait, they are, I mean
If thoughts were like
Branches on a
-no.
If they were all teeth, nothing but teeth
Gnashing in a still pond.
Yes, teeth in a pond gnashing towards
A meaning.
They would gnash that I
Would be gone from here.
Mount up all the goods in my
Vehicular body, and drive
Home to Iowa.

Does Iowa still love me?
In its mountains and waterfalls
Deserts Precambrian history
Mango orchards and Pacific coasts
It does,
But in its guilt wracked Des Moines
I find nothing I know nothing.

So, now back into the creep of fiction.
Thoughts like cartoons with their
Jellybean bodies which is
This place I know better.
The falling rain is only burning and hot
Little stars. Night
Is the dark room at the center of the house.
No happy visit for me to Iowa’s city, just
This lonely acre with its gnashing
Mouthful of wind.

To Merit a Finish

It is the newer
Kind of cancer,
A self making belligerent
Cells enough
To fill my -
Not drift floating in an
Open sea, but
Pellets of rat poison gone up to overfill.
Until I become a gone too.
Yesterday does not tomorrow.
Just grains.

A small vehicle that
Gets into small places.

Even now up to my eyelashes
In misgivings.
With no money and
Too many women.
Too many women.
Too many women.
Too, thy own self be new.
A steady utterances of unusual.
Until we go away with us.

A small vehicle that
Gets into small places.
Seems always to on go on.

Then the dreams end,
Being nowhere from
For them to come.
Nothing sensual. Nothing sense!
Do not touch me or
My arms. And in short

Being:
There is no Orchestra
Here to conduct.
They are on
The European leg of the tour.
It is the dry season
In the Himalayas.
The mind gone out
Of the body and
Joined leagues with falsehood.

A
Small vehicle in small
Places
Gotten into. Colored the tint red
Of the end.

2am & i want to call you
its raining
you're probaby asleep

Land Road - Sea Lane - Vapor Trail

Cracked and dry September roads before
The rains come back. Emptied barns
Scratching the sides of the roads.
Rust of augers pointing into the sky.
Here the machines have lost their meanings.
They are steely Stonehenges following
Lost constellations. The galaxies
Have crept away from here.
We navigate by the stars of overpasses
And exit ramps.
Creeping into another daylight like
The one we have left.

In another time I will move through the
Ditches, as before.
The wide and slow ditches of another
Place. Making a small fire under a
Copse. The mornings will be without
Ownership.

In a true way, I will be where
You were. Seeking the other thing
We have came for.

***

The chop is light, our prow drives
Into the waves the winds cut. If
We were still, we could hear the lapping
On the hull. The lines are out:
We are trolling for a something.
The lines are baited.

I wish a nothing eternally. No strikes, only to
Cut the green water, to
Watch the horizon of white from the flying bridge.
Never to fight the fish,
And bring the gaff, and
Hoist the twitching sore beast from the water.
String up the unliving thing on the dock.

There is no way to touch this moment.
Before the strike and the screaming
Real, before the joy and the beers.
This is the here I have searched for,
The time before the inevitable cracks
To life, when chance has not doubled
Its efforts to bring us what we
Wished for in the quiet hours.
When chance has its own motives
Beyond certain.

***

And like that,
We have leaped up from the earth.
The fields sprawl out, the mountains assume
Their shapes as we know them from maps.
Until the valleys resemble peaks.
This is speed and truth.
Nothing is hidden at this height.
If you loved me, I can see it here.
I can see it here.

We move faster than the speed
of crows, but towards a what?
When did it matter, but before
I had crossed into a time
We shared, then lost like
Life passing out of a wing?

Untitled

How?
Across the bed the shape of
The shoulders are never yours.
Never your little body,
But only a her or another her.
There is nothing worth dreaming here.
The bed is a burning ghetto. Phosphorus.

All day?
All day I make your body rise to me.
You take your place in imaginary chairs.
I hear nothing but your voice in the radio sounds.
Every drink is your slow tears.
I think only of my fingers on your skin.

The humor?
The humor is you never wanted me.
I never you. The unknown alls.
Now I hear you think.
Your thoughts cloud me.
I at my work while you in yours.

If you left?
If you left the moments collapse.
The matters unmatter.
There is no shelter for what I think.
If you leave, and leave,
Then you were never here.
I would take the life I’ve lived
And bury it within
The wildflowers of the planes.

Secret Topeka

The good many hours I've put in with
My married woman (unmarried to me)
Spent not talking about her husband in Topeka -
Is that a Kansas?
It was because we could openly lie.
I to her, her to me


Making great plans and thrashing in a
Small bed
But only when she could.
Between meals. Between airlines.


I once drove two hours to meet her
For forty-five minutes then
Came home to dinner. HA!


I pretended to love her name.
She pretended to love my talking.
Our feet touched in restaurants.
I told her I could play piano (I can't).
She told me about architecture
And I still don't care.
She would only peal a hotel orange
With a spoon.


In May her husband will name my daughter -
Who she will say comes two weeks early.


I am imagining a way of flying to a secret Topeka.
The rest of my life spent learning about the schools,
The neighborhoods, the events. A lifetime
Learning about things, and seeing things that
I can never have.

Untitled

“Well, goodnight anyway,”

As he struck those words

The sway of the chisel in his hand

As he struck those words

Beneath the hammer and into

The stone of his mind.

(Forever those last three words

Without lust the last things

He said to her)

Then the telephone in its silence.

And before this they had been

To every place.

In staircases.

In narrow hallways.

In green streets hairy with trees.

In shores of saltwater lakes.

In a desert place where nothing grew against

The rust of the colors.

But now arrived here, this emptier

Place at the end of a silent conversation.

Drop the phone. Take a drink.

Well here we are.

With all the time in the world

To make good on things

That were better not.

The Dancer Eye

And then with his little ‘time heals all’ dance,

Stuck his feet onto the stage

Facing the fear of the audience.

They all watched him crouch from the curtain,

And gasped with the way he took his jump.

His body a fearless hello.

Fingers straight as orchids.

Wobbles where they belong.

The very night itself a shoulder.



- This is me of late. Stepped out into the oncoming

Traffic which is morning. Without grace -



My darling, you are not an eagle.

You are a photograph of a Vespa:

Although I own the image, I do not

Own the item. My darling, you are

Not a sheet. You are a jar filled

With clean water: a vessel for

The only thing that matters.

My darling, you are not waking eyes.

You are a harp in a battle: a ghost sound

That I hear for years.



Have I been foolish? Then I have

Walked around in a foolish way feeding pigeons.

Have I been foolish? Camping along a frozen shore

In August while friends swim the Bras D’Or.

Have I been foolish? Spending the summer

Curled around your little feet and listening for

The whisper of your voice.



And these the dancer sees moving through

The window’s world. Trips around the studio.

The radio cranked up and drunk.



It was not our time for these lives to join their

Pursuits and strings. Rather the wind pulled us only a little,

Then scuttled the cans, the leaves, the junk,

The humanity of the alley into the places

From far away to far away.

The Concessions

I stray into older and
Older time that comes by order
Through year and another year.
The grips (the teeth) of the gears
Strip. The zinging it sounds like.
*Yes your ears and ears go
*Until you can only hear the punctuation,
*The look on faces.

As the gears go - they let you know they are
Going and slip out of the door one
At a time
Into the nightwoods ducking
Through brush until they reach the
Stream where trout do not see them
In their sleep -

The rest of it.
The whole damn mechanism.
It slows into a slow machine.
It is a turn of the century photograph of
Complicated belts and valves in a
Steam driven window-maker's dangerous shop.

I look outside. I can smell the sweet coal-burning
Smell of the engine. I feel the cap on my head.
It's sunlight and I'm wearing longsleaves.

What they do not tell say is that
It is peaceful. You may sit
With a blanket on your lap.
Rest your arms on the armrests.
There is only now time to enjoy
That it is warmer than you like.
And to sit without being hungry
Or without need.

The rest of everything is small.
It rests on the deck of a ship.
It is small. It looks small
As it tacks out towards the sea.

And behind - the crackle of a burning sound
That approaches here.
This place I am.
Stretching hands out behind you
Feeling flecks
Of the heat

Of the heat
On its approach.

irony in pills

i've made a doctor's appointment
tomorrow, 9 am

my bloodpressure its high
i've been stressed lately

life, job, money,
bills, relationship

etc etc etc
same story blah blah

want to make sure that
everything is okay under the hood

i'm sure i'll have to cough
& endure the cold stethoscope

irony of ironies
i've kind of got a sorethroat

that started tonight
probably psychosymatic-hypochondriac

i can feel my heart bang-bang-banging away
when i sit like a small baby's fist thwacking me

so i'm a tad worried
36 yrsold

my father had his first major
cardiac event at 43

by my math i have seven years
that gives me time

lose twenty lbs
quit drinking

relax

write my book of poems
get a real job

maybe get married

i'm going to
the dr tmrrw

Three groundhogs pray in a field
bob and dip, bob dip
they must be hasidic jews

In Tom Wait's Voice

Mary was a welfare mother
Joseph was a kindhearted man
Jesus was born on a cold winter's day
in a cardboard shack
Under a sign
which read
"WILL WORK FOR FOOD"

In Service

We had been to the hospital that
Morning to give blood, then
Drove into the city.
There was a bottle and we
Drank it because it did not matter.
We came through the slow
Streets and stopped at crowds and
Tried to help. No one wanted
Help. We took some to
The hospital. A man sent his son with
Us while he looked for his wife.
We wrote for him where
We would take the boy.

In the afternoon they began
Shelling the city again.

The truck ran out of fuel. For a while
I was not sure where you were.
We helped put out fires.
There was never water.
We did not sleep that night, but stayed
In a shed behind some buildings.
It rained. There was no wind
Or lightning.

Eleven days later I got on a boat and
Returned to this country. To linen. To
Warm. To language. To nights.
Everyone drinks and speaks.
My time there I saw but
Was part of no real. Mornings only
Hunched in the windows of sky.
Day never seeming to come bright.
Time rose and fell as it prayed.
And what if the world does not end?

nonverb

days like this

grey

cloudy
cold

make it hard
to want

to do
to be

to experience
to partake

The Mare

Foundering. It was foundering they
kept saying. That Travis had
walked in and saw something had
happened, but he didn't know
what to do. He knew about
staying on your feet
and not lying down. He ran
to get Bill. They came in
out of breath with their hats
off. Then Bill told Travis to
get Emily and dad.

I thought about the oats. The peacefulness
of the oats and the sweet crispness
of the dry corn. The smell of oats;
the dust of oats around your nose.
All the joy in your life in the
sunshine drinking cool water and coming
inside and having a little more to
eat, then the quiet of the
barn. Long nights without wind.
Listening to the small
sounds. Drifting to sleep
without thoughts of morning.

By now they were yelling.
Emily and Travis were off to get
the doctor. Gene was pulling me
around the lot and
Bill pushed when I tried to stop.
All the lanterns were lit, like
they were looking for
something. The animals moved
and watched with their eyes.
Outside the barn lot the
world was silent and waiting.

My legs were in terror - foam
thick in my mouth. I felt the red
and pain in my eyes. My guts
screaming. I wanted water, and
did not want water.
Gene and Bill pushed and pulled and
strained. I laid down. I laid
down by the fence near the
small gate.

The men's voices changed. They spoke
a new language. I could not
hear Emily's soft high
voice, or Myra's laughing.
The languages changed and changed
until they became the same - a
sound like rustling or wind.
The sound of a hand as it
strokes your neck. Then
no sound at all, just a feeling
like you're running as fast as
you can through dark and the
feeling of air all around you.
The soft and the present.

We never really know what we are doing

We learn, we get better, we improve

But the goal line keeps moving

There is no finishing this process

We'll never know what we are doing

Not really

Restful

Breathing fresh air
Is like drinking water
Or closing your eyes.