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
Excel Spreadsheert

8-4288
# for Messages
Then put in
Message pad
Code

DUPLEX
PRINTING NOW
AVAILABLE

PLEASE SEE
REFERENCE DESK

FOR INSTRUCTIONS

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