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