Definition 1

A poem
Is me buying a
Fifth of gin from Andy.
I've known Andy seven years.
He knows my first name, last name,
And ex-wife.

It is illegal
For Andy to sell me
A fifth of gin
Without first glancing
At my driver's license.

Two, sometimes three
Times a week,
Andy first glances at my driver's license.

I also buy lottery tickets.

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
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jackdaniels is not
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dri

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theres a reason
for

the add
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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

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fact: 1

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

scattered

im sorry
must be

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you watching

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stagefourbraincancer
it killed us
dead

broke us a

part shards scatt

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an exp
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ripp
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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.