-

It is my winter legend, as if I had
walked far through a tunnel or trench,
my winter legend as if I had survived
all I have survived but at once

and this hovering blue light touches
all my gentler desires

(and my harsher desires are wrought
of hot wax and fire. Lovingly I will
dig a hole big enough for my body
in the sand of this age.)

I am almost as fearless as if
I had knowledge of nothing.

In Dutch Flat it is freezing
but not snowing.

The coal sleeps one foot below
the frost.

The pines shake and hiss:
I feel I'm yours forever, stranger land.

I negotiate the body warm and
pulsing. I negotiate its past pains
on this present day.

I know how frightened you are of fear,
of bad dreams, how frightening
the consequences of mindless movements-

but continue out of curiosity
or want of heat.

I have such an abundance of both,
stranger land.

The compass of my silent part, of my
Silent Part, is spinning.

...

I am Flying Away.

Something has loosened its meticulous hold on my edges

and like a careless garment I am Flying Away.

The place that raised me dissipates me 

and ushers me silently pineward saying, 

fearfulness, you are fearsome forever the sum

of a silent and mystical equation

strongest when broken, strongest when 

breathing, oblivious, taking in sun or streaming 

rain, strongest Every Moment, lovely and 

natural. 

The only part of myself for keeping is the 

finger of fire in my chest and not forever.

All else is shirked and shed as minutes.

All else is shook like snow from my jacket.

And I no longer speak a language of Despites. 

To think that not long ago I felt that 

I was Flying Away. 

I am familiar with this relationship between 

space and nearness. The lost drowning feeling 

of being far from the still surface of a moment,

of glassy gentle waves evading me or my body. 

I am familiar with strange newness rendered

casual and known.

I am not familiar with the moment beyond 

this moment, 

but the moment when the charged 

roiling stops- 

I am familiar with it

I and II

1.

I see the fragile, missing aspect

like a vanished rib.

“These things can be

assuaged,

by long drive

by the estuary or

sequoia.”

The body of the beloved

is disrupted

by a rock cast on water.

It goes all wavy.

And we were not milkfed.

I was fed on plum brandy,

you on engine oil.

That we have gas in our tanks

to reach the coast

is boon enough.

That we grappled

to the last-

I’m so impressed-

so impressed by the unwavering stars,

the prevalence of field,

by all you’ve collected

beneath your fingernails.

I’m so impressed

by our earthly grace

in the face of hard time.

I hardly know how to put it-

I’ll stuff this in a cinnamon box,

and send it on its way.

2.

Sometimes all you know

are your quantitative fears,

stacked like a cairn.

Or you wake from a dream,

wildly loving

the face you found framed

by the snow

of sleep-

Sometimes you cry in the car.

And I dedicate this song to you, like

a bench with a name on it.

Hands decimated could rest now,

rest in the tidal pool of my dream,

almost as if home.

Mostly I don’t think of home,

because it carries on without me

but I lost it

and then noticed it was gone.

Softer times allow for gentler pains,

stung by nettles, stepped on a hive.

But you were caught on barbed wire,

stepped on knives.

We both of us have known the mine shaft

too well.

If a heart is a nautilus,

it makes me want things.

Long drives, drive

in a warm den of silence.

Spit memories into the west wind.

Let It Fade

Let It Fade

Occasionally struck by the nearness

of everything, the brevity of everything,

the precious greenness of it all,

struck by how I ought to run away with my crepe-soles

smoking,

collapse or not with great autonomy.

I am building a wall of books to

lean on.

I do not say that I will

engage with your body as an instrument

because that I will not do

I will only remember with

eyes closed as I curl like orange peel on this

bare mattress beneath wool, your back

stretching like a country mile your eyes

open and not,

or how taking your boots off I felt

venus,

I felt vaguely rose,

and I evacuate it all now like

a mouthful of vaporized time-

precious ether-

drop something and pick it up,

I cannot joke about it I say and you leave

nightward, I to sleep,

Forgive this trite awakening,  it is

trite in fact, but I realize so often now:

I really do not know what I want

of this day or this life

Marzipan

Marzipan

I love to love the life of the mind

as if it could salvage rather than harm-

but know I’m better off saying the rosary

until I fall asleep.

I’m slapped adolescent and pink

as lightning knocks with mounting

insistence outside the house

the Irishman says

spit in my mouth

and I do.

(When you are godlessly the slut

of your own anecdote, well then-

a mighty freedom!)

And a mighty freedom may descend

on you.

He huffs his hands, orders me around

as if I were simple, covering my face with

latticed fingers says darling did I hurt you darling

no.

I was hurt so long ago

I still tasted of marzipan then.

I laced up

the shoe of history and

it fit.

Marzipan is in the shops now, for impending

celebrations, lightning knocks, and winter

wipes its feet on the mat. I trade

my caustic tongue for marzipan.

Leaves sway and come to rest

on the morning’s euphoric dogs

out for their morning walks, they are leashed

but tied to nothing,

whereas the mind,

whereas the rosary,

whereas marzipan

whereas lightning and

the house, and yes

the marzipan

Fragile

Fragile

Sometimes sadness permeates my body from outside,

element moving through fragile membrane

or waxed paper gives beneath rain.

(It’s so fragile the thing which is hanging in the air

between us all

it’s so fragile as strung lights flicker and roll

along the limbs of sidewalk trees)

the downpour is sudden, and stunning, it’s so

fragile

creaking between the millstones

of our eyes, our warm and coursing bodies

Friend,  you’re with your chickens and I wonder what you are doing at this black moment. Your insides are clean and verdant, the rind of your heart is chartreuse, you stay light- you don’t get your feathers wet, and I don’t know how anyone manages that

when my brain itches and I sob sometimes. (I have not learned to be the infallible crier of our greater state of feeling.)

I sometimes hate it

that my only currency

is my own current.

I sometimes hate it that I do not yet know

everything, cannot yet gesture accordingly,

with grace

Friend your chickens outlived the brief thrash of coastal rain and they are fine. You say they stood there back to back

and that although you knew they’d be alright, something lodged a pit in you

Something lodged a pit in me in past. I do not remember the names of my home town’s streets. I left for colors of more vivid alacrity, and

harsher peals to meet,

a collision more meteoric.

How fragile, the revealing of our weather and humble force-field.

It’s so fragile

Gentle Future

Gentle Future

The oppressive atmosphere, just before

lightning is woken:

the oppressive atmosphere of

an anemic Sunday collapsing on itself

like whoever’s body that was

that body was my body

And are you terrified

that cruelty wins

the match?

Are you terrified

that cruelty

smashes the crucial

physical plane

of intelligence?

That was supposed to be

our redemptive scene.

Sometimes even flushed

lust is not the redemptive

scene, not the denouement

fondly forgiven by critics

who know better;

sometimes the body feels

forty degrees celsius pressed up

against the impossibility

of a gentle future.

The impossibility of a gentle future

beneath us

is running its hands

along our asses

and it keeps saying good girl,

and it keeps getting harder.

And She Is Incandescent Yet But

And She Is Incandescent Yes But

Fearfully, fearfully yours,

universe,

I belong fearfully to

my past self,

and she is incandescent, yes,

but vicious

she throws things around haphazardly,

has little regard for these bones of smoke.

This fragile skin of a collapsing

bloom

don’t think there is no shadow

in the rose garden, no cutlery clanging

in the recording of the night.

She wears this pigeon-gray Zeppelin shirt

and takes it off. She lies on the sticky

chest of indifference,

then rolls to the side.

She wakes early to the sound of rain

and it feels like relief

to the forehead,

then she falls asleep again.

She does not acknowledge the

Quaking Vacuum of Terror,

which is preoccupied but

has not forgotten.

And she is incandescent yes

but vicious.

Tossing the Sticks

If it is getting colder, I am grateful

although I know that such a mercy won't stay,

because we've tossed the sticks.

We've tossed the sticks and now

we have to read them.

And I snapped those twigs in the night meadow.

I moved those rocks beneath the tent

and woke up raining.

Woke up sweating beneath spattering rain,

woke up from a terrible dream,

the stirring

of deep animal discomfort.

(Mosquitos will feed on the legs

of every lover. They always have

and always will.)

I scrape a scanty barrel these days,

these end days, although we all can agree

that it's always seemed like end days

to the species that invented apocalypse.

I will face this apocalypse with

my salty eyes.

And if I seem hard, it is because

I am hard. I am hardened. In time,

I've been shanked by a bone knife.

I very narrowly made out with my life.

In my strange dream,

there is no room for dead weight.

In my strange dream, I have

a hurricane lamp in my chest.

In my strange dream, I have

a hurricane lamp for a heart.  

A Meadow at Night

I am having the sensation

of a thing lost. 

A greater losing,

like losing a star,

it was small but 

the whole sky bereft is huge 

and aching. 

The pressure drags behind my eyes,

like calming a dog down 

before thunderstorm, 

autumnal pressure.

And meadows at night are still,

meadows at night are still meadows.

Somebody showed me a crystal ball

which reflected the world upside down. 

And it was beautiful that way, 

skewed vision, still a 

meadow at night.

I stuffed you with moss 

and all at once you were

alight and crackling.

Pull my nightgown above my head

as if it were night itself.

I will reveal the truer shape of things,

like daybreak. 

I'm only gnawing bones, anyway, 

only stitching lacerations,

only cradling bare feet like a broken

vestal, 

one that threw wide the doors 

and freed the sacrifice 

I Intend To

I Intend To

I intend to swim in that lake ringed with pines. The past is full of instances of swimming:

that indoor pool in the Highlands. Grinding on teenagers in Tamarindo, drinking cans of Cuba Libre in the back of sports utility vehicles bouncing along unpaved roads toward beaches, lace of secret rip tide.

I intend to. I never remember what I

did not do.

What I did not do does not exist,

only half-existed for a moment as shimmering hologram.

Intentions are just dreams, like dreams of cliffs.

All of the cliffs I've seen, those I want to see- those mirage cliffs in An Affair To Remember.

I've had many affairs to remember, many to forget.

There is no point in thinking of all the slightly flawed piano songs

I've known and cried and

the shuffle of shoes scuffing the ground, the limes, it's hard enough,

I do read the papers though, I am up on the news. I never meant to destroy love like a delicate bough.

I never meant to do all sorts of things.

We loved one another once, crumbling vista

cliff mirage we loved

one another once

I've only ever been able to conjure something childlike for the breaking night.

Only ever felt bone-loyal to the rain. I frighten of things. But

cliff mirage we loved one another once.

Not like a man or woman, but like a tiny world, palm-held,

precious as hummingbird.

I thought that I was found but

I am not found;

that was a dry fountain. That was a lovely basket-

held no water.

When I am fearless then I will be found.

And I will heap a pyre, watch it long hours.

Every intention will burn. Only what is

will remain

to transcend