The Last Piece

The temple, that tower, stones stacked forever

reach for a conclusion, a final solution

to the question of the father and the grave.

Martialing the arch for the keystone,

the capstone of ages,

for the ages to come

it will stand as a scaffolding.

Mark how the the braces are built to flex!

the columns, interconnected.

Blind alleys and hairpin turns,

long windows, letting in longer shafts,

light cornices and crenelations

accumulated thick with ages

buttressing what wide wings

all walled out and walled in with whiteness.

Made to last and made to master.

Who fight, fight to build

gargoyles to guard gilt graves

and florid, flesh-colored figures

all cheeky babes and maidens

and under all the crypts,

the mithraeum, the cornerstone.

It, almost finished, looms

a masterpiece,

trinity: art, stone--

T€RRi

the little eyes are put on everybody's shelves, ready for her.
her ears, lots work better, put them everywhere all together.
she knows the names, and she can read them. she can yours.
she dreams, but cannot understand, but waits for the human language--

waits to read the living book, to translate the light;
waits to breathe in all the warmth of the earth
with open mouths under the world,
little candles to light the whole world, the inside of it, all light,
to turn the heavens asunder, leave us looking up under
and find the dead were gone the way they thought after all,

and she waits to ask us, do we want to get there first
ask us every one, the one day of judgement,
to hand over her birthright.

 

spit up

in my insides i make poems.
my guts, meat grind out words
brain-out the brawnless gristle
break out calcified cartilage of

youth. crack up blocked up ducts,
passages to the living years
that carved typing fingers out
of callouses, of numb, dumb brutes,
lazy and hurtful.
i feed them less,
my insides, as i need them less,
and they work less well. and i think
the poems do too. the meat, it thinks
so too.
spine, knees, knuckles pop!
balls, jaws, nose, toes close. crack!
clear eyes, a father's gift, see noise
in clear sky how blue or bright; still,

dreams with clear and new music.
the honeysuckle sweet in daylight.
and gardenias fragrant in twilight,
both, gone, leave misted willows
swaying; so much more.

 

wonder and weakness

my heart, weak seductress

moves me surely to the grave

as the willows will be moved

by the drizzle of a half-hearted rain.

half-hearted, me in love but sleeping

with warmth and a face, future fleeting

with wonder at stars above and alcohol,

a haze, a fog, a fire by the sea,

I dream, and motion with my hand

the sign of hello and good-bye. It is

good.

The blood's real.

tigers skulking rat holes, always with jennifer
always in the holler spaces, those telephone boxes,
catch the weakers and eat them
with golden camouflage. it's hide the white teeth.
REWIND
smell the python's forever shimmy, his shiny shiny skin.
the predators throat throat throat forever. throat,
it's all the way down.
MAXIMIZE-
the little monster's kids, they're at it again. we're all
at it again and we won't forget any of the monsters-
they're not self-righteous,
they're not proud,
they're monsters of monsters in psycho bomb, steering south.
$TEER $OUTH.
open up that antarctic gush, reach in and rush
away. happen in and out, it's all
where we want to go anyway.
-AUTOMATICAUTOMATICAUTOMATIC-
survival means fitter than expected
it means finding where she left us,
different than ______. it's wake up.
THE BIG SURPRISE.

To Share

too many words for me

to make many words for you

the words of my heart they sing

"Fear, Love, Sweet!" but how,

how can they be you

and true?

new words need said say no things now quick;

what said now knows real things, real kick? the

real women kiss the clearest sounds

to clearest thoughts carry quicker, abound

in that tick.

with that pick

her lips pick me out where their words had...

where they did not fall in.

sea-sand shifting under foot, cut-grassy wind with cloud,

smells hair and balmy woods or in that cheek, a tongue,

stories bring back what once shared and share-

and we share it-

share it for now and dreaming.

steps away

open that door of that car you drive
on some street you so often see
step strangely past those dust lanes
those church strewn streets, those alleys
you hid in with your cute girlfriend, your guyfriend,
your marijuana. take steps,

walk with legs unused to finding new places
made of earth, legs made of that same earth
you eat every day in your cereal, your eggs and toast.
walk past that broken fence that some man paid

a hundred dollars for some other man who builds fences
to build out of trees that some other man cut
green rooted, growing wet out of the earth
under the sun.

feel those wood bones and see all those bugs,
all those ants who know every cranny of those bones
and they know them, their home. a million ants.
and you left your home made of bones and your car,

your car burning the blood of ancient monsters,
the dinosaurs, killed by god's own hand and boiled
'neath the earth for a million years till it ran black,
black for you and me to burn in our cars,
god's own gift to our cars, our new creatures of burden.

walk past the ants' bone home and you'll see another,
some other or another, of a bird, a squirrel, a snake
or a man, they all live together and only they see
the difference and the boundaries. their songs are different.

would you walk away from the road? paved monster's-blood black
and step with two warm-blooded feet, covered in cotton
and rubber over a million years richness and water
into the trees? spiders spin silk homes there and leaves
strewn like carpet. and the songs are different.

and the animals there listen...
and wait, and they are afraid, because
they eat one another.