the myth of what really happens; family

i.

what else is
there to hate-
the fried egg,
& the pan
slips out of hand, a
grandfather
rises terrible
and human, an eye lost to
cancer, "i shouldn't
have let them take it"

ia.

they
where gods as they are
and his denial
mattered little
to that remote man
that skillfully
removed each
element of
death from his physical head
but his god shrunk like a penis
in early April keeling
a dark water lake trying to
swim to the other side
but unwilling the body
also wilts

ii.

the bloom growing steady
and under shadows of 5 o'clock
love lives a drop
on the tongue
a sweet measure of the
mortality rate on
Friday afternoon
the new mother hoping to scribble
a hopeful warning
about love
about letting the unbearable
in each daughter passing the dark
note famously quiet to
the next in line

iii.

this north country is
measured
tough under dry wall screws
and counter sunk nails
the wind curls the docks
like soft eye lashes
batting love looks at you

iiia.

despite minnow traps
and plastic decoys
resting in a duffel
until fall

iv.

the gun and the hound
all night animal
closing around
one thousand
lakes and islands here
the eyes steady
the boat
the wind takes quietly
and empty of
a rower to cattails,
muskellunge, pike
and the sound of an
egret lifting in flight

merry tool, sorry shoe

so regretted: the sea gull dead
and now it
wont come at all
the sun wakes
to stones, to horse apples
to the
anachronistic speech
of the last hopeful- one
the rain
comes and we
are happy
and stuck
in its down pour, ringing
the afternoon with
its steel
cage, leaving the too old
to fix puzzles and
gossip grave friends
up and down the flower lane
and the torch
they hold blows out
upside- down the drain pipe
wash
one hundred seeds,
the street
sheds its foam and libertine
garbage, the whole earth
shutters
under claw
and the cat wakes
to stare down
another man, that dared to
walk his way at all.

how the city grows barely

there is the fastest inflammatory word
the fastest lapse
of love that out lasts every stone,
smooth it rides
the heart to a glowing rich
ruby a glass and bloodless red
there in the alley the
spent and shattered to jem
the destroyed glitter in the
worn street lights proliferate gaze
the hungry crawl slowly
to sleep mired in
these tossed out dreams,
the scrapes of passion
wasted to the knife,
fork and plate
hopeful love is added and consumed
valued quickly and left for seagulls
beggar men and shopping carts, stolen
and pushed slowly through grease,
garbage and sleep long till
morning light.

yards off the rack

let the charged heart,
be broken
forever
and repeat the same instinct
to love
too crippled- to look back
the bones mend
and the walker moves
unsteady
but still forward,
dreams cash in
with howling winds
and hail where
the bobcat meows
terrible in the east lane
and love is battered, lost
unmoving
like a homeless man stolen
in a roofless garage
over whelmed
by quiet rage
and the
hope
to be left alone,
still the
heart wanders on
and
is found time
and again
like words
for
the bricks, the pipes
the stones that
mix with the million
human lives
crumbled to this remainder
a fair child
born in this city
mute
and so
desperate for the animal,
the clawed passion
of being
that the morning is rung in
gold and purple
by her fate and her longing
there the
devastation is
surrounded and
blessed,
like a coronation,
the
crowing of a
stubborn heart
pierced finally by
the silver
leaf of love and the single
sustained
note off the
lovers tongue.

how to burn June a cinder

these steps are the last the
blue stone gloms to the
shoe holding a firm
hope a heart
beating out the spring like a
step, a sun filed with a
shyness that is
not there, the words that
are the rays of the sun
pierce each smallness of earth
and burn in to
the core some how
to bleed the green juniper
the red carnation out
and then our skin roars
under its violence
which is love confused and
brutal, but love like no other.

ohdearno.

let the pages
fall open
to the answer the
long shores
of each night
crash there
hair colored the
stone monuments put
on hold
the dreams
of morning light
are
dull shears
and the paper
birds eat only
holy ghosts
all day long in the
shadow of
elm trees,
the rescinded
living- the icon elm
brought down by what is
truly grievance, truly
mortal and
pleasing purple tin.

needing to hear each stone rattle

the needle is
threaded with
words, as the
beautiful
terror tornado
is the sound
of a
freight train,
the
capsule is
the first
thing we know
and words
form in the
infant mouth
like steel,
like rails
traveling
west,
east and
up from south to
meet the cool
intellect
of New York City,
a full
inoculation
against manner
and
habeas corpus
and
even
then the linguist
can
not capitalize-
words carve
deep
the furrow
meaning plants
mortal
man
full of death
and only an
artist can
reap its
bloom
before its
final
fruit is
shown.