Loneliness comes
to Hannah
like the birds who dress
Snow White's hair,
fluttering, flattering,
and obscene.

those feathery pages
flippantly turning, covered
in purple ink
have the funny habit
of crushing
too-sweet-songs
in ancient
dulled and iron tongues.

Even leaving little purple
hearts in the margins
for my daughters
to find when these pages yellow
doesn't lift
that scrutiny, that truth:
Reading is not another form
of Living.

mulling over the holidays.

this game is characteristic-
ally brutal. calling up and putting down
flowers in the road
they say they're for the gods,
but i've known from the beginning of days:
Sacrifice is for the people,
to justify the death of some beautiful
thing.

In the beginning of the year, we're put up on
walls, in frames, to recite that Great Story:
So you see, History matters,
while down we burn the future.

i may be sitting
this one out, my spirits not right.
i won't listen to another year
of birds telling their children how dangerous
it is to fly;
my life was meant for simpler things, and much
warmer weather.

---


i scribbled down some words about the feeling
of living in the past.
(the fury of mindless conversation,
while we fight
to finish each others' sentences,
stuffing words down throats
that do not know our hands..)

the ocean is still,
the rain too polite,
(i heard, though
you can drown
in a drizzle)


-

While i was waiting to be struck
by a love that could move mountains,
i found instead
one that could move my mouth.

I think perhaps laughter
more useful
than large scale landscaping...

-

sweet friend,
my devotion to you may have waned
with passing years,
picking its way tentatively across the miles
like slippers in the rain.

Believe me, though,
our love is strong like the ocean,
like rubber boots from Canadian Tire,
it will be there, full force, four seasons, all terrain.

and you'll note that while our letters get shorter
the salutations grow;
there aren't enough words in the bible
to say how much you mean to me.

dark days

the records fall silent for a time
and all they can find of me are
tallies of rations
3 cups of tea. 6 hours of sleep.
one sandwich.
30 pages of notes.
four goats. ten sheep.
five pens.
five pens.

This will be swep over: a dark age full of
we don't knows.

1 bag of cat litter.
3 bushels of wheat.
4 bananas
2 bottles of wine
a prayer to Venus -

But we know these stories -
lives rose and fell, families
came together, spoke with the gods,
married, died,
had parties
and lead days away in misery.

There is food in the house,
but something else is empty;
I'll have to remarry,
just to feed the children.

september 20. 2009.

ever since first you wrote
to me, i could sense the twine-
ing of our geographies, and

i was called up on my hands
(your bruised knees) to speak of gymnasts and
the dance.,
(we twist, oh)
of old men, alone men
(they dance, oh)
near their mirrors,

before they lay down, alone (men)
by their clothes
before the smoke from the pyres
suffocates

those old-song-men.

Now you wait by oceans (where first the fire leapt from the
earth)
looking past those broken shards
of pottery (just another language you never learned)
that collect in corners of dusty places that
you've bought your way into,
paid your admit-tion...

wondering..

what i was doing there?

just rattling my chains, i guess.

the gods live in the morning

the stillness of the early morning sits
heavy and warm, an invisible blanket piled
between our bodies and the houses,
and it forms soft folds
over the water.

even the mountains are stepping softly.
even the street lamps whisper.

and the steam that pours
from the chimney of the house
across the alley moves
without moving,
in deep breaths, greets
the indigo sky -
a polite warning that the day waits.
waits for none.
(as on overnight flights, when
fake morning has come after too-few
night hours, and the cabin is lit
slowly: blue, first pink, pink first,
then orange. orange. orange. then
cold bread, soggy eggs, too-sweet smiles.)

i hold the sweetness of these moments,
hardly breathing for the joy
that glides between our shoulder blades, lifting
us gently, lifting without
a sound.

I pad around
in a dark house, before the sun comes
up, remembering
my life like the details
from a book i read
when i was younger -
the plot is gone, the characters
have faded, the places are distant
cloaked in my memory's own re-writing, formed now
to better suit my unconscious intentions:

i wanted the girl to live forever,
her cat was a dog, with one eye of each color,
the tree outside her house was shaped
like a mountain, it rained every day,
and the boy
who lived across
the street liked her back,
even if they never met.

she grew up, married
a poet, listened to music while she slept
and loved the quiet morning hours
when the earth was soft and she
could
shape it
with the slightest touch
of her mind.

XXVII.XI

we were ill advised to go chasing
orgasms like Daphne, to trap them
in some corner; to watch them
turn to trees in our fingertips.

if we could learn to sit, still as buddha,
and patiently wait for them to rain
down on us in showers
(of gold),
we would all be the mothers
of heroes,
and we'd never again have to pay for parking
or car insurance
or spend the night fingering each other
because the drug store closes early
on sundays.

word placement

I line our bodies up (your
hands, my fingers, your knees, my
back) and rearrange
them. I'm trying to make some sense
of this careless tangle.
I bring out the best in you (maybe, let's see -
your arms, my neck, your toes, my toes, my
toes)
but it seems you can't bring much
of me (anywhere - your tongue,
my wrists, my arms, my shoulders, my
shoulders!?),

If these parts were detachable,
I could line them up in flawless
sense, our syntax
would grind, would blossom, would wail -
(my palms, your palms, your hips, like this, like
this...)
but this is english, love,
and your subject cannot be implied - we lack
the signifier, we lack the
significance.

(my back, your back, your back, the door.)

In some other era we may meet
to sing sweet latin.
all the words will be implied,
effortless understanding - yes
the language yields to lovers -
will materialize, and you
won't have to say
anything.