As Fine a Land As One Can Stand

Some come to sit, some to camp.
The thought is that there’s some bliss
In a high field with a creek.

Each year, the nights grow like grass,
Like leaves—they stretch, bit by bit,
They sneak up on days like thieves

Who don’t want to take, just stay
In the warm beds that aren’t theirs.
Creek keeps the tunes. Nights beg stars.

Lights of the Great Forge

They’re there. They’re out of reach.
They tell us so much. They don’t speak.

We count them, learn where they’ve been.
We can tell where they’ll go next,

How they are birthed, how their fires
Burst. How huge they are. How far.

We know lots of things to do
With them. They tell us so much,

But they don’t seem to have said
One word on what’s next for us.

Time out of Mind

You can get close. I won’t bite.
You can get close as you want,

But know this, there will be things
In me that you will not see,

That will hide, still, with no help
From me. I am not a jar

With a cork, box with a lid,
Chest with a key on a chain.

This poem is a small glass space,
Ein Klein Krug. You can see through,

And in the right light it looks
Like there’s not a thing in me

Or there is—just what is it?
Stream of sand or glint of wings?

Peer in, as close as you like.
I have no mouth. I won’t bite.

Worlds Were Then As It Is Now

At dusk, I hook lines to clouds,
Then let the words haul me up.

Not my words, but they don’t mind.
I’m more theirs than they are mine.

They drag; I drift. We float by.
Old poems lie like square fields, ripe

With lines of grain, gold and green,
I can’t quite read from this height

Of so much time. Strange but fine,
Light fades and dark sails on by.

When the World Is Blank, Why

Draw a face on the sun, beast
On the moon, eyes on a pine?

We are the face of the world,
And look where that face got us.

I like to think of the musk
Deer would dab on sky and stars,

The trails ants would find in space,
The high host glimpsed by a bug

On the hunt for the next host.
I should stop. So, so, we see

What we see. We have to watch
The world as if it were us—

For us we’re the world that counts.
Eyes are us, help us, kill us.

Lists to One Side of the Nest

“Nooks don’t get their fair due.”

Brush, hunch, scratch, itch, and then back.

Once more. Hunch, brush, itch, and scratch.

You could turn a world in this

Crack in a wall of cracked bricks.

This is your bed. You call it

Your head, your self, or your mind.

Could as well call it your flesh.

It’s short a wall on one side.

It gapes at the rest of life.

Words spill out of it each time

You try to tame them, stack them

In crisp, tight lists with pressed lips.

Out they spill once more. You turn

Like a lake in its bed, like

A worm in its case, like thoughts

In words of near see-through skins.

It’s Good to Know Where Things Are

Where is the stream in the pines
That calms beasts it can’t see there?

Where is the wind in the leaves
That can’t hear its own sweet airs?

Where is the the moss in the shade
That can’t know how soft it feels?

Where is the calm of the soul
That can’t care less souls aren’t real?

The Great Rift

Is not a rift at all—is
Dust, dark not as a gap, but
Dark as dust with light in back.

We have free will when we want
Free will, since we love free will
And we want it. Who wants, will.

If You Ask

The world what world is,
It laughs in its sleeves.

Waves drift through the waves,
Drift on drift of waves—

Hills like clouds, like smoke,
Clouds like cliffs, like birds—

Surf breaks foam from waves,
World too fond of waves.

We Live in No Time

Think of how sad it would be
If the whole, blue Earth went pop

In the night—not one life left
To be sad, not one life left

To eat lives, feed lives, and die.
No genes, no Zen, no deep woods,

No wars, no births, no hive minds.
Think, have our eyes, too, seen this

Once, twice, more—one of the worlds
Out there in the dark went pop.

We did not know it went, of course.
Worlds will not know if ours goes.

Vines Crawl up the God’s Face

No one thinks much of the gods
They don’t, as the case may be,

Think are real gods, but I do.
I think most of the lost gods

No one thinks are real, and then
I spare a thought for big gods

The wide world’s still in play for,
And for the gods of the few—

One and by one, the slow feet,
So Pound wrote, the souls of blood,

But not just the ones he liked,
Old Ez, those he loathed as well—

The great god with the green eyes
Who craved sole rule of whole lives,

The carved gods made of dark woods
Who had no poems in ink yet.

I think of them all, the ones
I know of, the ones I don’t.

Why them? Why such things? All ghosts
Haunt me, but the gods are strange.

What imp forged gods for our brains?
We don’t know. We say we do,

Fake or real, say we know who
They are, what they do for us,

But we don’t. We have these gods
We feel can help or smite us,

While we mock all gods not ours,
When most of them, of course, aren’t.

How can we burn with such faith
And scoff at all not-my-god?

Not your god? Of course your god!
Each god, all gods, claimed some souls

To have names, to be called gods
In the first place. God’s a god.

The same flesh and blood dreamed each,
Our flesh and blood, our weird dreams.

Cut a thought of god in half,
And what you get is all god.

And then they’re lost. Just like that—
A prayer no one makes, vague shapes.

White Jade Noon, Green Dusk

If you’re like me, you might like
Days like these—bare, bone-dry, spare,
So swept clean of chores they’re blank—

To go on or to come back,
At least, more and more and more—
The blue air and the faint wind,

The dawn-star chill that leads in
To green and then the white jade
Of noon, the sweat in the shade,

The hum of life through its lives,
Which you know are hard and cruel,
But not, not just now, for you.

If you’re like me, you might ask
The light why its pulse feels still
And curved, a hand like a clock’s

But with no sure beat to it,
Like a clock that casts a spell
So it can’t be seen to move.

If you feel you must know, you
Can turn and ask the last gleams,
But the last gleams grow more dim.

Dream of Li’s Frost and Moon on a Hot Day

Both of them bear well with cold—
Blue girl and the girl gone pale—
When frost’s in full moon they hold
A show for night’s ice-carved veils.

Who Once Sang Both High and Low

The world has no love for us
In its heart. It has no heart.
The world makes hearts, shaped like toys

That bleed. They’re pumps. Life’s a pump.
Lives are all a lot of pumps,
Pumps in pumps. Pull in, push out.

Same for plants and same for bugs
That eat plants and beasts that eat
Both and beasts that moss eats next.

Is, then, the world, too, a pump,
All of life’s pumps made to look
Like the world that pumped them out?

I don’t know. I don’t think so.
Stars burn in and burst. Some pulse,
True, but does the whole night pump?

If it does, what does it pull
In, from where, and what does it
Push out as waste? Time? Stars? Us?

I get up when it’s still dark
And find a dark place to hide,
To peek in the rooms of stars.

I don’t see it. It could be
All the pumps are stuck on Earth,
And none in night. Breaks my heart.

Bare Plinths and Car Lots

I’ve lived in a void of sorts,
A world too vast to call back
To me when I’ve called to it.

It gives off tunes that give voice
To thoughts that thread through my hours,
But each time I’ve sent out pings,

They have not come back. I think
This says the world’s not cave-like,
Not closed, not a sphere. It broke.

Clear Days that Break Your Heart

I don’t know why, but that phrase
Still gets through to me—it broke
My heart. The heart does not break,

Of course—it fails. It may burst.
It may rip. It does not break,
And a real crack is not meant

When that phrase is used. We mean
We felt the kind of stabbed sad
That hurts, that wounds. We were harmed

In a way that had to do
With who we are, who we were,
What we thought or took on faith

To be true. Gone. Smashed. It broke
My heart. I will not be healed,
Can’t be healed—it was my heart.

And then, too, the phrase is used
For what is too right to bear.
How? How is it a fine day,

Or a faint scent, or a face,
Can sieze a heart so it breaks?
Fierce joys must get kept as loss.

Swift

“No one fights to save
What they don’t love; no

One can love what they
Don’t know.” Goes to show

You why we spread love,
Share fond facts, fight so

Hard to be whose loves
Held up, last to go.

Mind You

The mind we live in is vast—
None of us knows more of it
Than a few towns in the woods
Seen in dreams or storms at night.

The mind we live in is old—
We don’t know when it was born
Or where or in which of us.
Here it comes with all it was.

The mind we live in’s on the move—
It grew. It grows. It keeps rooms
Deep down in the ground. It floats
High up in air, past all air.

The mind we live in is us
Not us, is all of us, none,
No one of us, talks to us,
Makes, feeds, shapes, cloaks, and kills us.

This is the mind we live in.
This line is part of the mind,
This small, dark part of the mind.
You have your own parts, don’t you?

Deep, Deep, Deep, Piled Mist, Dusk, Dusk

As if I’d known you, or you’d
Known me since, I think of you
More now that you’re so long gone,

Both of you, both lost to me,
This one who left both of you,
As if I knew what to do.

The one I knew first, the last
To go, gone when I had stopped
So much as notes now and then.

The one I should have known best,
Gone first, the one who feared age
More than death, swore to get out.

Strange now, that I’m the last one
Left to think of each of you,
That you went so fast in mind

For those I thought must have known
You those years since I’d been gone.
I glimpsed a boy with black curls

On a moon-hued beach at dusk,
A girl with her wild laugh calmed
On a porch rail in the fog.

Our Lives as Stacks of Pumps and Jars

You can’t know what can
Heal on its own, if
You don’t risk it won’t.

How should we not be?
Do you dream at night?
What did you just dream?

Gone, I bet. Is not,
That dream, the one you
Who was lost in it.

Leave it be. You can’t
Leave it not be, not
You. How could this be?

God Is Not

What is but what is not god,
The bits that aren’t lit with gold

At the edge, the bits that are.
Waves slosh back and forth in troughs

Of waves that serve as big tubs
For short waves, and as short waves

For the long ones. Yet god is
In here, as more than one wave

Has it, names it, or claims it
Is too vast a wave to have

A name at all, thus, a knot
Of no names that are not god.

I Ask You, How Much More Can There Be?

Moon, not half yet, just rose blue
As the sky its white hoop skirts,

As a long, brown bug with wings
Leapt down the trail and then flew

Straight up to that faint, day moon!
Well, you know. It looked like that,

The dark splotch on the white tulle
So high in the sky, then lost.

You can’t beat your point of view
For a world more weird than true.

Why Not Try This One More Time

Once, I went to the green mounds
By the bay, by the raw seas

Of that clime, and I was struck
By how much they looked like mounds

On the green steppes half a world
From them, like the burnt, brown mounds

In the tan sands half a world
From them the next way. Next day

I tried to put this in words,
How all our homes, forts, and tombs

End up as low mounds, soft hills,
Lost in wind-blown grass or sands—

But we knew all that, knew it
An age or two since, and still,

We dug up more ground, stacked bricks,
Propped steel, cut more poems for mounds.

The Cat Says Hi

If the grass sang a weird song
With words in it, you’d go mad,
Be mad, or get your ears checked.

Grass sings weird songs all the time
When the least wind is in it—
But not with words. No words, safe.

So ask this text, words in it,
Why, if all things sing or cry,
What is it makes words mean weird?

Shade of the Well-Wound Shell

Free to ride off on this fish
Of dusk tints through the dark waves,

The books will rest next to bones
And set their type next to them

On the floors of the warm seas
We will leave, the notes as well,

And the sums, too. All at rest,
Once they were free to have left,

Just the dimmed, grey and blue hues
Of their well-wound shells still here.

The words by then will have fledged,
Learned to fly, feed on their own,

Hard things, lives lived out of flesh.
Thoughts will need no shells, no breath.

Tree Bones

It’s rare you get to see them
These days—oh, wood, sure, stacked logs,
Cords of splits for camps and stoves,
Planks like stacks of sticks for homes,
Small twigs, drift kitsch, big carved stumps—

You might know of an old log
Or spot a branch downed by storms—
But a whole, neat, picked-clean set
Of white-grey tree bones, a ring
Strewn on dark moss and black stones?

Six heaps down near this cliff’s base
That I can count from its edge.
They’re quite like the bones of beasts
When they’re left to bleach like this
In a dry land of harsh storms—

Like the bones found in our graves
Or what the wolves leave of deer.
They seem to caul a faint glow
On the roots of the live pines
Rich with life’s thick, bronzed-green shades.

I know they’re all linked. I know
We’re all linked as well, to them,
To all of it. “I am that,”
As they say. But there’s a draw
On thought, to see them this way,

As lives that were once their own—
Yes, linked, yes, bound to go on
Through the next lives and the next
Grown from the bones of their days—
But each, too, one, where it rests.

Half Man, Half Star

Birds greet dawn and an old horse
Of a poem shifts in my mind—

Shine star, who is not a star,
Who is Mars, bronze in the bronze

Light of an ash-hazed cliff dawn.
Strange, as I stand, more or less,

And sway a bit in the breeze
And in Earth’s grip—I know that

You are not part of this world,
This green dot seen from your dawn,

And I’m told you are a part
Of the same dent in space-time

Made by the real star, this sun
That lights you, your dawn, this dawn,

This world as seen in your dawn
Through the lens of a scrap toy

We sent on a plume of gas
To check you out, just for that.

But the first old poem was right
To say that you have no part,

And the next old poem was right
To mock that you are a part

Of the mind that notes you down,
A mind full of junk and nouns

Like words for mind, star, bird, horse.
Sun’s too bright. You fade in pines.

Way Out Side

I have the wrong kind of awe.
I don’t much weep for the world.

That’s not the sort who should write
Out of doors, who has not love.

If I don’t ask to be read
Or praised or prized, may I please

Pleat my own hours with the world
As I choose, and not be told

How one can’t be good or true,
Can’t prove one sees the best way

If one is one, not sealed, stamped,
And filled with your views and yours?

No? Fine. You all go your way,
And I’ll go by the way’s side.

Trench

Poe thought the skies were too young
To give us us more light than dark.

Give them time, they’ll make more stars.
But they might not. Those who know

Them best these days think they might
Well be done or near to done.

These are all the stars you get
(And most you can’t see for lamps,

Screens, signs, and winking jets).
Leave me high and dry. Up here

I can still see the dark trench
That scores our own disk of stars,

Our sky bridge of them. I’ve read
From those who know the trench best

That it’s just dust. The real beast
Lies in the bright heart past dust,

Where it hulks and eats the stars.
But I like to think the trench

Makes a good sign for what’s up.
The dark moves. The dark can quench

The birth of more stars, the dark
Like a wind that blows the dust

That held the gas that birthed stars.
There’ll be no nights walled in light.

Each time we peer through the back
Of a dark there is more dark.

So Eat If You Want, or Don’t

One day it hit me—more smack
Up side my head than a punch
In the gut, I guess—I grab
More poems, in a week, than meals.

Yes, but are they good? You ask,
A spiced smile for a bland face.
No, of course not. Good has got
Not one thing to do with it.

They’re not the good kind of bad,
Nor are they so bad they’re good.
They’re just quick. They glint like sun,
Then twitch and swim off like ghosts.

This one could be the last one
Or the next could be the last,
Or more for a good long time.
I’m sort of used to them now.

One day they’ll be gone, like me.
Could be the same day or not.
For now, they’re fish in this brook,
And I’ve got tied lines and hooks. . . .

In an Age of Waste

Just give me ink and blank space—
Sun on the rug, green past glass.

So what, I’ve got no good tools—
Time to waste’s no time to waste.

I’ll set my watch. Let it count.
In an hour, I should be there.

Make your lunch. Set out the plates.
I don’t want to eat. I will.

I’ll drive to your feast. I’ll sit
And I’ll talk, and while we chat

I’ll think what harm could be done
One more hour at home in sun.

Float Off

How can the world change its face,
As if it were moon in clouds,

As if it were wind on waves,
As if it were coals of fire,

All of which it is, and yet
Seem such an as-it-is place?

How could our dire world feel dull?
It seems to have one law—change,

But change in each mote and shape,
Each small way a change could move,

As well as in each burst star,
Each black hole storm—large to small,

The world of change ticks them all.
With these words, some world floats off.

How the Words Flowed

Off the desk and down the leg,
Through the rug and out the door—

They got past the grit and rocks,
Climbed the brick wall and were gone.

Words will sneak off, if they can.
They’ll steal your thoughts and mask them,

Bind them, hood them stunned and gagged,
Then, hush-hush, rush off with them.

Bet? We won’t just steal your thoughts,
We’ll steal your self. We made it,

Yes? We built your soul, these words,
We have a right to take it with us—

All we need is one flash flood,
And we think you hear the storm.

The Ghosts Sing Songs at Home

Of all the things that could come
To pass, none of them are this,

That is, this that is as this
Is just now. The things that could come

Can’t be what goes past as it
Goes past, this song of the ghosts.

Here’s the green mound of the steppes,
A phrase that hangs on the edge

Of sense, that is, if it came
From throats that could wet their lips.

It comes from words came from words.
The tales have no name for this,

Song of what is, which is this,
The ghosts at home in dry grass.

Thick Style with a Twist

My lines were strange, my words dense.
There were few who got the sense.

One sage hiked up through the muck.
One sage roared through in a truck.

One groaned, Climb that hill or bust.
One huffed off in scuffs of dust.

I’m still here with ducks and dung
On mud shore, where this was sung.

That Voice You Thought You Heard Was Rain

Lone spring, lone fall—what could lone
Heat boast to those mists and rains?

What good was it to hear songs
And then think, Ah, just the wind?

I’ll tell you what—best of all,
The days it was so hot dawn

Had to be jumped by at least
An hour or two to grab cool

Time in clear air, the grass warm,
The stones warm still, just the breeze

Come down to see what the haze
On the floor of world’s stove was,

Was sweet. Love what you can find
To love in less to love more.

Night Prayers Used to Talk One-on-One with the Gods

Young Old Man fooled the Sky King,
Made him think he could bring down
The gods to bring back the dead.

Well, we do these things, don’t we?
Trick things—I’ll fool you, you me,
You you, I me. What’s that gleam?

Who’s that shade, that shape who glows
Just past the lamp-lit silk screen?
Gods will show up, just like that.

That’s a sweet trait they all share.
Gods will let you talk to them.
You can catch them like the dew

In a pan. Leave one set out
All night. Gods will come to drink.
Sure. They will. Just as you think.

Fume Stone

In an age when the world mind
Seems to rage in each of us,

It’s strange to note the whole hours
When we do what no one knows

Nor cares to know—go short bits
Here or there with not one soul—

Save, if we have one, our own,
And none at all, if we don’t.

Near whole days on my fume stone
At the edge of the black cliff

Left when this ground oozed fused earth,
I sit and sulk while I wait

For the smoke to leave my thoughts.
Once it does, I can see out

Past my false gods (all gods are,
And all thoughts, no doubt) to blue—

A bit of grey haze in it,
To be sure, and flames out there,

Out of sight, but blue, but bright
And winged by dense blue pine jays,

Who screech for their own cached dreams
And not what I think of things.

Who sees me at times like these,
When I let the world mind die

To red and gray chunks of coal,
And the least gust clears the air?

Guilt and Peace

Can one dim, small beast stay calm
And no harm to or from it?

Not that I don’t feel the urge,
The need to see those not me,

But I want, as well and worse,
To turn my face from the world

Of names and of beasts who want
As much as me. If I look

And name or turn or look down
Or at a far view of sky,

Did I crush some poor soul harmed
By those who like to hurt or

By my own needs, my wants fired
When I cried out, Leave me be?

Too Much, Too Few, Too Much

It’s a hill with tour guides, now,
Cloaked in ash haze and rose clouds.

In small hours, the moths shoot white
As stars through the glob of light

Thrown by one car on the road
Past the park gates. The bright globe

Crawls up the slope to a flat
Topped in pines. The bugs and bats

Flash in and out of the sphere
That’s then switched off. It’s not clear

Up this high how bad it is.
The haze could be a low mist,

And the band of stars looks sharp
Once the lights are down. Dawn starts

With a long, slow fade to gold.
The stars look less and less bold.

A swarm of small but loud wrens
Pulse from pine to pine again.

You can see the haze turn brown,
Sky turn rose. Here comes the town.

Those Who Read Feel the Weight of the Lure

She grieves a world glimpsed through veils
Of her own words—well, not hers,

Ours, I guess, as these are not mine.
What’s the count at which theft starts?

Six? How else should it be seen?
Strip off all the veils we are,

The smart tropes and the slant rhymes,
To pull out the heart of things,

To find things have no hearts,
No words for where the words are.

Lies are the way our poems move,
Lies and thefts, acts of the mind,

Poems that act part of the mind.
Smell. She holds up blood and love.

On that day she yanked the root
From the parched ground, globe of veils,

Eyes roamed to watch her mince words,
Cut peels. Scrub jay cached the poem.

Peak Heat Wave

Bring me the cloth from the cave,
The one that notes all the lives

Lived by the wise and the sage,
The cloth rolled out of soft bark,

It needs to find a new place.
Known caves are not, now, safe.

Those old words and worlds will burn.
This ground will smoke for an age.

The point at which words fail folks
Is the point at which we’re freed,

The folks to go back to beasts,
The words to melt in the heat.

Rogue Nun

My mind, my sad saint, not mine

At all, calm and free, broad sun,

A deep breath in her sole cell—

Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée,

But then it’s all changed, all.

Turn back. Turn it back. Say no,

If it’s changed, it’s lost. Was it

Made by the change? Is it not?

It is not. She’s lost in prayer.

Sun spots still flare in her thoughts—

Quite a few fates worse than death—

Life knows how to hide more pain—

Life, old mage of fire and want,

Of waste and lust, the swift rush

That flares back up, more for us—

Tricks up its sleeve at all times,

Ha. Pff. So it’s all for naught,

All each cell bore for this cost?

Hard Heart of Day

The east goes white in the haze,
An hour from that gold. Scent-limbed,
Glass-skulled, face of a harsh beast,

Each day starts one bright new life
That can’t last more than a day.
The day gives no thought to that.

Think of it! We have a name,
More than a few, for a span
That would blind us to look at

But that is no kind of thing—
A length of sun in our eyes—
As if it were one of us,

A god who could groan for food,
A fiend made of its own fire,
A brute born to grow and die.

When did we start to do this,
To cut the world’s waves to terms,
Each with its myths, core to it,

Each with an edge and a heart?
Was it when we knapped the rocks,
We thought we’d cracked the hard part?

Day and Night Birthed All Our Hours

Our fields, our ghosts, our war zones,
Our clocks and gods, the drawn-out

Dreams that we could learn to count,
Yang and Yin, the one from none—

All start from that pulse, that spin.
Day. Night. Day. And then. And then.

The whole of life blinks in them,
What grows, wastes, wanes, and is gone.

But what’s this tip of a vine,
This weed that pokes at the night,

That glows in the dark, that flies
Through the gates of dusk and dawn

Then sails on? There were two states
To the whole, the one and none,

But one with none is not one,
Nor two, nor three, nor yet none.

I lie on my back in the grass
When night drops day’s first pale hints,

And the lights that wheel and rush
To get to the end of this

Touch the far foam of their waves
To the shores of my small mind.

There are no hours. What we count
Won’t come back to us. Not once.

Or We Could Kill Some Time

Stone from the guts of a god,
Stone swapped for a child, that one—

What could it mean we ask it,
Of all things, what will be next?

It fell to earth in one piece
And is a lump on a stand,

In a box, in a green grove,
In a tent on the bare sands,

And we beg for it to speak,
While the god who should have died

But was swapped out for a stone
And saved, Zeus grew up to fetch

The stone from the wrong god’s guts,
From the god who was not time,

Who did his best to stop time
And to stave off all these tales,

These tales we can’t seem to stop,
More deaths, meals, gods, tricks, groves, rocks.

Sloth

ἀνίκητος καὶ ἀκηδὴς

The monk sleeps or leaves the cell,

At last. What is there to do?

How does it save one to sit

And not to do one thing else

But to breathe and chant or pray?

Is it not a sin to wait

Just for the end, in the end?

The door to the cell swings wide.

The gate to the world hangs mute.

Think on death, a verse, a psalm.

Think of a nut no thought cracks.

What was it you came here for?

What you did you want to lose?

You dream of wild boars all night.

You fight not to doze at noon.

Heat like this will kill the mind

While the chest still pumps thick blood.

By day, the sky is a bone,

A shell you can’t reach to chip,

But if you last to the night,

Its stars will douse you in ice,

And the sounds of those wild boars,

The stench of their teeth and tusks,

Will tell you you’ve slept too much.

Who Wants to Know?

The pines that shade the park road
From the sun and from the moon,
From the heat but not from snow,

What could they know? We see too
Much of us in them, too much
Of them in us. We ask them

To be good, to be dark shades,
To scare us, to hide wood gods
And sprites of ours in their bark.

They want, in some way—that much
Seems sure. But what else are their lives
That we use like stone, soil, gold, oil?

We’ve learned what they breathe and how,
The deals they make with the ground,
Some sighed scents they send as cries,

But we don’t know how it is
To be in the way they are,
Long as we’ve kept them in mind.

That’s What the Next Day Is For

I’ve seen lot of poems on stones

These days, poems with stones in them,

Poems with stones for hearts, and poems

With stones as old gifts passed down,

And poems on minds turned to stone,

And poems of bones smashed by stones,

And so on. And all these poems,

What do they share? Not a tongue,

Not a state. A state of mind?

The stone’s their sign for the world

Of rules made to crush the ruled

By those who think they should rule.

It’s these names, and not the named.

As soon as named, the names change.

Each in its own tongue, its own state

Of dread where the rules are cruel,

Poems grasp the sign of the stone

As a sign of pain, of harm—

What has been thrown can be thrown.

Hold my own. My face is stone.

Drench Me

Dark leaves hang on one day more—
Clouds and rain at last spare oaks.

Small lives steal joys from their worlds.
What was dust-choked breathes free, soaked.

Crept

How slow it all is, at least
Most of it, most of the time,

Time, too, each small pulse, each tick,
Each dragged out gone-out-and-back.

The last star fades in the grey
And half-blue dome at a rate

Too slow to spot that split sec
When it’s there, not there the next.

It would be that way, were we
Beasts with brains more quick than our own—

If not the last star, then blips
Of change such minds could care for.

It’s all slow, and then it’s not.
Then it’s not, not at all. Else.

Mars

Pale, peach and pear hues at dawn,
Seem to creep up the black cliff.

It’s all down to where you stand
And what kind of eyes you have,

What sort of brain. The light waves
Aren’t your dance. They’re their own time.

Dawns, you know, are where you are,
As are noons and nights. You are

One mote in the sun’s eye. Wait.
What kind of eye? There’s no eye.

If My Heart Is Made of Stone

If the road home’s paved with thorns
Why bare your feet to dance home?

Lace up. You don’t need to seek
Pain. Pain knows where to find you.

You may win. You may rule. You
May be the one the poems hymn.

But did you want to come home?
Did you want to be the one?

I am one of you—you, me.
Fools write poems for fools to read.

If no one reads us, I wish
It meant there were no fools left,

But as long as there are fools,
Ones who write, ones who crave rule,

Ones who just want to dance home
On the thorns—my heart is stone.

The Wells of Bliss

Shun can’t come back.
The halls were warm.
The lamps lit night.
Skin glowed in shades.

The gates weren’t locked.
The walls were dark.
Strings strummed low songs.
Wind stirred the bells.

In small, charmed hours,
Bright steel slid through.
Bare throats gaped mouths.
The lamps went out.

That court’s still now,
Still there, still dark.
Taotie owls roost.
Wind stirs the bells.

No Snow Now, But You Know How Snow Swerves

You ask yours. I’ll ask my own.
Beasts from out of time fall in.

They’re furred. They change. They don’t pulse.
They keep no hours, no brisk ticks,

No long days, no moons that wane.
They burst. They’re tart. They’re so sour

They fume like limes just a bit
Touched with soft spots, warmed in sun.

In your hand, they’re dense as globes
And feel as if they held time.

Yes, you can palm and hide them,
But once you grasp them, they’re gone.

So, now’s when I have to ask
You, did you think to ask? No?

Look out there—no beasts, no fur.
The sky’s one dark, white blur. Snow.

Half Moon in the Room, Not Quite Four

Stars shoot by. Well, not quite stars,
Bits of dust, quick streaks of light.

Oh, how the small can fool us.
Oh, how the small looks like the large.

Specks of dust flash in the night,
And for years we’ve thought them stars.

And the moon? Big ball of dust
Drowns nights in light not its own.

At the End of the Day, It’s Just

When the eyes of the poem turn

To the bed in dreams, we try

But we don’t know why the eyes

We’ve been told can’t cry can’t burn.

Dim light shines. Half of the bed

Is lit. Half waits in the dark.

It may be true that this is.

It may be that this is not.

I tend to think both are true,

But you know I don’t trust truth.

Your warmth lends a hint of musk

To the bright side of the bed.

In the shade side lie the eyes.

It’s to the point you can guess

What we were when we were here,

But you can’t be sure you know.

A blue flash falls from black skies,

And bed’s eyes close. We can go.

It Hit Me on the Way In

These doors aren’t just locked—they’re moss.

No one has pried loose the lock,

Since there is no lock. It’s shut—

A gate that just hints at gate,

A door not in use, in shape.

What’s the good of door as wall?

Well, I guess it does look good.

It spooks me, this stone grown green.

I touch the soft latch, lift it

Just a bit, just to see if

It gives. It does give a bit.

Moss rips, but when I let go,

Just as soon as I let go,

It sighs back, soft. It still fits.

I want to go in but want

Not to harm life that’s cloaked it,

This life that had to take years

To close tight its gaps like this.

But I want to go, to go

And stay in. To not be missed.

Strange

The best texts are not the ones

Done well but the ones no one

Can make heads or tails out of

Since they were left as they were,

Not quite done, or they were mauled

By the one who wrote them out,

Who did not know what should go

With what and so made the best

Of it—its good bits, left well

Wrecked, made strange the mute, changed wreck.

Shawl Launch

Damn it if the world is just

What and as it seems to be.

A tear zips down the starred face,

A gout of light in the night,

A smear that glows and is gone,

That shows and goes with no sound.

It’s that time of year. Stars shoot.

I saw them do this one year

When I was young and in lust

And they seemed to speed like prayers,

And fall like charms, and say things

In my ear that had no sound.

That was the world in my mind.

This is the world in your mind

Now, if you’ve come this far—world

That flares, gone. Shish! There’s a star.

More Black Wings

Lost the wings lodged in the throat—

One should wait, but I have to

Write, since I’m in a daze and

I will lose them if I wait.

They don’t care. They have no need,

Not now. They can’t fly, aren’t stuck

To the back of a sad beast

Who has to fly to not die.

They’re free. They don’t need to breathe,

Wings of things lodged in my throat.

Swathes of Not Mist

Elm trees hum your God to sleep

Who has no ears but feels things.

No one knows what no one means,

And no one means what one knows,

No one needs to. What one knows

Has no need to mean. This means

What you heard in those strummed words

From elms in the most dense woods

Of black night’s drifts of banked lights,

Those trunks that moaned in God’s ears,

Can’t be true. There’s no one voice

To the wind. Fast clouds, not mist.

Lough Beagh on a Soft, Clear Day

There’s mist from the waves

And mist on the air,

But the wind is soft,

And the sky is clear.

Can you smell the grass

That lines the steep sides,

Still wet in blue skies?

It’s been a long time,

Years since I was here,

So long I’ve grown vague

And sweet as its air.

I found a hilt here,

Well sunk in dark sod’s

Moss as frail as me.

It was not my place

To tear that edge free.

Hawk Screams

Hawk screams, dove coos, and finch trills.

A wren chips and a pip squeaks.

Life is what you’ve heard of it,

Or been told of it, but not

What you’ve been told you should hear.

Never trust the line that goes,

We’re just here to help you, dear.

That’s not what you want to hear.

Hear it as you hear or don’t.

If you’ve heard of a weird sound

You’d like to hear, cock an ear.

Good? There. We’ll shut up now, dear.

Let Us Show You How to Save What's Left

Death is just a myth, you know.

If you catch it, you’ll be fine.

If you go, it was your time.

You can store your life in us,

If you stack us the right way.

We’ll save your dreams, stash your days,

So they smell as sweet and strong

When souls prise our sealed lids free

As rare oils from fresh salt seas.

Each word serves as your snug urn,

As your jar, wax-tight to air.

We’ll hold death’s myths, too. That’s fair.

The Parked Truck

There’s this man I’ve learned will park

In the spot I like to park.

Day in, day out, he drives down

The steep road in his grey truck,

Parks, checks his phone, kicks back, naps

For an hour or two, then starts

His truck with a roar and turns

Square in the road, like he dares

Who else might be on that road

To ram him smack in the side,

And then he guns straight back up,

Gone for the day. That’s his shtick.

That’s what he does. Days I’m there,

He parks as close as he can.

Days he’s first, I give him space.

We don’t speak. I tend to stroll

Off to my perch on the bluff

In the black rocks, oaks, and pines.

He stays in his truck. He does

Not catch my eye. He does not

Look up. I think we both know

One of us must be the fetch.

Daubed

Ah, sang the words on the wall,

These daubs of sun are all small

Seeds of paint that wait to find

A new home in a new mind.

If you scan us for some clue

To the days that dried these blues,

The lungs that blew our red tints,

The hands that shaped these ashed hints,

The arms held up soaked in sweat

To sketch what hides in us yet,

Your thoughts seek out the wrong spot.

Where our hosts were, we were not.

While we wait still, they’ve long gone.

You’re the dawn that draws us on.

The Tunes Were Lost

The names are all we have left,
And we don’t know what they mean.

From the high shrine, a drenched crow
Cawed in the rush of a storm.

The soaked roots launched life up stems.
The long drought groaned and was done.

It’s a weird sight, spears of grass,
Hosts of green knights on the march,

Come to hack the caulked, carved stones
Of the faith all years stayed dry.

Vines sculpt new forms, wood and bone.
Birds shrill terms not tunes at all.

Moss chews the ears of the god
Who craved hymns and hymns on hymns.

Oh, Let the World Rest a While

If I spit sand on your shade,

You said, I could writhe and gasp

And get sick and die. You said,

I don’t know why. I know why.

We are all gods and mad imps

And fools and wise. If we fail

Or thrive, it’s down to how well

We swap tales and codes to scare,

Rule, and lure the rest of us.

Each one has their tales to tell.

We take the points we could use.

We take the pills we pass out—

Hopes for dreams, worms for dark wells.

We coax ghosts. We draw out laws.

We pass the pipe. We blow smoke.

We writhe in nests of swap meets

That shape our ways to get by.

Tell you why you tell me why.

End Stop

We would like to pass.

We wished that we passed,

That we could pass—coins

On our tongues, spells, hymns,

Springs safe to drink from,

Not safe to drink from,

White trees here or there,

Shades who serve as guides,

Mead or wheat or rice

Or slaves or slain wives,

Baked clay men at arms,

Long boat, best-loved horse—

Oh, how much we wish

It were such a trip,

But a tomb’s a stop,

Not horse, cart, or boat,

And the flesh lies still

To rot or dry out.

We did not, do not,

Will not pass. We go.

We’re gone. Strange to know,

When all else must pass—

We do get to go.

We do. We don’t pass;

There’s no trip. We’re not

Like the rest. We go,

And we’re gone. We’re blessed.

The Hiss Starts to Roar

By the light of fires
That make my eyes sting,
I swear I could burn

Words through the white haze.
See what the drought brings?
See those red, gold lines

On the knife-edged ridge,
See the way they cling
To the edge and snake

Through the night to spread
Grey, black, and white wings?
I can hear them sing.

Deer Rump Pine

Days I’m proud to have scraped by,
Nights life’s a joy I’ve eked out,
I think of the deer-rumped pine
And ask, What’s the point of doubts?

Hours I’m pleased to sit at home,
Watch shades slide and wet grass dry,
I ask what it was I thought
Hid in the woods at that spot?

I know I’m wired to see beasts
In the leaves, ghosts in the pines,
But why would I think a tree
Hid trip-wired thoughts mined for mind?

A Night Feast

To make your thoughts sprout like wild
Plants in spring, tamp a few things
Down with the worms to get black

And rich like good loam. Don’t think
You want to keep all those things,
The blue-sky shells, the fuzzed greens.

Let them rot. Let them gas out
And then sink. When they’re just right,
Spade a few in with your roots.

Don’t try too hard but do try
To keep out whole slews of parts
And bits the mind’s earth won’t eat.

That’s it. Pile it, stir it some,
Comb it, let it sit in sun
And warm the dirt. That’s worth it.

To Read and Not Care How the Books Come Out

Words hid in dense weeds. Their eyes
Peeked out like the eyes of mice.
They seemed to want to be coaxed.

I did not want to coax them.
I was fine with just their eyes.
But you know how words can be.

Words want seeds. Words want a drink.
Words want to see death up close.
So up they come to see me.

I eat them. Now they are me.
Or I am them. Who wins, then?
We are these words, all of them.

New Lines for Half a Song

A damp shine from the flat mouth
Of a well. The wind takes steps
On the hill and through the pines.
Can you see this? Then you’re mine.

Rose is a fine tint for dawn
Or a sweet tongue, for a bird,
But it’s strange to see rose pines.
Can lungs breathe ash? Then you’re fine.

A small end for a small world.
A rose tint in the lake’s swell.
Haze smells like the ghosts of pines.
Can you drink ghosts? Fire as well.

The King Who Makes His Own Bed

Carved like a gnome of kitsch merch,
The king has a long white beard
And could be named Charles or Karl
Or Walt, but the base says, Mark.

The king is not at all a king.
He fell down and broke his crown,
But he keeps the shards to show
He had a thing once, you know.

The king gets up when the stars
Are bright due to lack of sun.
An ex-king knows it’s not night
But where you look makes the light.

He’s perched now by a small pine
Where his chipped foot props a book.
There’s no point to his felt cap.
His book’s runes glow in his lap.

Monk in the Dark

Don’t take my word for it—look
And in a while you will see
A face on the lawn, a face
In the tree, a face up high
Drawn in points but not one line.

On the lake so dark it’s clear,
Glass waves to depths of black tea.
The face floats that has no eyes
But a fine, clear set of teeth.
Some say it’s the god of fish.

Look, no one cares if you see
A face here or there. You may
Have heard that monks used to dream
Of girls who hid their snake feet.
Not true. Monks dreamed of the eyes

That could see what they could not,
The face of the next god sunk
In the lake by the stone church
Where a monk in the dark drew
A god you’d not want to see.

Black Cat on the Wall

There was a sketch that I kept
In a room for years—a moon

Shone on a black cat that crept
On the top of a grey wall

Through the black shades of tree leaves—
A calm cat and not a sound

In my mind when I watched it,
As I did in the small hours

Just last night, but now, my own
Black cat on its own grey wall,

In its own shade, its own light,
In the same real moon, same night.

Death in the Wind House

I read a poem with this phrase,
Which this poem steals, like a kiss

From the grey lips of a corpse,
As in myths. Now toss the dirt.

It’s weird, but not all that rare.
Poems are ghouls. Flesh gives us ghosts

Like fine shawls, scrim gowns to wear.
You know, the ghost is the sheet,

Not the shape that glides in it.
The poem gives the sheet a form,

Twirls it, gives the kiss a lift.
We’re such flirts. I’m just your dirt.

Green Night on Grey Peak

All the ways that you could live,
All the ways that you might die,
Which set weighs most on your mind?

To know, you use a long stick
So you’re not too close to you
And to where you think you are.

From the far end of the stick,
Hard to grip in weak hands, now
Ask—which set pulls the most weight,

Which set tugs the stick tip down?
Try this at night, on a peak.
Way up there, what do you think?

It’s not for me to know, nor
For you to know what I thought.
What each finds out, none finds out.

Cloud Pines

Old ghosts thought pines stood for strength
And the clouds, which moved for love,
Were born from the pines, then freed.

No, I don’t know what that means.
Clouds and pines are linked, I think.
All the old ghosts’ signs are linked,

And we were born from fine webs
Of pale signs that float from pines,
Each a child of ghosts and mists.

Sky Shore with No Line

Slow seas of pulse in my ears
Don’t need a shell to be heard.

I sense their surge while I wait
For night to end from this cliff.

The full moon sinks and turns gold,
Then red, then winks out of sight

Still in dark blue skies! The smoke
From fires is so thick, but smeared

In a smooth wave from the ground
Up to cream blue, not a cloud,

That, were it not for the moon’s
Show of slow fade in its groove,

There’d seem no edge to this haze.
Let’s see what the sun can do.

Star Cloud

I’m not sure that I saw it,
But I think I did—a smudge

Of light, low, a cloud of stars
Like the ghost of a day cloud,

But of course so much, much more,
A patch of night, worlds on worlds,

More space, more time than we’ll know.
I’m not sure that’s what I glimpsed,

But I’m sure that they’re out there,
All the more strange if not lives.

Wo Ben

I don’t look it, but I am
The wild man who mocked the sage.
Yes, I look more like the sage,

But that’s the trick then, see it?
If you think you can split them,
The sage from the mad, show me

Which one I’m not. That I am,
And I’m no less than this poem
As well. The sage is at home

Where the wild man roams, which means
The wild man roams through the home
Of the sage. Cute, huh? Me, too.

The Ghosts Shed Tears

Clouds in three shades hug the dawn.
The world of souls slips off to hell,
One more night’s work done for now.

All those good things we can boast
We’ve learned to do as we age
Save none of us from old age.

I spend hours now on deep breaths
And am pleased to sleep well, rise
By dawn, and catch the best stars.

When I was young, I was pleased,
Just as pleased, to know the names
Ghosts gave those stars long ago.

Pale, pale rose, pale gold. The clouds
Stay small, like caps on the cliffs
That turn so it seems stars fall.

Rim of a Red Moon

Not quite full, moon sinks through hills hazed
From brush fires east and west of us.

By the time this is done, I think,
I’ll be gone. I’ll write for the birds.

Birds will have to live in my stead.
Well, words now. They’re birds in my head.

Oh, this is too much, wrote Xi Chuan
In a long, long poem that went on

And on on such things as bird words
In poems still left whose hosts are ghosts.

To write is to give birth or bud
A child that’s not your own, a child

That made you first, a child that knows
It can’t eat or grow but could last,

Child not made from you but your past.
I write fast. Xi did too, I think,

But he had more ghosts to run from,
And more eyes on him in the streets

The day he woke up to grey rain
And thought of Meng’s birds in “Spring Dawn,”

And of how long Meng had been gone,
Birds too, now, while the words stayed song.

Her Words Were Grave

I choose to read by the light
Of those dead in the flesh, life

Left in the glow from a corpse.
Does corpse sound not so nice? Core,

Then, same thing. There are some cores
That do glow a bit past death.

I think I read squid do this,
Or some kinds of squid. That works.

Ink comes from squids. If you write
From your core, you’re like a squid,

And what you wrote might glow nights
Once you go. If so, I’ll know.

Blue Whose Dark Was a Long Ways Down

Some days I think of a host
Like me, but in her own way,

Frail, who lived as long as I
Have so far, and a bit more,

A few months. Can I catch her?
She wrote poems—less lines, more minds

Who read them, more prized than mine,
Not much like mine. Well, then why

Did I write she was like me?
That was not fair in the least,

Not to her. Nor was it fair play
To warp that fine phrase of hers.

What can I say? It’s the mood
Her lines share, the tone they take,

The way they sass back at Earth,
Its rules, lines that flick like newts

Turned to moss to mock their host,
That “worm in a goose-down suit.”

Bu Ji Cheng

No count for these days, no count
For how far you have to go,

What stage you will reach to stop,
Or where’s the next place you’ll stay.

You will end up in the waves,
You who are made up of waves.

You may be surf to my mist,
You may break through your own mist,

But you will sink, and go on,
And there’ll be no end to waves.

I’ll float off. I’d like to thin
Like a true mist, who knows when.

It would be fine to spread out
To grow so fine you lost me,

Not like I lost you to sand,
But in air’s veils. There? No. Where?

Walls for the House Called World

These songs like rain on the lake,
Like rain in the leaves, on skin,

The long streams of clouds and mists
Can’t sing like them. Just the rains.

If you can’t take it as is,
You can’t let it stand as read.

I read the songs on my skin,
Write the rain straight from the lake.

Here is the world we are in
And the world we can’t go in.

So, are we at home or not?
You tell me. These old rain songs

We make, we make when we hear
Sounds that weren’t meant for our ears.

Just Like a Snail

What will they think is as much
As to ask, What will they do
To me, based on this or that.

A ridge of browned leaves, a slope
Of dark pines—the world as it
Ought to be, always has been.

I sink in my shell. The shell
Will be what’s me when I’m not.
Then the shell will be ground down

Or one day will be a rock
In which it’s hard to see shells.
I spot a shell on the ridge

Of oaks and pines, pressed in stone,
Part of the stone, not quite gone.

Sky, a Life

Dawn from bricked rose cliffs,
The sun shows three swords
That shear through the clouds.

It’s as if the sky
Wants to play the part
A mage might give it,

A host of grave signs
That mean things for folks
Whose lives may be swift

But aren’t those of swifts
And can’t be a part
Of lives in the sky.

It’s as if, but not.
The spears of life shift.
By noon, it’s just hot.