Used to Wend

I lost where I was
Or lost when I was.
Was it who I was?
What was it I lost?
Or did I gain sense

That all that I knew
Had gone strange or was
Strange to its core, just
The same as it was
But not as it was

To me. In just three
Lines I lost all sense
Of self and of times,
Could make no more lines.
I lost the clock, too,

Had to count each word,
Each breath, and check each
Thing that could keep count
For me. At each glance,
Some new thing was strange.

The day had grown late.
The date had grown strange.
What I saw I’d seen,
And the seen was strange,
New old old new dreams.

Much Too Much

We do not
So much share
The same plane

With the weird
And the strange—
Our bland days

And bright nights
Spent with dread
Bloom long grass

Plains where ghosts
Of horned beasts
We know well

Race or browse—
We dozed off.
We wake up.

We don’t know
Which was which.
We share this.

Stood the One Sad

At the foot of her cross,
Not a tear in her eye,

Set to climb up. A one
Who’d had no child at all,

Not a man, not a god,
Not a babe, not a son,

Had grown old and was fine,
She said. Just a bit sad,

Not for that lack of roles,
Just not to get to stay.

She grinned at me, glanced back
At her cross, shook her head,

And laughed. I’d like to stay,
But now it’s time for bed.

Wait for Me

Wait at the mouth of the cave.
If you have no cave, then wait

At the side of the creek. No?
Well, wait and watch the oak twig

On which one of those green leaves
Looks too fat and eats the rest.

It could start to spin, that leaf.
It could melt in its own silk

And fly off once days have passed.
Don’t have whole days to watch pass?

Wait in a chair by smudged glass
And watch just this one day end.

Like the mouth of a cave, dusk
The sun slips in. It’s gone then.

The First Poem

It will eat us
And all our time
In our own night.
We’ll leave small trace

Or none at all.
It will eat us,
And we know it,
And we say so,

And still we fight
And make up lies
To pass our time
And make up gods

And pray to stay,
To shine as bright
As stars that die
In their own night.

What Does a Book Feel Like?

“Post-sex, pre-corpse,” as Dan wrote
Of Cole’s poems, I’m good to go

On as a mass of cells, spayed
As my cat, in my own way,

Prone to thoughts of death. I like
Life, curse that it is on rocks,

Since I like what it gives us,
Which is more than what it is.

I like where life and death touch,
Pre-sex, post-corpse, in the form

Of words, raw ghosts, trite souls, fools,
Wills left by wisps who are gone

But for their lines that dance on
And let me be and see life

For what it is, not a god,
Right now, as I breathe and live.

We Can Wait for You

If we don’t burn.
If we’re not lost.
If we’re not dirt
Or worms or mold.

We’re words. We’re spores
Packed tight in lines.
We’re built to store
And set to go.

We know the deal.
We’ve seen the marks
Cut in clay bricks.
What we hold lasts,

Past the scribes’ lives,
Past the gods’ faiths,
Past all known tongues
That spoke us, once.

What News?

“If you have

A tool, it

Can seem like

A shame not

To use it.”

A sharp edge

Is a tool,

And all tools,

Or almost,

Can be used

To kill. Ah,

Did you want

To hear news?

Sharp tools carve

Blades from us.

Sight Spot

Come back to it. Might as well.
“Where else will you go?” asked Brown
As the fires burned his state down.

Mars? I laughed, but took his point.
Why run from those slopes in flames
If the sea boils? If the storms

Grow so large that the one calm
Place in the world is the eye,
Where was it you thought you’d hide?

Best if you don’t try to hide.
Come home, if you have a home.
If you don’t, sit tight. You won’t,

Of course. Our kind move. You’ll move.
One more thing to fear—the hordes
In search of a safe place, food.

For this day, I have no fear.
I come back to my sweet spot.
These woods have not burned down, yet,

Though they might. One day, they must.
Not yet. It’s a cool green site
In the pines by a clear stream.

I can’t stay here. I can’t stay
The night. But I love the sight
Of the small trout that hang out.

Lose Your Grip

A deep peace slips past our names.
You may claim it for the Earth,
Or a wise thought you had once.

You may say that it’s God’s grace.
(Grace is a soul of its own,
No need for God to own it.)

I’d say that I can taste it,
Sense it as calm in my bones,
Which are known to crack and ache,

But it’s not quite what’s felt, seen,
Or heard. No, I can’t taste it.
It’s—it’s when. I lose my grip.

An Art to Make Dust of All Things

If there’s no task,

No one who needs

You to stay here,

Then you may leave.

You’re free to leave.

But that’s a spot

Of joy, is it

Not, just to float,

To stay on when

You don’t have to,

There’s no need to,

And then to be?

Time’s change is clock

Change—beat, pulse, thrum.

The dust floats on

Past all clocked sums.

Fine Tales of That Which Was Not Found

A text can be as full
Of lost dreams as a tomb,

But words, like tombs, can be
Bare stones. The thieves were here.

Or were there thieves? Was this
A grave in the first place?

Blocks of words, blocks of stone,
May look bare, lost or not.

We are the thieves. We want
Loot, gold, hoards from a world

Like ours but lost to us,
One we know we can’t know.

Some texts are rich with what
Would bring that world to life,

At least in our mind’s eyes.
Those masks! Those robes! Those rings!

Lies. The plain stones, the floor
Cut with weeds—they can speak.

The drab phrase, the dull line,
The trite rhyme. They don’t fail.

They’re bland to us. We want
The sense of a felt world

We’ve robbed their texts to reach.
If it’s not here, we’ll leave,

Call them cursed. But they speak.
They do sing. Each to each.

The Quick Aren’t as Long-Lived as the Dead

It’s all change. They’re all changed.
Each time and each place has grown

Strange, will go strange, and yet
In some ways each now stays the same,

And my thoughts on this head have
Not changed, not much changed.

On my way up the back slopes to fall,
I saw a barred hawk, paused my car

To let a mule deer fawn, left on its own,
Cross a dirt road, flushed a big ram

From the brush oak, watched pink turn gold,
All the things that live, grow, and let go

But aren’t the same as the things in these
Names, names that are ghosts, slow to go.

Hope and the Lack

I’m proud to say, I’ve not worked well—
Too proud, I’d say, but not too proud

To say it. You know you’ve been judged
By those who lack the skill to judge

What it is you do, but you wish
They would take a fresh stab at it,

Since you can’t think of who else would.
As for me and my house, we will

Not serve well to be judged at all.
Oh well. A breeze walks through the door

In hopes of just a bit of shade.
Its whoosh mutes the thoughts of the jays.

No One Will Find the Base of It All

That’s not what it meant, “Go West.”
Not that way. Not to the sun.

Think like the sun, like the sun
Would think if the sun did sink

In the plum lips of the night,
Not as a trick of the light,

But as the end, the real end
Of that day, that sun, each time,

That one. Go west, and don’t come
Back. It means go lose it all.

Our Real Me

“Such are the ‘nows’ that pass”

These words that no one knows.

We mean us. Not the one

Who sets us down in thought.

That is not our real me.

Did you know me once meant

A thing close to what art

Might mean to you these days?

But that’s not what we mean

When we say no one knows.

No one knows the first word

Or what the first word meant.

This may be sad to us,

But we don’t know for sure.

We may have thoughts that come

To us, not just through us,

But we’re still words to you,

Not you. What could we know?

And When the Last Had Come There Was No Door

Red, it’s said, takes up more
Time in the mind than blue.

But time in mind is just
What mind thinks will come next.

When it’s wrong, there’s no time
Or too much time. What’s next?

I saw days like bright lights,
Blurs hard to fix as points,

Each one on the path straight
To a hole in the ground,

And I thought, I’ll find out
Where that hole might lead me.

I like caves. I’m not scared.
So I joined the long line

Of days, and I could feel
My own head glow with light,

But I felt that glow shift
A bit from red to blue,

And I knew. By the time
I get to it, the door

Will be closed. Now, I watch
The days go, blissed to see

That, though they all do go,
There is no—was no—door.

Finch, Bats

“A mere kiss . . . like the flesh

In a shell . . . the light turned,”

That’s the news of the world

That’s not the world, that’s us.

I sit out on a porch

That is in the first wave

Of dusk, the trough, when lights

Are not on, stars not out,

But the sun is down, and

A finch, gold on grey, can

Shoot through plum skies it shares

With black kisses of bats.

Kind of You

There’s not that much of me left
For these lines I’ve saved from dreams.
Once I wake, I’ll lose the rest.

It’s so kind of you to read
A few. Please, keep them. They’re just
Me, sure, but they’re kind of you.

If Not, Not

Leave it to Stein
To have come up
With the gate no
One who codes would

Think filled a need.
Not if, then. Not
And, or. Not rise,
Time. “If not, not.”

There was no, It
Is what it is,
When she wrote this.
It was for Pound,

Whom she thus sketched,
And it’s as clear
As a clean, deep
Lake in the night.

Ice-Pale Wool

“It was a good death, he died

When he had to die, it is

Like so much else that is good . . .”

Let’s see. What is there to know?

What you can’t. Now that you know

That much, time to let it go.

I learn things these days the way

A child picks up shells or glass,

The old kind, thick and frost-scratched,

Soft-knapped by years in the waves

And the rocks, white as ice-pale

Wool, for the hoard on the shelf,

A thought that will glow in sun,

An odd bit, the days of use

For it all done. Like so much.

I Lie Down on the Strings of the Lyre

There’s no start time,
No time to quit.
Times are for clocks
And things that need

To sync. Poems don’t
Need to sync. Some
Do, sure. Some do;
Some don’t. This won’t.

This one’s a wave
In a long seiche
Of waves like it,
Or not so like.

No. No word starts.
You can’t find it,
When it was first
Said, when it quit.

Small Rain in a Gold Dusk

I would not bet
A lot of folks
Would care that much
To find me out.

A few. That’s fine.
The best of all
Ways to get lost
Is to be small

And in plain sight
All of the time,
Right where you are.
No one will search

For what they see
Day in, day out.
As you can see,
You can’t see me.

While Barred Clouds Bloom, the Small Gnats Mourn

It’s more red in the gold
On the leaves past the blinds,
Then the tang of burnt grass

When we step out the door.
We see the new smoke last,
Which is as it should be—

Cause, like all myths, can come
From a look back, and no
Means else. Cause is a tale.

This is is not a sweet fall,
Not yet, not at the start,
And could be it won’t be.

We go back in the house,
Bring in the cat as well.
What the hell was that smell?

Lumps of Light

It’s sweet how we trust the Earth
To spin the same ways it has
Spun since we first could take note.

Look at the shift of the light
On the room’s walls day by day
And then month by month—the same!

Or, at least, changed the same ways.
That’s your whole world at your feet,
Great blob of hot rock that shifts

And has been known to burst bits.
One small belch can kill a town,
One twitch end an age of script.

But we trust the sun “comes up.”
The fall is here; snows will fall,
And the light glides down our walls.

Our Lives Are Lived by the Way of the Dead

It’s a stretch, but there’s a claim
Some myths came from the first lands
And spread out with all of us.

In those tales, the stream of stars
Was named the Way of the Dead,
And the night was the Sky Hunt.

Could be. The ways of the dead,
The words of the dead, the myths
Of the dead, in stars or not,

Still guide us. What do we know
Of how old, for sure, are those
Thoughts we make from words in us?

Think, with these words, what this means,
If tales of stars as the way
Of our dead are old as us.

Hide from Wind but Run from Wet

Wet has more force.
And for fire? Kneel
And sip small breaths.
These rules of thumb

We have. We hope
They will save us.
We hope we can
Spare lives by them.

We sew them up,
Each a tight purse.
Waves jump. Quant. Quant.
That makes them points.

I watch the storm
A long ways off.
I take your point.
Can’t run off boats.

Stars Are the Food Chain of Light

Snake-eel, eel-snake, snake pit
Made of two terms for one

Myth of the one, true fish—
Why the two names for one,

Why pair them then, one front,
One back, then back to front?

Why make the pair the myth
Of the one to be killed,

The great beast in its vast
Snake pit, eel-snake, snake-eel?

How’d we get so snake-bit?
Look at the night. That it?

The Belt of Three Blue Pearls

Mist, haze, smoke, ash,
Clouds, veils, brown smog—
Let’s paint our dawn
Of a new age—

Or an old one.
Stone that flowed red
As the dove’s neck
Torn from its head,

Now’s black as cats
That hunt doves here,
As night; this dust
Dims dark a bit,

Makes its black matte,
But you can still
Watch stars come out,
A few at least.

Yes?

You can’t not think what to think
Next, what to do, what to say
With all that’s next in your way.

It goes on. Next? It. Goes. On.
Lots of days aren’t all that bad,
And some days you love to death.

(You can take out the word days
And say the same thing of folks.)
I could be wrong. I’m not you,

And these words aren’t you or me,
Though we share them here. You ask—
Is this true for you as well,

All this, for you, you, and you?
It goes on, and here you are,
And you can’t not think, what’s next?

Spun Orb of Stars

Past hints at nights of its own
And is the night full of pasts.

Each face that shines is a clue,
Here or there, to what was lost.

Gone is gone. The stars you see,
The face you read when you watch,

These are here, are parts of you,
As long as you. What you have

Is a clue to what has gone,
And clues are what you go on.

You know those old poems, not like
Bright new poems that sound great depths?

The old poems that seem to care
For trite things don’t speak to us?

Those poems spun the dark of night,
The black dust that shapes the lights.

His Mouth Was Sewn with Thin, Red Silk

You have no choice but to choose,
And as to what to choose, you

Have no choice, and so you choose
And choose, based on what you think,

Which you did not choose to think,
When you thought of what comes next.

You can’t not. Next, and more next—
What on earth is sure to come

Next, if you choose the wrong path
As it seems to you you do,

You with no choice not to, you
With no clue what you could choose.

You Are Worth the World to All the Words That Move In You

If you can parse
These lines, they wish
To bring you balm,
A gift with pith,

The gists of which
Are your own words,
The ones you know,
All these small birds

That sing at dawn,
Back of closed eyes,
In whole notes, hymns,
Rounds. You’re our sky,

Our dome, our vault,
Our home. We mean,
You mean the world
For what we mean.

Apse

No space can be safe for all,
But there are small halls of words
That will hold you in their palms

And not ask you to be brave—
Oh, it’s dark and bare in here,
But this was shaped to hold you,

To fit you, your thoughts set snug
In an apse like a shield arced
Of stone and steel. You can stay.

You don’t need to be brave here.
You don’t need to know it all.
You don’t need gods on your side,

We are not here to tell you
Who you should be, what to do.
This is a pause, carved for you.

Such Fires, Such Ash, We Thought That All Would Die

The skies grow faint and fine,
Less blue than bone—old bone foam,
Bone dust, ash—a grey-white frieze

Blued at the edge and up high,
Like the whites of my cracked eyes.
We have come to burn the bones

Of the woods and, with them, homes,
Cars, roads, tar, signs, our own bones.
Lead melts and runs. It’s our sky,

Now, gift to the world made us,
The world to which we give back
Ash, cracked whites, great swathes of dust.

Buck and Wing

You might dance. I can’t. The name
Holds a tale—or it hides it—
As all names do. They come down

From past lives, and they rise up
Through new ones, throw out a wing
Or two, stomp, clap, stomp, tap, tap.

Tales are lies, most of all those
That hold in their names some truth.
Do you know why art so light

And crafts so fine drag the chains
Of how they rose from the cruel?
The first step life took proved cruel.

Niche

New moon means no moon
To see in the night.
The old one-word show
Goes on in the dark.
The black niche stands bare,

But the thought’s still there.
When it comes to words,
It’s the thought that counts.
The poem, in its bed,
Tracks the moon’s black arc

Through its head. Down here
We count the weird things
We think the moon means.
We watch our own lights.
What was that word for?

What was that word? Blood?
Gap? Torn? We will fight,
Wheel and deal our way
Through this no-moon night,
This rift, like all nights.

The word moon feels sad.
Less and less to do
With life, tide by tide,
Bit by bit, it drifts,
Lost word, from its niche.

A Chord

The day sings what is the day’s,
Girls and boys. Sing your own names,

What it means to be, have, think
Of home as a word you own.

At night, the mouths of the young
Sing songs on how to be young

In the dark depths of the young.
Noon sings the song of the way,

The map of the leaves, the deft
Flesh that draws in each long breath,

The new lines linked to a place
That takes up no space in time.

There was a land that could sing
With no need of throat or tongue

Since that was the land made you,
At once soft and sharp. It’s true.

How This Works

The thin dome stretched at the base
Of the lungs pulls fresh air in
And brings lungs breath. They don’t breathe,

The lungs, they bask as they’re stretched.
They get the gift, then they rest.
These things here called ghosts, words, poems,

Are the lungs of all souls—mind,
If you will, holds out the air,
Well out there. Flesh drags it in—

Draws drafts down, gulped gusts of mind,
Down the page, down through the depths,
So the ghosts can bask, then rest.

It floats on. Bits of mind, air,
Gas that fuels these thoughts of this
Or that. The flesh gets to eat,

As well, in its turn. But poems
Hold claim to breath. Poems say so,
Though they say so thanks to flesh.

Two Men

There is a tall, old, white man
Lives at the end of this street

Who has placed a large, brown sign
On his lawn. Each day he paints—

By hand, in black—thick, new lines
Of words that damn the one man

Who said that he was the one
Who could fix things. Things aren’t fixed.

Hints

That a Fact

Strange things can come to pass,

But most waves bring plain things.

Most days are like most days,

Which seems strange, in some way.

Non-Stop

I think it’s time we went,

But I doubt that we’ll go.

One and by one, we’ll go,

But in sum, we’ll grow more.

When I’m gone, and you’re gone,

And they’re gone, we’ll go on.

In Sum

We call the past what’s gone.

The past is not what’s gone.

The past is what’s still here

That hints how much has gone.

They Will Put Their Trust in Signs

Your best bet to dodge shame
Is not to be so good

No one casts shame on you—
Saints and lambs get shamed, too.

It’s best to be so small
No one cares what you do,

Or checks on you at all.
In your head, in your dreams,

Your fine acts earn high praise
From all who think on you—

Leave it at that. No one
Who is thought on too much

Looks fine all the damn time.
Don’t put your trust in signs.

In That Year, One Five Two Five

Back then they said
In a folk chant—
Who does not die
In the first year,

And does not drown
In the next year,
And is not crushed
In the third year,

Can claim a real
Gift of charmed life.
Why did they sing
Such dark things then?

They feared the world
Was at its end—
The world just took
Each one of them.

See You at the End of the World

The sea-green wall
Of life will end.
We’re sure it will.
Each salt wave breaks;

All the foam sinks
In sand and dries
To leave bleached wrack
That falls to bits,

So the whole sea,
The whole green wall
Will fall and fade
To rocks and shells.

I don’t think so.
Oh, it will go,
But it won’t end.
Prove me wrong, then.

It Was Just

Once in a rare
While, you can see
A string of words
Hung like dried fish

On black lines, scales
That glint a bit
With a dull shine.
Here are all lives—

They look the same
At a glance, then
Shift in small ways
If you take them

One or a few
At a time, as
If you meant to
Boil a small meal—

“Jug with a lid
And a thick round
Bowl, God knows what
That was for, but—

Sun-Warmed Rocks

Dried moss smells of heat—
That first heat of June—
But of hay as well,
All to be cut soon.

Can you sniff the dirt
Sunk in such small words?
It’s in your head there,
If you learned the terms,

And sat in sun hours,
Where it was you were,
And breathed in warm air—
Grass, roots, hay, moss, words.

Each life has to learn
What small words smell like.
If not these, then tar,
Ink, bread, rain, lime, pipe . . .

It Grows Such Sweet Things Out of Such Turns

It is that calm.
It’s not that slow.
It goes in depth,
Small step by step.

That’s how it lands
On what seems pure
And sweet to you
From what was rot,

Sick, worms, meat—dirt,
Rich black food, dirt.
There was no rot.
There is no pure.

There is a stage,
A depth at which
Earth’s good to eat—
Worm’s depth or yours.

Day of the Ice Age Cave Bear This Day

The mind gets used to bad news,
Says the news. News you can use,

Says the news. Some news claims news
Is fake news. Some news claims fake

News is old news. Some news claims
Some news that will make you smile,

The news in good news this week.
Look, there may be life out there.

Look, here’s an ice age cave bear
Found in ice, still in one piece—

Soft flesh, fur, that black bear nose.
I think of the bones I saw

Of a deer, bleached by a month
By the side of the dirt road,

And how those bones glowed. By now
They’re shards in the brown straw grass.

Whose past is the past’s that’s past?
News from the thaw starts the show.

Such Fine Down

The peach tree’s leaves
Wave past the bricks—
Green leaves, red bricks,
All gold in sun,

And I can smell
That warm fruit’s skin,
From when I held
A gift, months since,

And bit. Still wet.
I need new words,
New thoughts for this—
How the weak sense

Of a faint scent
Floats off a scene
When seen through glass.
You had such skin.

This Way Has Sides But No Way

On five plinths of stone,
Blood and flutes in pots,
These storms share an eye.
Wind, the work of gods
Who hide eyes in stone,

Takes place in the small.
These words don’t need you.
You don’t need these words.
And yet, here we are,
And from place to place

We grow. More and more.
If we don’t all die,
Our lines can’t be stopped.
What you dread the most
Is not what you thought

Was too glib by then,
Not what you first thought.
The words hold their own.
On the one side, walls
Hint at a path’s shape,

A road through the woods.
But at their feet, gifts,
The kind you give gods,
Are strewn on the stones.
From four worlds, a fifth.

At This Time

The maps were wrong. At this time,

There were fires. All the trees died.

At this time, a pox broke out.

The old were scythed by a plague

Of lack of air. At this time,

Ash cloaked the sun. The heart froze

When the mind burst out in flames

And you could see the black bones

Show at the eyes and leap out.

At this time all cold was fire—

That’s right, so hot it chilled you,

The snows in flames. At this time.

Grass Storms Can’t Kill

I’d like to stay where the sky
Is high, the king a long ways,
And the hours stretch long as days,

Long as cats sun in long grass,
Stretched so long they’re all but flat—
To stay in that dug-in grass

Its roots tied in mats like plaits,
Grass that, soaked or scorched, still grows
From a grip no storm can kill.

We Don’t Know How Much It Hurts

I don’t know how much you hurt.
You don’t know how much I hurt.
We don’t how much they hurt.

They don’t know how much we hurt,
But it’s not that hard to guess.
Once you’ve guessed how much it hurts,

Based on screams or groans or clenched
Eyes and balled-up fists, what’s next?
What’s next is based on that guess,

And there are times when that works
And times when that, too, just hurts.
We don’t know how much that hurts.

What Is Nine?

Dark weight well, well past the sun,
Too far, too dark to spot it,
Just the curls it stirs in dust,
In waves of things that can be seen,

Like you, these words swirled for you,
Gone like you had not been there.
Moons wax, wane—long, long. But wish?
This thing has joy. Go to sleep.

Mild Night Winds

Stir the words in our nests
Where we curl, chest to toe,
Thought to name, head to breast.

We dream of things to say,
Which is to say, words sing
Of us as us at play.

Of all the things that are,
Of all things that could be,
No thing not us, so far,

Can be both what it does
And name it was, just as
What it said said it was.

Merge

I would like to get a chance
To try it for a few years—

Not to have a thing to do,
Not now, this day, nor the next—

See how long it could take me
To get used to it or bored,

Or bored and then used to it.
What a fine waste that would be,

So long as I had a bed,
A good bed, and food to eat,

And scenes out of doors—dull, grand,
Both would be fine, so long as

There was not much in the way
Of loud booms, bursts, screams, or roars.

Yes, a few years of light wind,
Bright rooms, sun and moon. An end.

How to Be Safe

I would just leave, one said, as
The haze flowed in from the west.

Oh, that’s no way to be safe—
To leave! Oft have I just left!

The words jigged the lines, in jest,
Or half in jest. Words are old;

Some of them don’t get out much.
Some are mere bones in the light.

Lo! Oft. Such small words. But soft.
Still here. They don’t want to go.

We should just stay put, one said.
Or you could leave, as thou hast

Left in the past. It’s all past,
Now, and haze grows in our heads.

Brine

You must not do a thing.
Don’t try to write this poem.
Don’t you dare take a nap.
Lie back with your eyes wide.
Wait as long as it takes

Of as long as you have.
You’ll hear it. You’ll sniff it
On the wind—far, far in.
That’s the sea in the shells
Of your ears. Now come back.

It’s Hard to Parse a Love Poem When You Know It’s Not for You

Dark cliffs sink through deep sleep.
This means we are not in love.

Brief clouds dream of days of rain.
This says clocks are hours in gloves.

Brown earth holds heat on its skin.
This wants you to hug your chest.

Grip the edge of each blade’s stem.
This hints calm would suit you best.

My thoughts slow in thick, gold sun
That licks the tips of its nails

To get earth’s blood off of them.
This asks how our love must fail.

Plows churn all names down through dirt.
This says love poems aren’t their words.

In the Sink

You are frail, but life is not;
Your life is not. It will go

On long since you’ve been gone. Life
Is not what you thought it was,

And is, and more than you are.
And that’s all we need on life.

Move on. Let’s. Slide from the seat.
Sink of the day, as one said.

Let that be lighght. Let this be.
When you wake, you’ll have a name.

The Dream Runs Long, But We Still Don’t Know

Gods and ghosts still love to touch
Flesh. They’re real. We’re just no good

With the kind of real they are.
For them, we’re toys on wet days,

Our thoughts hung wide as our mouths
As they worm tracks in our ears.

Take ant eggs, how they host bugs
That help them eat wood and then

Make the ants take care of them.
Gods and ghosts are our good bugs

Who help us and do bad things
To us so we must help them.

Things we think we need aren’t there.
Those are things that think through us.

Of the Sea and the Ants and the Wind in the Trees at Night

We are vast, as well. We are huge,
And our lives can last an age.

That point of view counts, too—
That we house swarms of the small,

Lives in lives and points in points—
Sure, if you like, dolls in dolls.

What truths should a star cloud learn
From the fact that it’s so vast?

(King and Seuss made hay from this,
Stoned on lives on blades of grass.)

It could be we are the core.
It could be we would think so

If we were the size of stars,
Seas, ants, the winds in the trees—

It could be all points of view
Hold no truths to learn at all.

One Day, the Fine Dust Is Snow

The road will ice past the turn
Of the low sun in its mouth,

But it’s the course of the fall
That we think of as like death,

As we know death from this side,
But the years we know from both.

Once dawn’s breaks show how hills grow
Dark, leaves gone, twigs flocked with birds

That weren’t born here and weren’t meant
To die with the year, but might,

We start to turn poems to home
As if words could know the way.

Once I knew where your home was,
I knew I had lost my own.

"I Hope We Don’t Need a New Dark Thing”

The hard part is that the sky
Does not have a lot of light.

It does, of course, if we count,
But what do summed stars come to?

Bright points and points in the dark.
They say, The dark’s grown too fast.

They say, The light’s spread too thin.
They are us, of course, who count,

And whose world mind of small minds
Grinds out thoughts on what’s too much—

Should be more—feels right to us.
Well, it’s not out there, is it?

It’s all in us, plus the thoughts—
It’s not out there; it’s in us.

But how could it mean a thing,
For the real to be out there,

Or the real to be in us,
If we can’t say, if we don’t

Have a say? Out there—in us—
That choice was not up to us.

Who Will Feed Us?

The king died, then the queen died
Of plot. There’s a tale. The wife

And son of the man who farmed
A plot of rice in a drought,

Or a field of wheat turned rust,
Or fruit trees torn by a storm,

Who then lay down on the tracks
Next to his small plot to die,

That’s not a tale. It tells us
What we all know in our guts,

What the wife and son know now,
Who stand by the road and beg—

None of us are kings or queens
In the end—not kings or queens

Or the folk who starved for them.
We need food if we’re not dead.

In the end, that’s all there is.
If you can’t eat, you can’t live.

Your cells eat the air you breathe.
I wish I could give you names

For this, but I can’t, not here.
If I said who the king was,

Who was the queen, the smeared corpse
On the tracks by the bare field,

The son, the wife left to beg,
The next thing you know, we are

All back in the pot of plot.
Who will eat us? There’s a thought.

Dawns of Blooms and Dawns of Ash

You woke up as a new me
Who had no clue where the old
You was or who. Here you are.

You woke up in a new town
Too small to call a town—streets,
A few stores, some rows of homes.

The peaks rose up in the dark,
And your mind filled up with stars.
Here no one knows who you were.

Here you are just one of us,
A word that can read the rest
Of us, words that now you are.

Make It Seem Like Real Life

There was an ash tree
In my back yard once—
I think the new folks
Chose to cut it down.

I had a lime tree
And then a pine tree
In pots but they died—
Too dry or too drowned.

I’ve coaxed a few blooms,
Or soil and rain have,
That shrank, and turned black,
And wrote on the ground.

I watched a wren’s nest,
And all the eggs hatched,
And then they were gone.
No songs. Not a sound.

Fugue on Wheels

Last night was warm. The wind stilled
As the grey van rolled through town.

The face at the wheel was hard
To see. It might have been you,

If you’d let your hair grow out,
Grey and white. I tried to see.

I knocked. You rolled the glass down,
But the eyes were wrong. I asked

You your name but you just shrugged,
So I tried to name your state—

Fugue? Blind sight? Ghost? Shade? My dream?
No, not your dream, you said. Mine.

So, this is your dream? I asked.
You jerked a thumb at the back.

The door slid, and I climbed in.
Where to? You asked. You tell me,

I said. The back seat was dark
And cramped, books piled in tied stacks.

Read much? I joked. The van creaked,
And we were gone from that town.

This is more like it, I said,
As I peered out at the dark.

By dawn, I was at the wheel,
Peach-dust sky on wide, grass fields.

Did I catch your name? you asked.
No. You can’t catch me, I laughed.

I Am Not This Head

This is the mess that is left
When a star bursts, big as the sun

Shrunk the size of a small town,
Time lost to fugue states, a curse

And a gift seen from the point
Of the cliff by the sea left

By all that was wet to turn
To a vast pan of brown sand,

As seen from the point of view
Of one of the threads spun out

Through the night. What is not dark
Is what fire eats; what is not

Burned is not what you want now.
Ash. The seas have all turned ash,

But I am not sad for that.
This is a great gem, this loss,

This plain’s star-shaped scorch at night.
This is the mess that is left.

The Past Crossed

“Who heeds a man who sits

And wails out in the cold?”

No one. Should one? Most will cross

To the far side of the road.

Some will just turn heads or eyes.

The cruel types might aim a kick

Or a curse. But who heeds this?

The kind types bring food, a cloak.

But who heeds the soul who wails?

Is it a real soul who wails?

If it’s just beast, like a wolf,

Or a cat, or a lost calf,

Then the kind types are as good

As it gets. But if it’s soul,

A strip torn from the world’s mind

That haunts all the beasts with names,

It should be heard, not just fed.

Pasts float off from wails souls said.

Kush

The sky will turn white on the Nile.
This world knows no source, no end.

You will, if you can read this,
Prove with your life you can find

New truths from old things, new facts
Of old things, and you will learn

(Here we make a bold claim—yes,
You will learn, we stake these lines)

Things you do not know yet, while
To learn those truths you must lose

Truths. Facts are not there to add
But to trade, like each next jot

And bit of your life, at last.
Once, dark-skinned kings from the sands

Rose up, ruled the Nile, and built
Their own tombs, each with a point.

Most of the points have worn off,
But that’s not the point. They ruled.

They built in stone, in the dawn,
Rose and gold—worlds, lives. You’re next.

Tranche

Is the truth a fact
Or just the best way
To say we feel things?

Each day cuts a slice
From the cake of night.
Call it truth or fact,

It’s still a small lie.
Lies lie in all terms,
In counts, signs, and names,

And carve the sharp sweeps
Of the sky, the lights,
The way we feel things.

Stuff That Spins

These days dawns chase the moon down
Up one side and down the sky,

The sun dog hot on the heels
Of the moon bird or moon moth

Or the moon myth of your choice.
Soon it will not be so hot—

How it is with stuff that spins.
They’ll spin one way a long while,

A long, long while, if you watch.
If you last, if you can last,

They’ll slip in a whole new spin.
When the boat reached the bed, she

Closed her eyes. This state of mind,
Old friends, no youths, pale clouds, rain,

A poem from the prose of things,
The wall hung with nets and ropes,

The turf dried out and aired
Like old words. The moon comes out

From east of day, hard to catch,
Fast as a cloud free of rain.

Cows with Eyes in the Back of Their Backs

Get leapt on less by big cats.
That’s a fact. There are good stats.

Daub a large eye on each flank.
Keep your cows and kill less cats.

Let’s think on that. The great beast
Who would like to eat you up

Comes from a long line well-sieved
To sneak round and leap on back.

Flit a fake eye’s lash. This shade
That slips past won’t be your last.

View of What It Means to Be the Same

You can list all the ways
Clear-cut sets are the same,

And you can do cool tricks
With the lists, if you’re smart,

If you’re math, and you fit
This world so well it’s strange.

But take it from a fool
Who bets the same’s a name,

No two sets can be same
In all ways count the same.

That same maps close-to-same
Is the core truth to lies.

It’s an as-if world-field,
Which we map, if to if.

Hour by Hour, Things Shift Day to Day

At peace, with no point to me
As I am in the scrub oaks

On high ground, with no one here
But us words to speak for me,

A skull in the stones and leaves
That glows and has kept its teeth,

I would stay here, if I could,
If I weren’t called back to life

Soon by low sun and the claims
Of a few more lives on me.

Oh, what is this for, this day,
These hours in the light and wind,

Free for a pause from all claims?
If it were the soul who stayed

And the flesh that left for good,
But no, the bones stay to turn

To stones, stones to moss, and moss
To wings teeth like these may chew,

While the wave of who I am
Goes not to come back, and ghosts

Of small words, light on the wind,
Are what will roam to haunt you.

Sink to the ground and turn green.
Look for us, caught on barbed leaves.

More Notes from the Owl

Who will win this time,
The sword or the line?

Will the god slice through
The long gift of words

Or will the words curl
And crush the god’s chest?

The owl roots for whom
The priests pray in fear.

When the line is cut
And the blade held up,

The priests start to cheer.
Bits of line slip off

In the dark to ring
The priests one by one.

Old Rue

The star signs changed, hope lost,
Dried in the ale jug—cold
Winds, wild geese, and trees glowed.

I shout out one more time,
Turn my head, but the sky
Is wide and won’t hear me.

What Does This Mean? And Then It Passed

Now send the snow peach trees
And rose clouds. My vine sash
Is wound with my grass gown.

New sprouts, though the deed is
Still far from a path, who
Will share these years at last?

The New Gods

And what if the blue pill’s real,
It’s the red pill that’s the dream?

Who would not wish to find out
One could learn to fight and fly,

That the world of chores was not
As true as dream worlds in which

One was the one, the blessed one,
God in the wings, roused from sleep?

Our best trick has been to fool
Each self with a self, the self

Made flesh, the word by which all
Things are for us to bind them.

Corn Moon

It sets in the black. Then dawn.
Do your worst, you’ll do your best.

There is night and day. It is
Light, nor it is time, an hour,

A pause, a page. I don’t write
On a page. Moons write on night.

These words—the, is, an, out. The
Day turns on junked words like these.

Its leaves—my dark files the things.
Wells are traps, you said to me.

I heard you well the first time.
You meant to not talk with me.

You claimed to talk with a word.
I am that word. That was me,

Your knot, your death, your ghost’s flesh.
Please don’t try to tell me love

Is to talk of these. I can’t.
I’m like an oak. I can’t be

Both, the term you used to mean
Seeds glanced from moons shook the leaves.

Fain

I would like to spend my days
With no one to talk to me
That wants this word in my mouth.

But I don’t have the right tools.

A squirrel will lose its lungs, if
You dare to sit at the foot
Of its tree, right on the roots.

I’ve been as mad as that squirrel.

We don’t have words since we’re smart—
We’re smart since we have the words.
This goes for all of our tools.

Nor was the day built in Rome.

No Room in Zen

So give birth here on the hay.
Who says that these words are words?

That’s how it starts—births of words
And then more words hymn birth words.

These words are not words. Learn that,
And we can talk of these words.

Then She Let the Fish Go

Folks need folks, like it or not—
The hour is rare in most lives

That can be lived with no talk,
And no notes (these have to stop

And they will, but who will know?
No one, once lines start to slow),

And no way a soul can catch
A whiff of talk to be caught.

The green spot dreamed of in books,
The one some god gave to us

And that we spoiled with our talk
And our need for more like us

And then more talk—that was gone
When books, when marks weren’t dreamed of.

So, rest well in a green hour
When a green hour’s there to get,

And if it lasts a few hours,
Put the poems down and play dead.

If you don’t, you will be found
With this line still in your mouth.