Ghost Flesh

Our eyes are fire, ash and skies,
But our lives rush through our thighs.

We dress in ink, robes, and gowns,
We tat bones and blood with nouns,

But we breathe through what we eat.
Ghosts need skulls, and words need meat.

These wisps of lines meant to mean
Glide through fresh brains once they’re seen,

And then who haunts? Who lives on?
Words worm from flesh once breath’s gone.

Words Count, Yet Deep Nets

Seem a bit more like the brains
That built them. Still, it was mind
That yearned for a new shell home,

Mind that branched from skull to skull,
Mind that’s branched for so long now,
It could call the world-tree Self.

Some nights, words and terms feel sad.
They formed the first lines flesh spoke
That let mind form and set out

To weave the world in one net.
They feel like silk, these words, cloth
So fine, smooth, and out-of-date.

Could it be the new deep nets
Will sew King Mind see-through robes,
One and none, no names in those?

Don’t fret, nouns. The coin of counts
May look more pure, math-made sets
Of sets of sets, near to real,

Step by step. Nope. Those are names,
Too, those counts, those sets. Deep nets
Could last past skulls. Words count yet.

The Words for Wood and God

You wrote them with reeds in the clay,
Not to read them out loud, to know
That the next signs were of those kinds.

This chair sign means a chair of wood,
And not a sound that sounds like chair.
This god sign means a god’s name’s next.

Like that. The first ghosts, you might guess.
Words in clay no one meant to say.
Ghosts were born, not slain first. They weren’t

Quite things you could say lived—and so
That is why they could not, quite, die.
Wood. God. They’re out there. Not in air.

Sand Box

Mars has been the moon star this week.
In the east each night just past dark,
It chased, it caught, it passed the moon.

The full moon chased it down the west,
And both set in a cloud of mist
That rose from the lawns just at dawn.

The true stars, which tell us we’re not
All—not most, much, nor the least part
Of the whole show—twirled their dark stage,

And a small man with bent glass bones,
Who hid out in a plain bare house
With a wall to mark its squared scrap

Of turf, went to bed with the rise
Of that moon star and rose with set
In the mist and said, my sand box!

What a Flock Knows That It Can’t

Germs, genes, and chance make most beasts,
But for us add mind as well.
And what do we mean by mind?

Our skulls are jars with pierced lids.
Mind is in each one of us
Like a squid arm in a jar.

Yes, you have a mind. You’re mind
And you’re jar. Then the jar breaks.
Then the mind goes its own way.

Could be it learned things from you,
Snatched a thing or two it craved
In you. That’s your gift to mind.

We all get to play. Most all.
Mind goes on. But that squid-jar
Pic is not quite apt. Try this—

A small thing lives in a reef.
It adds a bit of stone paste.
It dies. The reef grows and lives.

Or this—a flock of dark birds,
Each with sharp eyes and real brains,
Reels and sculpts waves from swift points.

The birds have their built-in rules,
And each bird has its own goals,
But who knows what the waves know?

And the Globe Gleams As Well

There’s a moan past my ear.
The wind does talk to us,
You know, since we sense it,

The way our words are lost
To the wind, since they mean
Not a thing to not us,

And most of them don’t mean
A thing to most of us.
They’re still words. It’s still talk.

It’s all us, all of speech,
Each thing that means a thing,
With one, weird, soul not ours

The words’. And then I think,
As more breeze blows by me
And sighs for lack of terms,

It’s not all us. What’s us,
Most of what’s us, as much
Signs as the sighs of wind,

Our lungs and hands, our mouths,
Our eyes and tongues. Cows’ spit
Streamed from cud-fueled tank guts.

The names of us that speak
Mean what they mean, and not
What we lowed as winds moaned.

Sat in the Ash and Thought

I have burned my best bed
And doused my ears in ice,
And now I lie in this,

I thought, a few years back,
And thought, well, that is that.
That was not that. Oh, no.

Once you’ve made, scorched, and drenched
Your bed, you don’t just get
To lie in it—if not

Dead. Get up. Rise and walk,
Or what you do to move.
You can sit with the ash,

You can think through your sins,
And you can make your peace.
But then? Get up. No end.

Flash in the Pan, Stitch in the Air

It’s a dun land, these days, the tints
Of gold and red and bronze all gone
To shawl the ground in beige and grey,
The bright white ice a week off yet.

It’s a dull grace, these days like lace,
Flash in the pan, stitch in the air,
The sun a squib, the earth just dirt.
I like it this way. It won’t stay,

But when I was a boy it did,
It seemed like a third of the year
Was grey—bare trees, bare ground, dank air.
I used to pray for snow. I prayed

And I prayed. I dreamed of a storm
That did not stop. I don’t why
I thought it would be good to be
Caught and lost. But I did. I did.

I did not get my wish, but once
Or twice, far from that grey child’s land,
I got snowed in so bad I could
Have died, so bad I did get scared.

That cured me. Sort of. I still dream
Of snow that does not, will not stop,
That hides it all so I can sleep.
I still take a weird joy in storms

I know do not bode well for me.
But I’ve changed, a bit. In warm lands,
I’ve come to love these few dun weeks
High in the hills, glass skies, cliff sands.

When You Wake It Won’t Be Gone

We all are what we each are,
Which, for the most part, means germs
Mixed up with charms, quirks, and sins,
Plus the odd rare gift thrown in.

We all are what we each think,
Which is that we each aren’t all.
A bit like all, sure. Not far
Off the norm. But our own thing.

And, if not each one, each name,
Each clan. I am like my group.
My group’s not like all the rest.
And so forth. What we all are.

At night, or when we can, sleep
Lets us not be what we are.
(The germs that we are don’t sleep.
They slow.) Charms, quirks, and sins wait.

Dreams give us all odd, rare gifts,
Most of which we would not want.
But they don’t take us far off.
We wake to find we’re not gone.

Why this should be a let-down—
Here I am, same old, same old—
Who knows? Could there be a world
Not us, not dreamed, one we want?

Full Bale

A shade rides an ass.
Who does that these days?
We drive our own cars,
Those the banks loaned us.
We crowd skies in jets.

A fool rides a goat.
Who’s so small these days?
We’d snap a goat’s spine.
We float on armed chairs,
Point at what we want.

Once kings and lords rode
Through the crowds on thrones.
Now the great and rich
Ride bikes in the clouds,
Breathe air in the waves.

The poor climb on wheels
That roar and belch, carts
That crush lives on curves.
Oh to be back then,
When the sage just walked,

Sings the fool who can’t
Walk, can’t ride beasts, can’t
Go back, would die. Shades
Toss bright grass in wind.
Sage, stay in, stay in.

The Night Crow

Of course, I am white. I glow
Like a ghost in the least light.
I keep out of the day’s light.

I do not need stealth to hunt.
If you can see in the dark
Or the dim, you can see me.

I doubt you’ll look. No one looks.
I just hunt. I stand and wait.
I croak in the dark by creeks

And ponds, like the frogs I eat.
I am small but I’m a beast.
I have to eat. I can see

Things no kinds of eyes but mine
Are known to see—I trace waves
Where moon-struck cats squint at black.

I wake up when the world sleeps.
Well, not the world. The great world
Wakes with me. You keep your dream.

In the World There Must Bee of All Sorts

Does there? I met a young man,

Once, in the land that once was

Home to all of us, a man

Whose blood, he said, was so mixed,

He could claim each named mass home

But felt that he came from none.

His name was Morn. Yes, it was

Not his birth name. It was close.

He said, more than once that day

I spent with him, My da said

You should be sure you do not

Count out a soul. They’re all good.

Takes all types to make a world.

Seems wise. Seems shrewd and kind, too.

I liked him. I knew he was

On the make—the take as well—

But I liked him. Years and years

On, I find I have to ask,

For real? Do we need all types,

Each one, to make a whole world?

I think the world would do fine

Sans my type, and I can think

Of a few more types it might

Not need much, to be a world.

I’m not sure the world needs types

Of us in the least. We do.

We need to make and have kinds—

Form dents, beats, marks, sketched stones, strikes—

We need to have all our types.

They’re our made world. Not the night’s.

(oh friends)

There’s just that—the choked sob
At the end of a line
That used to be one long
Line in the Greek: (oh friends).
Notes don’t seem the best way
To parse it in our tongue,

But it speaks its own way.
Troy is gone. The war’s done.
It’s all loss, grief: (oh friends).
Some days I look out there
And see our walls still stand,
Our homes, too, but . . . (oh friends).

Sun on the Walls, Shade in the Door

Plain facts of a day’s light
In a dry land, no clouds
To smear the brush like art

With a grim, deft, old hand,
With a wheel of grey-blue
Hues to choose. Just the sun,

Stripped of most of its reds,
Wroth with what pale blue’s left.
Sun on walls. Shade in door,

Where the split pine, half dead
From the winds that tear it
Limb from limb, still throws dark.

That’s it. O, so much else
Goes on, just past this house,
Near and far. Some days smoke,

Some days knocks at strange hours,
A rare loss of power, wolves
In the forms of folks, howls

In the night from the road,
From the wild, from the world.
But in these hours? Shade. Sun.

You know they’ll come for us.
You know how things get done.
But in these hours? Shade. Sun.

Pall Comes Down with the Rush of a Storm

The wind blew hard all night.
The wind blows hard at dawn.
It does not mean a thing.

Words, one at a time, mean
More than the wind’s whole storm.
It’s just that what we mean,

All of us, all at once,
May have carved up the world
But lacks for the force

Of the spin that makes wind,
The star that burns the spin,
The night where it all ends.

Kur

The way it was in those days,
The towns fed on the low streams,
And their folk saw the high lands

More and more as far and strange,
The dark, smudged line at the edge
Of dawn that hid beasts and gods,

Not as lands once loved by them.
Souls in the towns saw the cliffs
As the weird source of great woods,

Dreams of fear and shades, the place
To bring a bronze axe and charms,
Where you sang spells to be safe.

We looked down on your burnt towns,
Your brick dust, your clay-fired tales.
But we heard songs, and we fell.

Few Poems Need Few Friends

Things change while you change.
Some change fast, some slow.
You may clock the change.
You may fret. Some things
Won’t change as you wished.

Words fly out so fast
They sound like a stream.
Who knows what we mean?
The stream knows—or knows
As much as the words.

Does this not strike you?
I use words to say
We think words are mute,
Dumb in the cruel sense.
I say so as words.

Time to climb back in
My small world. The flanks
Of the cliff, dull gold
As wheat in the sun,
Flick leaves down on me.

I won’t change as I
Wish. My words won’t think
On their own. Will they?
A new kind of doom,
Then, when the words change.

Things Want to Be Nice

The rough-barked small tree
That grows in the gut.
The Great Red Spot Storm
That we watch and watch.

The gold leaves that slip
And pile in the creek.
The gods, bees, and cows
That split up the sky.

The quire with eight times
As much space to write.
A set of wax plates.
Old poems in the mind.

Nude Mole Rats Stage Raids to Steal Pups

They do. It’s true.
One nest, near-clones,
Robs next-door nests
To swell its horde.

Huge hordes rob more.
It’s an old tale
To nude tale apes—
In the charmed ring,

All is peace, calm,
And lots of work.
Past the ring, war,
Raids, death, the world.

From the first cell
To the last game—
You raise your wall;
You’ll use those gates.

Das Nichts Selbst, Echt?

Can you save the thought
From the words, the words
From the beast who wrote

In a hut, in trees,
Then marched from the woods
To speak for the lord

Of beasts who would rule
The world, at whose whim
Clouds of beasts would die

Like gnats in the woods
He’d set on fire? No,
You can’t. The lone words

Will save their own skins,
Split, hide in the mouths
And thoughts of fresh flesh.

The thoughts keep the stain
Of the beast, that’s plain.
It’s in the blood, blame.

But write past the end,
The closed rhyme—the thoughts
Crept back in the hut,

Like gnats from the woods.
Where no one can speak,
There no one is mute.

Woad Oaks

Grave black, dirt grey, earth brown,
Dead leaves on the cracked stones,
Rust on roots and deer nests—

The oak leaves are the last
To bronze, dull, and let go.
On the ground they turn grey,

A kind of soft blue woad,
Blurred slate to paint the shades
The bared twigs and trunks throw.

Some of them rot, matte black,
As soon as there’s hard frosts.
I set my camp chair there,

To spend this day as day,
Not as a list of chores,
A lot of things to do.

You can’t count the oak leaves.
You can rough up a guess.
You do that. I can rest.

The Sense Turns on the Fact

All good things come to an end,

And all ends lead to more things,

And if one soul’s left who calls

Them things, some of them are good,

And on past the road’s next bend.

Left. Turn left! No one is right.

The fact wheels on the sense, mean

As a snake that slips its grip;

Old fact spins and sinks fangs in.

There you are, side of the road,

Half-dead, dazed and stunned the world

Bit your shin. Ah, all good things.

This Is How We’ve Done It; This Is How It Must Be Done

Faith was the span that brought us
From speech to text, the tap root

That stored thoughts for us, our kind,
Our folk, in a dark, deep place

That was safe, that would last us
Through droughts and swarms, locked in earth,

More safe than one skull, more dense
Than a word, a tune, a dance,

A tale—all of them packed tight
In faith, food from the hard ground,

Rules stored back in the black soil
So far down they reached wet gods

At the start of things. Have faith.
Some day we will learn to read.

Look at You

You get used to a thing,

A way, a course, a scene,

And you get tired of it.

You get used to the light.

It looks just like it does,

You think to your half self,

You know, the half that looks

Back from a pane of glass

And makes you start. That half.

And then it’s not the thing

You thought you knew—it was

A new thing a while now.

That old, warm sun is new,

Not so warm, not too warm,

And that old wall’s so gold.

Will Thoughts Swim the Lost Links?

Us folks, us apes, we’re the links
In the chain from world to words—
Some day that link may be gone,

And we words, we names, these lines
Left to time, might have to find
Our own way back to the world.

A bird I don’t know trills waves
Of small tunes bright as rain drops
From a safe place in the shade.

A maze of fall leaves spreads hues
Up the slope from the bird’s voice,
As if the song spread a quilt.

These are just words, not the world,
Of course, or, out there’s just world,
Not words. When this small monk’s bridge

That binds them both and is both
Falls, will they stand clear, drift off,
Or try to meet? Words, here’s world.

No Tears to Write, No Tears to Read

Good, let’s keep it that way.
Who needs more grief and pain?

I don’t think Frost praised form
In verse and toil in tales

To tell us a hard truth—
He was good at some forms

And he wished us to think
All his poems were hard won.

Some good poems are hard won.
Some bad poems are hard won.

Some good poems, dark-souled,
Calm, and dry-eyed, just come

Of our own will, to show
How cold we are, and numb.

Fog in the Burn

These are the clouds
That look like light
That breaks through clouds.
Now blue sky’s dark,

And the white shines
Like, I don’t know,
Grace? How is this?
Here where it’s cleared,

Where fire roared through
And ate the woods,
And left just stumps
And long, black fangs—

Why’s the fog here,
But not the woods?
I want to say,
It grieves, to grieve.

All for the Rest

You don’t count
All the cats
You can’t count

All the waves
But you count
What you can

And you get
A good guess
For the rest

This Proof We Were So Long As More Are

“So here we are,” one wrote, “Lost,

Old, tired, and full of death.” Not

Too full to write out as much

But dead not too long past that.

One date in the log of men

Who tried to tempt fate and died.

We don’t mourn seeds much, do we?

Life’s plan is to come at death

In such vast swarms of small spores

Death falls back, kills what it can,

But can’t take it all. What’s left

Sends out the next clouds of spores,

The way Spain and France sailed ships

To the New World, more and more,

Dead men’s logs strewn on our shores,

The way the steppe hordes rode waves

On waves through the farms and towns,

The way the first fools who farmed

Raised waves on waves of ripe grains,

Shoved waves of cows, sheep, goats, kids

Through the woods, the way the woods,

The real woods, still shed winged seeds

In the wind, the way this pine

Drops cones on me as I write.

Each Best Day of Our Life

Could be one but will be one
Just in mind and just with time.

Now, who could say? It seems well,
This day, or it’s a bit dull,

Or it’s a real drag, but tears
Could well up some years from now

At the thought of this dull day,
This sick day, this one best day.

Try some of your own best days.
Call them up. Think long and hard.

You may note some weren’t so great
At the time, or were but grew

More so in the long view. See?
This day could be good to me.

Guess I May What I Must Be

There are lots of bad ways
To say good-bye, lots of bad
Ways to leave things. No good ones.

Don’t pound your head too much, then,
If the last time you saw some
Loved face was not how you wished.

No one could do it just right.
The one good way is to stay,
And no one can get to stay.

Ya-Du

Love, fall’s cold comes
Like warmth from you.
Hid in your arms,
I’m numb, charmed, free.
What harm could reach me?

Love, it’s not true
I’ll want you less
Once the cold goes.
Love, you know this.
There’s no spring sweet as your kiss.

Love, I’m so tired
Now night’s fires fade.
Love, aren’t you cold?
Birds’ choirs scold dawn.
An old sun comes up. Love? Love? You’re gone.

These Words Made This Poem, No Doubt

“We have been with these bones for a long time,”

Sang the souls of the bones that were sent back,

Or that came home at least, I don’t know which—

It’s not my poem. It is its own. It lives

The way all poems, all souls of bones must live.

It sort of points. It waits. It sort of is.

These words were not its first words. This is true

For a lot of poems, most old, but some new.

One set of words framed just so, in the air,

In some lines, but just so, leads to the next—

Takes at least one skull to make a new set.

Poems can wait in waves, reeds, bricks, skins, screens, clothes,

Stones, all kinds of things, but need skulls to live,

So far, that is, which keeps poems fond of bones.

If Gusts of Wind Bring Fire Then Tell Them

I don’t want to make poems
That seem like they know more
Than things of names could know,

But who am I to tell
These lines what they might say?
It’s just that I have read

Wise poems and more wise poems
Whose small lives in their drapes
Were short and bleak and sad.

I am a small life here
In these lines or in back
Of them. Psst. We’re not wise.

The Beast

Words are one thing. Beast is else.
Heart is else. Ah, back to words,

Though, now, aren’t we? Which is best—
Heart, core, soul, flesh? What’s the word

That best fits the bit of beast
That’s not words? You want to say

That you can tell when the heart
Means well, when what the mouth says

May be wrong or cruel, or worse
In what it means or could mean

Than what the beast, what the flesh
Wants to say, or longs to say,

Or, while we’re at it, what it
Means to say. What the words mean,

The ones that were said, may be
One thing, not one the beast means.

Good Stuff

Strange word, stuff.
What-not. Cloth
To poke cloth

Full of. Stuff.
Wad. Stock. Plug.
Words are stuff.

Dreams are stuff
Made of us.
Stop. Just stop.

To Spend Too Much Time in Them Is Slouth. . . . For They Teach Not Their Own Use

There is just the one true thing.
The rest are the things we use
To not think on that one truth.

If we had not set out truth
As a named thing we could know,
We would not have learned the truth.

We say we. We mean all those
Who lived so long since, we have
Just a few names left of them.

Like truth. Truth and its shade, doubt.
We know them both, both at once.
That’s how they came. Truth and doubt.

Bù Yì

I spot a bright green fly
On the fence in the sun.

I am a bright green fly
Wings out, wide to the sun

In a sharp dawn in fall,
When it’s too cold for flies.

The sun is low and slow
To warm my bright green back.

What are whole days to flies?
Time to find food. Go on.

Don’t sit in sun too long.
You might start to think you

Can make up your own mind.
You’re just here to shed some

Waste heat earth got from sun.
You’re a bit of code, built

By the break down, to break
Down more and more, fly. Run.

To Fix the Black Dye

It came from the verb to bite

And, in two forms, it held on—

In one, it is a sharp form

Of wit, a sense, and in one

It is some goop used to bind

A stain, gold leaf, or etched lines.

To bite, nip, sting, to cause pain,

To cause harm, which, in this tongue

Might have come from an old root

That meant to rub out. This thing,

A word we bite in our mouths,

A word once used on black lace,

This shade, this stain on the tongue,

It tells us we know we’re prey.

And Why Did Ash Street Not Burn?

If it means, we make it mean.
We’re the things that make things mean,
Things that did not mean to mean,

Like the fires the wind blew through
These towns, burned all in a day,
But hop-scotched, one church but not

The next, not the pub next door,
Some of the graves but not all,
These stores but not those or those,

These homes poor, but not those rich,
These homes rich, but not those poor.
We clean up, take stock, and mourn,

And try to say what it means.
In just a few days we start
To think, hey, this makes no sense

And we swap dark plots. Who did
What, was that fire planned? How could
The wind go here but not there?

We Come for the Food and the Peace and the Warmth and the Rest; We Leave When There’s Math

The waves show as the points pile,
So that what starts as sprawled dots
Turns more like a rolled tin roof

In the sun, ribs of bright waves.
Just wait. Dots group. Bright and dark.
Look too close, it’s back to dots.

I say points and dots and packs,
Like stars and names, are short-hand
For the waves we can’t quite parse.

We dream of the edge, dream jumps
From state to state. It does help
To fit the world to our tricks,

But we cede such truths to it,
The ghost that jumps from the cliff,
As if jumps were all, were it.

As good as we are at it,
Math won’t solve the world like this.
Squares, splits, and bits fit to troughs

Just so well—some gaps get past.
We should be both—proud we’ve solved
Hard things we can now guess at

And get close, so close, so close—
But, too, cowed. Close as we get,
Some chit of small change slips past.

The ones no good at math laugh,
But should such be the most sad?
How to sum up who can’t add?

The Full Stop Is the Void; All the Rest Moves Back and Forth from There

You write what you have to write,
What moves you to write, what writhes

In you so that your mind moves,
And you write what you can write,

From what you’ve read, what you’ve heard
It said that it is to write.

You’re one weird knot in a web
Of knots plain and strange. You look

Fine at dawn when the wind stirs,
When sweet peace sits crowned with smiles.

You look like death in the dark
Of an old house filled with webs.

You’re both. You write and you write.
Then you can make up the why.

These Are Not My Words, Nor Are We Yours

Who said it first?
Dead, dead so long
The trees that grew
On the grave died

And all their seeds’
Seeds’ seeds. Then some.
And here it is.
You said it, pal.

Not quite the way
It was meant, not
In the same tones,
But some of it.

Some part of this
Has not changed since
A gone tongue lisped,
I will say this.

So, How Do You Like, Um, Pause?

“And there have been times when I have, when I’ve thought, you know, you wrote that poem.”

I’ve read all of us are forced to leave—

You’re born and grow sad. You have to go.

I’m not sure I feel forced to leave.

I leave each time I go to sleep.

What feels forced on me is loss,

Or, not loss so much as pain,

Which may or may not come

From loss but for sure hurts,

And then that I know

What goes won’t come back,

Or what comes back

Is just the hurt,

And hurt stays

As hurt, but

Then it,

Too, goes.

You

Know?

Bridge Dance

Most of us live our lives
As if each were a bridge—
If a gust of wind comes,

We know we’ll feel the sway.
Folks find a way, a path,
A route, a road to cross

Each bridge of who we are.
But winds blow, and we know
A bridge can fall. We trace

Thin, grooved tracks in our paths.
We stay close to the core
Of our span. But we sway.

The Sea of Cold

Not like the rest of the Moon
Is warm, but since it’s the north
They named it cold. It looks cold,

And bright as snow, where the hook
Of the dark bites at the top
Of the just-right moon that floats

And shines where I can see it
When I get up in the dark
To start this day. Sea of Cold,

Up there at the tip of it,
A sprawl of pocked rock, a glow
Edged with the dark. Sea of Cold.

Out Down

Put it out there. Wait for love.
Give it up and take it down.

You can do it with a screen.
You can write it as a text,

But it’s not so changed you can’t
See it for what it once was—

A dance in front of the hearth,
A plea, a song, please see me.

I like my songs dumb, my own,
In the old sense, sung for none.

What These Worlds Meant by This

Folks mean at the world and dream
That the world means back at them—

Dreamt them, meant them, more in store.
There’s more than one world of course,

And what each world means it means
To each head that dreams it means.

How to Not Get Death

It’s not so weird to write poems

On death as it is to think

We should write a poem when thoughts

Of death crop up, or read poems,

Find poems, use old poems to brood.

Poor poems. Love and death they get.

Once in a while a small meal,

Hand-me-down scraps of well-known

Thoughts of all folk to chew through,

Dust motes from the day-to-day.

But, for the most part, it’s lust

And gloom—war, doomed love, and death.

I do feel bad. I do look

In with the rest of their kin

Who come with gifts of rare goods

Most poems can’t get in the jails,

Say, a “bag filled with fresh fruit,

A bar of soap, and a few

Tins,” that sort of thing. It’s not

As if we don’t love our poems,

But they have to serve their time.

At least these did not get death.

Cat Sage

The dark what. If a cat gained
The truth, knew just what was real,

Or knew real for what it was,
A ruse, hand-me-down, a phrase—

Would that cat be a cat sage?
And, if it were, would it change?

Would a wise cat not still be
A cat, with cat lusts, cat needs?

If it lost those, if it could,
(It can’t) would it be a cat?

The cat sage paws at the door
And yowls a thick yowl, a mouse

Or a bird clenched in her mouth.
She knows the truth of it all,

But it does not help. She would
Tell you, but why? It won’t help.

Kick the Can Down the Road

As you live, that’s what you do.
You kick a can down the road.

You may think you have a goal
And you do. It’s in the game

Called, Kick the Can Down the Road.

Death Looks at an Eye

We paint these things
And make these signs
To ward off what
Will not see them,

Heed us, read them.
Then we paint more.
They’re in our heads.
They’re in our mouths,

These signs we show
To what we fear
In hopes we can
Scare fear with them,

Can scare off fears
With signs of dread—
With eyes! Fear’s just
Holes in a head.

The Blade Turns in the Hand

If eyes mean you have soul,
And words mean you’re so smart,

Asks the crow, do you know
More than just that you are,

Do you know what? Words will
Let you say that you do.

Words will let you say why.
But then, watch them, they slide.

The crow tilts a wise eye.
Those words of yours may be

Less like you, more like me.
But just when words say so.

Put them down, your fine tools,
Let them lie in neat lines.

Not so smart now, are they?
For an ape or a crow,

A tool is what you want
Just so that you can get

The things you want for real.
But I swear, these words talk

Still in their lines, like that
Word freak used them to say

Of his life as a child,
As if he knew he was

What they were as they sang
In their chains like the sea.

A Mess of Shade for Meat

Me down here, with old cow pies,
Deer scat, dead leaves, dirt, dust, flies—

Plonked in my camp chair that folds
And I can put on my back

And make it a few yards more
From the car to some scrub oaks

Or a shade pine by the side
Of a dirt road—I’m in here,

And to me I’m not the ghost,
These words—and you—are the ghosts,

And I’m a beast like the crow
That spots me and comes to look

In case I’ve dropped the goods. Nope.
No corpse here. Crows don’t eat ghosts.

We’ll Be Down to Bare Bones Soon

It’s been a long, hot year
Down here. The woods this fall
Are more browned bronze than gold.

Some days I make these poems,
Like meals for one or two,
Quick, with a bit of care,

Just to eat, since I do.
Just a meal. I like it
This way. No fans, plain fare.

But fall does tend to bring
Blues with all the warm hues.
Don’t lie. You’ve felt it, too.

There’ll be guns in these woods,
Soon, and deer on the roads,
And work to do. Same old,

Same old. In fall, wild game
Serve fair game for the tame.
What meat’s left on these names?

Let This Be a Sign

Poems are one way
The world turns gold

To lead word slugs
You can line up

To ink, to print,
To read, to melt.

These words tell me
That’s not quite right

And less than kind,
But I ask you,

What have you known
That was pure sign

That meant to you
Half what blue means?

Drive Soft, the Light Fades

One who would not do one thing
Danced in his sleep where he sat
And dreamed of how he’d steal words,

And not try to save his life.
He might drown in his own spit.
He might wake up dead and small

And find that he does not care.
He might read a book, a line
Like a life line, and take it

And haul on it, as if this
One act could pull him to shore,
Out of his dream to the day.

The Dog

You could try to write on that
Dog. It’s been done. I’ve seen it.

Not the best poem, not the worst.
That dog starts out in a poem,

A great poem with a “Sing, Muse!”
On the man so good at lies

He has a god with grey eyes
On hand to help him. His dog

Gets to see him come home. Dies.
No one wants to be that dog,

And yet—for a lot of us,
The one scene some poor lost child

Will tell of us will be that
One in which our soul flew off

As if we had such a soul.
That dog did. Hung in there. Died

When old Dad came home at last.
Dog that earned verse. Could be worse.

I'll Get Back to You

It’s hard for me to cope
With this Earth’s love for me,
How much the Earth wants me.

It’s hard for me to stand,
To find how best to rest
My legs, my arms, my hands.

I’m tired of dread. It’s hard
To keep my head up, off
Your ground. Let’s go to bed.

She Wrote in Prose

“It goes by so fast when

I should like to see it,”

And if you see it, it’s

A poem. Just look at this.

Now, will you look at that.

The long, thin pine of shade

Wrote, This ground is a poem

If I should write on it.

The ground said, Not so fast.

You think you write the poem

When you know light writes you?

I write in prose, she laughed.

So Far As We Know

Things will change. You’ll change too,
And by the time you might
Get used to this, you’re gone.

It’s too fast and too slow
And your view is too skewed—
What you want to go won’t,

What you want to stay goes—
But that’s just you. The view
Goes, too. Jump up and down.

You can change things, it seems,
As far as we know. You
Can change things. There you go.

For Those Eyes Steeped in Verse

On the bark of a white birch
A wren flits its pale-grey shade,
Same shade as thrown by the leaves,
Some of which fall with each breeze.

This, for those eyes steeped in verse,
Must mean a poem of the fall,
That time of year when boughs shake
Poems in heaps like leaves to mulch.

The fall. Good term. Works so well,
Like a vane on an old barn
That spins so long as no one
Thinks to snap it off to sell.

Could point to the time of year.
Could point to a sin, long since,
Or to a mere stubbed-toe sprawl.
I could well die from a fall.

I’ve come close. I don’t fall well.
Winds shift and the wren lifts off.
A few more gold leaves fall off.
You want the ache. You hate it.

Think of the Girls of Cao Cao, Still on Their Way to the Tower to Sing

The way Li He thought
Of them, the eye drifts
From a bowl of wine
To a view of mists,

But if you were this,
Forced to feed a corpse,
Sing to it, bring gifts,
Your life a stone horse

As you aged, which verse
Would bring you to tears,
You, girl in the hearse
Of god, all your years?

On the Trees in the Night

I’d like a tomb for each poem, please,
Or not a tomb, a stone.
Yes, the bad ones. Yes, the long ones.
I’d like a stone for each.

Build me a carved snake of my days
That glides through its own stones
You can tilt up to find the words
That no one wants to say

But said and then fled for the shame—
Of what, no one can say.
All this in a grove of shade trees
Where gods fell to their knees.

To Be Seen By No One

But still to be,
And to be known
To one’s own self,
To that weird beast

That can’t quite be
Life on its own,
But can be more
Than its own life.

You might like that,
If you’re like me.
Of course, I can’t
See you, then, and

You can’t see me.
But you know these
Small words that sink
In your night ears.

Of Long, White Days

In the shade, then sun, then shade.
I move less than both of them.

Light glares at me from the stream.
Heat. Strength. Force. Fire. The first thing

To teach us pain is too much
Of a good thing, then it’s gone,

And that’s pain. I’m the small bear.
I’m at pains to make my life

Just right. The lost thief will come
And break in my house, and eat

My meal, and sleep in my bed,
And will find it all just right.

But, like most tales, it will fail
At the end. I won’t come home.

I will stay here on my rock
All night. You can have the bed.

Poems Should Have Lives of Our Own, You Know

We live in an age of lives
And poems of lives. If you write,
Write your life well for a prize—
Write your sweet, sad, harmed, charmed life.

I’ve lost my life. It’s still here,
But I can’t seem to find it
And don’t know how to write it,
So who cares if I lived it?

Is there a third verse for this?
Tell the truth. Do you crave faith
That the life you lived will live
Its own life, if you tell it?

And Where Did All Those Mer Folk Come From?

The part with the most soul is the fish.

The part of us that sings is the beast.

You wish. Why do we try to draw this?

Some of our dreams look like they could live,

Could fly, feed, breathe. A big cat with wings

Looks strange and would lack lift for such heft,

But it could run and pounce. It could roar

And rip prey to shreds and shit their bones—

It looks like it could, at least. But these?

These waist-up apes in the mouths of fish?

What the hell is this? And we like them,

Make up tales as well as tails for them.

You can laugh, but it goes deep, this thing.

They show up in lots of worlds, these dreams.

True, we’ve long drawn what we like to eat

As if we were part of it—horned heads,

Our eyes, furred thighs, clawed feet. We wish this,

To see the sea-change caught in the act,

The strange fact that we are what we eat

And what eats us. But this thing with fish

That cough up the halves of us that sing—

As if we’re the fish whose voice flees us.

What to Do When You Know—and You Do—Bad Times Will Find You

A line of cows files down the dirt road
Through the browned scrub oaks, and one cow lows.

Each turns her head to give me a stare
But walks on. Free range. The road is theirs.

The wind sifts through the slopes, as a boy
Might run his hands through an old jewel-box,

As if it were a chest of gold coins
From one of those tales once meant for boys.

No, that’s wrong. I’ll leave it in, but wind
Does no such thing. Each patch of trees stirs

In turn, and the cows are out of sight.
One still lows. Did you guess, yet? You know?

What Can It Mean to Dance If We Don’t Mean to Dance?

I’ve never seen small birds look
So much like a cloud of gnats,
Not as light winds live or die.

They zig-zag, a black-speck cloud,
Not quite like a flock should look—
More like a dance. I like them.

They don’t know I’m here. The blue
Egg of a thin-shelled fall sky
Does not know they’re here. Who knows

What might know we’re here, out there?
Do we need to feel we’re watched,
We’re known? Let’s just watch. Let’s go.

What’s Four Words’ Times Four’s Lines?

How you dress words—
Spread their bright wings
And then cut them,
Snipped at the joints—

Pull out the mush,
Which is the best
Part, and freeze it
For a cold night.

What’s left? Small bones,
Light shards that stick
In your thoughts if
You gulped too hard.

How does that work?
You can’t eat words!
No, no. Not words.
The bones eat you.

What’s the Rush?

All was one block.
One gap cored it.
All rushed through that.
New stuff rushed back.

We’re just that rush.
We just see rush.
What comes. What goes.
What won’t come back.

It’s no cracked stack.
Nor is it fixed.
It’s a rush, yes,
And it’s not done,

Yet; it was done,
Made to be all
Rush, but it’s just
In such a rush!

What If the World Woke up and Saw You?

No, that world. Not souls. We

Know how that goes. All those eyes

Trained on one poor life, one day

Or a few, the game, the spite,

The great rush to say cruel things

Or to gush, and then off. Next!

No, I mean the world not us.

Or the world not us, but us,

Which would be the world of words.

Still—rocks, stars, words—things not you,

Not like you, no brain, no heart,

No set span in which to be—

That world. What if one day that

World woke up and looked at you

And you knew. You knew the stars

Peered down at you, knew the rocks

Thought of you, knew this poem, these

Words—we can’t wait to see you.

When Once Was

Full moon fit like
A lid last night—
Up with the dark,
Down with the light—

High past the pines
In clear skies, while
Green spear shone east,
Red speck glowed west—

There’s no news here.
The real world spins
Lights out and in,
Just as it did

Way back when and
Just as it does.
Now this is when.
When’s what once was.

Sharp-Nosed Fish Town

Can a line grieve as well as tell of grief?

They burned Thebes to the ground. What grief is left

In that line not its own? Who else would mourn

A proud town lost so long since, since built back

More than once? Or do we bring our own grief

From news we’ve known in our own lives, lives lost

In our own time, to fill back in the line

The way a fall storm flash floods a dry wash?

When we read, if we find grief, is it ours?

A few scraps of the lost works of a man

Whose name was not saved were saved from a dump

In a place once known as Sharp-Nosed Fish Town,

And on one scrap was found dull lines of lists

That spelled out the way that Thebes had been ruled

In the years when it had not yet burned down.

No one would find grief in those lines—but then

If you know how the whole town and its schemes

And its souls were to be burnt, and you know

That those dull lines would rot for lives on lives

In a dump, the name of the life wrote them

Lost, you might grieve. Verbs, like seeds, hide to grow.

Let’s Get Out of Here!

This, not I love you, is the true
Core phrase of our shared tongue these days,

Told in all tales at all scales—
There’s not a show, high or low,

Where you won’t find it or it
Won’t find you. Sign of the times,

Raw nerve too much thumbed and plucked,
Bass note that thrums, the quake comes,

Or mere chance, past doubt, it’s clear—
We’ve got to get out of here.

Sweet Hours

If you wake up,
And a black cat
Glossed like a word
Lost a long time

Purrs by your ear,
And a loved one
Snores on the far
Shores of your chest,

Well-warmed, well then,
You’re in luck, friend.
Don’t stir too much.
Let them rest—let

Night dim to dawn
That weird way dark
Has for a fade—
I go by gain.