one ugly motherfucker

-for Jim Harrison

geese call as they pass overhead
and maybe you are drifting with them
in that overweight cloud of your own weathered hide
lost in the dark river that time has etched
where wolves missing teeth circle their own tails
and you slump dead at your desk
killed by the only thing that kills a writer
death

horses come galloping
draped in headless rattlesnakes
and bearing polished stones
retrieved from the dust of riverbeds
high in the dead mountains
or are these stones from the mountains of dead rivers
whose murmurs can still be heard
between the gusts of wind

the winds of those places
are either too hot or too cold
they carry too many voices from the past
the voices speaking to you have now ceased
and you in your turn join that cadre of voices
spoken to others of your kin
or are they mine

i never knew you
but i’ve always known you
something deeper than blood entwines us
all the poets i know are suicides
some are just too frightened to realize it
but you were wise in some ways
knowing you had yet to pay your penance

and when the last coin was demanded
you –still living– were left to haunt your dead wife
until the walls of the rooms came down on your head
and toppled the cold pencil from your curled fingers

you thundered down on the floorboards
and all the wine and whiskey you ever drank
spilled from the cavity of your ursine mouth
silent now

your left eye freed from its body
healed at last and turned to glass
spun round and round
before fixing its gaze outside a window
on those starry hosts seen between a woman’s legs
wondrously dangling
from the boughs of an overgrown apple tree

a measure of time

there again
a fly on the windowsill
cleaning its wings in the sun—
this ritual of welcoming each season

age

little by little
we let go of this world.

we say to ourselves
damn, what an odd dream.

then one day

then one day
there came a door
in the middle of my living room
we were having dinner
i had to get up
there was no time
to finish my peas
everyone else was talking
on and on and on they went but
there in the doorway
my      mother
who was the last of her sisters
my uncle
who’d outlived the rest of his family
i turned back to the table
shattered my fist on a plate
trying to warn them
my wife my children
but just like always
they never listened

lust

woman
in a doorway 
the corner of her hem
a red triangle blazing in the sun

she leans against the door post
grips it gently in her hand
she gazes out across the brilliance
and holds you in her stare

she can’t be bought
there is no price
though you have paid it
a thousand times with blood

later it is dark—
you have swallowed all the sunlight
it burns inside you
nothing can extinguish it

covered by a woolen blanket
riddled with bright bullet holes
the cheap motel diminishes
over and over she stabs you

with a single ray of light 

my congregation of crumbs

“like a giant absorbed in pulling down stars and scattering nebulae” –Lorca

four crumbs
and nothing more
like stray planets
or a cluster of galaxies

with one exhalation
i send them tumbling
across the table
and onto the floor

soon they’ll be crushed
and carried into the universe
on the heel of someone’s shoe

this is the way i change the world

refund

with a great urgency
number 972 must be identified
fervently the pages of rice paper are turned
in the great annals of hell
where all the eyeballs are found
why are there so many eyeballs in hell?
like marbles spilled from duffle bags
glistening
darting this way and that
in panic
yes
because they are helpless
deprived of their eyelids
unable to blink
damned to bear so much seeing
a monotony of gore
that incessant ocean of infinite nothings

forlorn

it used to be so easy
to cross over to your side of the river

but now i’m lost
among the reeds that choke the waters

when i do arrive
i find the field abandoned

a crow there speaks of me
he has scattered himself across the years

another replies
who shall gather up the sheaves

véronic

years ago she was the nurse
from médecins du monde
who held the x-ray of my broken arm
against a home-made tray of light
i dreamt of her again
last night

this evening
the sunset turns red
the moon is just a shard of white
i walk around the block
and walk around the block
there is no way of knowing

window

the vision burns
within me and through me
pooling at my feet
the floor made window into the world
a glass through which i see the ironworks
deep thrumming of great engines
grinding bone to ash
the garments of a woman
laid out on a bed beside a wavering furnace
they smell of talc
the stockings have been worn
the odor is not unpleasant
the scent of a woman
weeping naked by the blond bed
her hair is gone
she is bald and shaven and shivering
her ribs beneath her tiny breasts
her eyes the insides of skies
vacuous
she raps her fingers on her skull
empty echoes of an oil drum
a thought drops from her mind
it might sound like a tear
but several come dripping
the faucet run dry
her bare body emptied
beautiful in all its pure lack
and so become perfect
because you can starve her
and still not hollow her out
she is filled with visions of white cities
adobe of some other realm
the place she weeps in begins to diminish
whether it’s moving away from me
or i’m moving away from it
i can’t tell
sometimes the apparent is true
it shrinks to nothing
my window through the world closes up
there’s a knock at the door
she has become lovely
wrapped in the robe
of all her own hair 

october as ontological preface

incessant
the weight of broken things
the way incandescence hangs
on all the dusty shelves

earlier
a fire of small sticks
sunlight beyond the southern trees—
it lay upon the upper branches of an oak

a tendril of smoke weaved sinuously
among the yellowing leaves
the sky bluer than it had ever been
echoing with silence

I leaned into the fire’s heat
it stayed October’s cold
I sat by the fire and dozed
propped up by a grey branch

the evening was fading
but in a sudden gust of light
I understood
what it meant to be an exile many years

left alone to stir one’s dimming coals—
dozing is preferable
to chasing one’s ambitions around
in the wakened life

oh that turning and fluttering
if you take what you’ve been given—
everything
and open it to wind

returning alone

i find myself standing at the foot of the driveway
the dark house
a dog barks a few doors down
and beyond that
traffic noise from the highway
i peer into the night
at bands of clouds occulting stars
many still shine
so many points of luminance
among all the places i’ve ever known
here is where i’ve come to be

head caught in a machine

there was once a poet
who got his head caught
in a machine
it was a very bad machine
but better than his brain
flowering ensued
but not the kind that you might think
the internet of things
began to come to life
and suddenly
the refrigerator started to sing
an automated car
sought out a precarious peak
the municipal water spouts
began to leak
people were confused
they went outside
and there they found
strange things
forgotten things--
dandelions and collard greens

destitute woman

that you were a wren
or swallow or bluebird
inhabiting some uninhabited space

that men might make a home for you
fashioned from discarded boards
of some abandoned barn

that you were two or five
of Jesus’ sparrows
alighting on a bough of locust leaves

that wings would be your grace and
lift you from the thorny branch
or save you from the mangling

understand—

a photograph can’t
nor memory

seagulls cannot speak to it
nor the chattering of children

red of geraniums
already beginning

petal by petal
to flit away

Fallow

From zero, infinity.
From two, sometimes twelve children.
The harvest yields a hundredfold.

Each night
I return to lay again
amidst the desolation,

but then the sun comes out
and all green things
begin to flourish once more.

Yes,
I have decided
I will let the milkweed grow.

longing

deep in a forest you part the underbrush
find morning sunlight glimmering off a pond

in the shallows whitetail stoop to drink
their hides so bronze you take them for naiads

but don’t we always lose ourselves in some wilderness
alone and in peril of being remade into an echo

an imperfect acquiescence

burgeoning leaves
obscure this evening’s soft light
gold upon far pines
let the cool winds set you free
abandon your white gown to breeze

tropic of cancer

remember that desolate beach
inhabited by strange crustaceans
washed away by surging foam
only to come sidling back
those red armored creations of claws
and stalks of eyes
enacting their curious uprisings
in claims over the meager remains
of more complex forms of life
their odd intrigues
beneath meandering boughs of a great tree
that one wide limb where we would lay
weary from swimming
sharing our last mango
tossing its skin into the fray
that glistening fisherman
scattering every crawling creature away
his fish of many colors speared
which in that night’s dark downpour
we roasted over fire
waves in the distance
breaking and hissing
upon that shore of crabs

failing chaung tzu

nothing left undone
the myriad creatures transform
desire raises its head and raises its head

press it down he says
press it down
with the weight of the uncarved block

but freedom from desire
ceasing to desire
even crows and the kites will feast