Mr. Bones & Attendant Flights

I was thinking Bones, probably thinking
Like Henry. Happens sometimes. And I'm sure
A stewardess is falling, falling, now
A flight attendant, now a slight depression.
They talk back in patois. They have their ways.
They're violent and clinically unsound
And deader than a deaf door jamb. They're closed.
I think of them, though, waiting in the dark,
Collectedly insentient. Such bones
We use for soup, grow strong & tall 12 ways.

When I became a man, I took such bones,
Plucked free of noodles, cast them in the street,
And read my riddles, almost knew the truth,
Although a blue Imperial, false spare
& painted whitewalls, ran them down like dirt.

Spread Sheets

The cash alone was not enough.
It made the flagstone terrace slick
And all the shutters red and bright;
But consciences are black at night, 
And cash does not afford a light
When even sheets and spreads are rough.
The dead are still, and eke the quick.

Gelt not so much. The dead forgot,
The live forsworn: but in the dark,
Where they go on, but you would not,
You can't buy room. There is a lot
Of that in Zion Perfect Park,
Home to the absent. They were all
Live on the margins. Came the call.

Whither Fled?

I:

No, I will not plant this ground
With mace or betel, this a sound
And normal garden. Get thee hence.
I think I need a taller fence.

Me:
It is not normal thus to be
Enmired in normality.
Peas and squash. And butterbeans.
Petunias, maybe. What it means
Is you have died while standing up.
Might as well plant these, buttercup.

I:
No, take them back. I have my seeds,
And they sufficient to my needs.

Me:
Do they draw girls? Do dryads fling
Themselves about your trowel-y thing?
Do garden nymphs, with pansied skin,
Invite your stamened self within?
They do not feed on beans and peas,
Who court with pollen dancing bees.

I:
A pandar of the flower bed.
What kind of shit is this you spread?
I grow to eat. I eat to grow,
A bit of flower there for show,
Mere decoration. Here I till,
Repository of my will.

Me:
And what a way. Spirit will not
Indefinitely be forgot.
Plant coconut whilst still you can.
Vanilla saffron. Be a man.

I:
So I can watch them die and sink,
Mere bitter herbs who would not drink?
My soil's more fit for summer squash
And dirt for annelidic nosh.
I'll make my beauty out of use
And not descend to plant abuse.

Me:
Except for chewing. Your recruits
Salute you from their martialled roots.
Meantime the spirits all have fled,
Your gardens grown from gardens dead.
I fear your dull capacity.
Do grow this pekoe for your tea.

I:
My beets require service. Move.
Their lives need water more than love.

Me:
As the world turns, it turns through black
As well as brown. Here hide your eyes
With this.

I:
A lettuce-leaf. Surprise,
Surprise: you scorn the nutritive.

Me:
You breathe. I do not think you live.
You speak.

I:
I do not think you know
Where nymphs and vegetables go,
Together compost, likely lost,
And do not feel the common cost.

Wet Work

They are not of the state.  They homestead here
Privately, adjunct piddling field of corn
Too shiny to be spent on ethanol.
Deprived of pensions, with a family tree
Ruined by mountain pine beetles and burned,
Not for the fuel, neither for decoration,
Their saints declared fictitious, they accept
That they are spooks, discharged without a mandate
Or ammunition. Yet they hone their knives,
They oil their sheaths, in case the Lord should find
Them home at the last, stalked in their empty yards.
They scan reflexively. The gate is shut
Because it squeaks, as useful as a song
To keep raptors at large, repelling goons
And toothless hitmen, hired by the day.
Don't never write down nothing, they were taught,
Though mostly they ignore what they were told.

An Affection for Battered Objects

More duct tape. In his Weimar he cries out 

For his repair. The rents reach for the sky;
Mere tatters are not held by paperclips.
I had this elephant when I was young.
Look at him now. The light is sicklied o’er
With blinds, the last Venetian charity
This man performs in darkness. He knows if
You ask, but in between he is a boy,
The brightest of his class, a lower form
Than he has yet acknowledged. I had these pants—
Envy me, envy me. I think I heard
That this had happened once or twice before,
To Adam and Erasmus and a Doge
Desperate to recall flesh on demand.

Devolvus Still

Devolvus, underground, preserves,

By lying still, his fraying nerves.
Yet in the sun, his brother walks
Above, and steels himself with talks
And chatter, as if they were kids
And wonted. And no mom forbids
One’s shoes inside or singing loud
Or hamming it up to please the crowd
Of featured hangers-on. If he
Should wish to lie there quietly,
Devolvus doesn’t say or swear,
Since he has time to spill and share,
By wit, by verve, by joie-de-not.
What was that punchline? All forgot.

Notes for the Volume Left Unfinished

*Albinius says otherwise. He errs.
His sources for an ill-conceiving creed
Are elderly ex-chamberlains and eunuchs,
Village crones and plods deprived of the sense
Announced to a scarecrow, those who took their cues
From discount chickens, virgins secondhand,
And scholars from the farmhouse provinces.
As every schoolboy knows, the archers filled
His orifices with their arrows. Pray
For him, but do not emulate his art.
He burns in Hell and weeps black tears of ink.
(It is no sin to benison the damned,
Whatever El Chimayo says, the damned.)

†Persona Claus claims 273,
Year of Our Lord. Persona Claus, who loved
Boys best, then men, was skewered, a flaming bowl
Of apple cores inverted on his head.

°Albumen, King, who found that history
Irenic--they had lied, the scribal tribe.
The Church Pacific strewed its road, on donkeys,
With palms and psalms; and all its paths were peace.
Albumen, King was thrown into a pit
Of Bulgars, Albigensians, and Swedes.
No fragments of him ever were retrieved.

•It sounds absurd, and yet proved true. I went
Myself, with native guide, and saw the place,
A dog to follow and a wife to heel.
I touched the Rock, the Rock was warm. My sense
Of touch is unimpeachable. What else
Explains the errors of the Early Crypts?
Deceived by Occam’s Razor Blade, they shaved
A world away and found a Heaven there.
I recommend The Liber Book, ƒ. 2.

§Cf., op. cit., to-wit, to-woo. Tra-la,
The placard on the temple wall proclaimed,
In Greek first, Latin after, sing tra-la,
The angels have been with us from the first
And bless the martyrs in their shattered state
And bear their broken bones away and praise
The bearded monarchs who have made it so.
Nevertheless, Albinius was wrong.

The Goön Folk.

Their pilgrimage began before the light,
Before the squabbles of the little birds
Pilgrims forswore. And they were going where?
To where the road concluded. Since this was
Their latter days, that just might mean the sea,
The culmination, surely, of strange strands,
Pounding a plainsong once, twice, dot, dot, dot.
They’d rather it would end against a wall
Invisible to those of little faith,
Studded with jasper, joined without a joint,
And crowned with fire or with Dagon’s roc
In chains, something spectacular, without
Curios at the exit, something none
Knew substantives sufficient for. They brought
A change of shirt, a charger for the phone,
And water double-filtered to remove
Impurities. They sang car tunes without
The words, not all the words. They thought they’d left
The word behind, the first rest stop enclosed
By plastic fence. The map said, You Aren’t There.

As Numberless As the Stars

Hagar didn’t care for the manchild much,

The one whose dam she wasn’t.  In the star-

Personable nighttime sky she reckoned

The number of descendants he’d been promised,

And every one an uninvited guest.

Me, I try to avoid the sin of counting.

It leads to lust and envy.  I have named

More women than I knew, and they are glad,

Or so they say, when they imagine me.

They think about the child who isn’t there,

The period they never missed, the pain

Promised them, that they passed on, and they smile

And smooth their hair and think about the days

When boys would gasp because they happened by.

Laird and His Manner

The word is out that Laird is back in town,
Or maybe not-—he doesn’t advertise.
Cagey as always, full of little bits
Of wisdom-lit and recipes and still
A handsome highwayman, he’s double belted
With bullets, bone-knobbed pliers, and a compass.
He sings too loudly, talks too loudly, eats
Peculiar combinations. He won’t lodge
With those who need him; he won’t go away,
Not before night. Or autumn. He makes rules
As need requires. Once he wouldn't budge
Until the last pin-oak leaf had detached.
One of us climbed the tree and shook it down,
Unable to face any more of Laird.

Tonight we wait for resurrection men.
We’re told the sod will open in the park,
And frontier mamas, babies dead of croup,
And gambling dudes in rotted vests will rise.
There are agnostics, certainly, but Laird,
He has his ways. Leastways, he keeps things warm.

Even the trees have changed since these were laid
In certainty of dark and dank. I shall
Fulfill some promise, Laird says, or I’ll bear
Witness to unfulfillment. There are new
Stones since then, most likely trucked in from Creede.
Do you believe in Everlasting Life?
He asks me. I do not. What I believe
Has not changed much since I was 17,
When I first said that absence was a gift.

There is no sound, except the trucks that leave.
The park is closed. The turf lies still. And Laird
Is nowhere you can find. He’s been and gone,
The cartilage of stories. What a waste,
The scent of pine borne past us on the breeze.

Sonnetina

A sort of summer cabaret
Performed by girls in little more
Than skin, just like the dress they wore
When they dropped in. A small hooray
From men with lawnmowers and shears,
Indrawn disdain from proximate wives,
Both lots of whom resume their lives,
Unaugmented by wishful tears.

Not girls in skin, not now, this late.
Good girls go by. Old ladies pass
This way at noon. They touch the grass
With shadow. They are gnarled of gait;
And yet without their clothes, within,
Concealed consent, they carry skin.

Active Spirits

We stowed our spirits underneath the bed,
To ripen in the dark. There will be bits
Of unexplained detritus on the necks
And bitter accents, something like a stain,
Floating on amber surfaces. Some day
They might be fit for use, oily on bright
October afternoons and nicely keen
When darkness undertakes our management,
But only if our lives go well. We trust
That chemistry will not betray the heart
Which counts upon her. There are still inert
Elements to be heard from and the sweet
Aftertaste of hydrangea leaves and mint
And complicated resins, close enough
To life to be electrified by chance.
The spirits might just walk, depart their glass
Panopticon and take to love and crime,
Go skulking through the streets. We'd see them turn
Unshaved faces away, ashamed to know
The jailers of their lightless infancy
And corkscrewed adolescence. We have turned
The bottles lately. Maybe we can drink
What we have brewed. Lord, we can hardly wait.

And Drift Away

There’s fire in the hole, but I have lost

The hard endeavor in the smoke and spark.

For whom and whence was written I knew once,

Boss hog gavotting just in front of death,

Illumination in the margin, sky

The color of Crayola never glimpsed

By god or inamorata. Have you seen

The hole I filled with powdered air and notes

Of sherry, Spanish flies, and cherubim?

I thought not. Let it burn. Maybe the ash,

On such hot air, will land on something green.

And the Last Lost Adit

Conceivable the bitter parts, the twa'

Derbies you never brought back home nor wore,
The spats unpurchased, only acted out
With objects made affectional by law.
The piles in which the birds Arabian
Nested during the months of cinnamon--
Them you never saw, the pellucid pools
Wherein begins the mighty Zamazon,
Crocodile-worshipped, head-huntered, and blue
Beyond the sapphires of Mozambique.
(Well, to be fair, you read about the last
In Newsweek, and the children made to serve
Dark lords with hand grenades and empty guns
On pain of death, both fort and dure. They're dead
And nothing like the poster of Seville
You bought in the Rive Right, as faded now
As that brocaded vest you used to wear
To absinthe parties, fond of spongy hearts.)
Still, you have read, the absent elephants
Of Pukkastan--they sparkle like the dew
And trumpet like a glee club in the heat
Of frond-oscura sun--may have been traced
To Adam's Lair, tickets for sale, online.

Alone in the Afterlife

At least the leaves are crispy, and they smell

Of cinnamon. Kick them aside, they float
Like butterflies and settle on the trees
Who held them last. There are no promises
Of stars beyond the stars I see. The fox
Rolls on the patio and shakes himself,
A Canis Minor. Everyone I know
Still loves me -- better, loves me now, at last,
At once. The fox trots back into the woods,
His little dance insouciant desire.
My coffee smells like it was made from leaves.

Odysseus Leaves the 7-11

Odysseus stopped, turned to the monitor
The clerk was watching. “Odysseus,” she cried,
The black Calypso, as she wrapped her legs
Around the Italian claiming he was he.
“Damn all these pronouns!” said the wily hero.
“Say what?” the clerk enquired, with what passed
For courtesy among a swordless breed.

His shipmates looked to have been coifed by nymphs,
Or Ganymede, maybe. A talking pig appeared.
“Some pig,” said Circe. “All you guys are swine,”
The wired clerk said. Odysseus believed
The gods who sent him here did not make change,
Except for sport. He thought Penelope
Entitled to a break from his attentions.
“Some pig,” she told him, just the other day.

A rosy-fingered Dawn was fingering
The donuts filled with wine-dark jelly, hoping
He’d speak to her. She was prepared to boil
His clothes and give him shelter. No man looked
Past her like that; crafty Odysseus,
Accustomed to being No-man, took his change,
His Lotto ticket, and his Diet Fresca,
And thrust into the night, seeking a storm.

A Poem Unrequested

The mice knew first, the crickets and the small
Wrens, who muted their music in respect.

The Bigguns had no reason to expect
A coming, first or second, so they all

Went to the circus, laundry, or the mall,

To buy some smoke detectors could detect.

And then they bought a family to protect.

The beetles sang, We shan't shut up till Fall.

Somewhere the news was posted. In a paper

Of general circulation, someone read:

Death shall have no dominion, being dead;

But he was only someone, not a shaper

Of big opinion. Big opinion heard

Interruption and said, Shut up that bird.

Winter Leaves

This appeared in Poetry Proper 3.

Look, have I mentioned how the winter leaves
Resemble bronze? That statue of a tree,
It is a tree. The art of standing still,
Of keeping still till everyone forgets
The name you had when swords were haute couture,
When bronze was for an age, and dryads slept
With bark for blankets, that you still possess.
Have I not watered you when it was dry
And promised that the birds would love you, too?
Some day a god will build his nest from hair
He took as a trophy. Some day he will kiss
Confusion into legs and roots, some day;
And men will cut themselves on winter leaves
And swear eternal love, day after day.

The Sparrows' Fall

from These Denver Odes


At this week's yard sale
sparrows swap husks and hulls,
dry, but not amusing,
and they soon move on.

Next door's seed is new,
the last word in millet.
They beat each other up,
first doing no harm.

They will return. Ice
will dam their best bedrooms;
the cold will not comfort
their minuscule down:

and I'll fill their bath
regularly with hot
water, regularly
frozen in seconds.

A hard little life,
sparrows'. Precarious
hearts, what can they recall?
Listen how they sing.

Dumb little bastards.
Dry seed, cold empty beds,
taut untutored lifelines.
Listen to them sing.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Crossing at night the Straits of El Kabong,

I saw the Pillars of Persephone,
Half the year there and half in Florida,
A moving destination, once two girls
Of 17, turned to obsidian by
A randy god who had eternity
To kill. His name is lost. His victims here
Said, No, and migrate now from sea to sea.
I saw a stormy petrel detour round
The pillars. I saw fish leap between waves.
I drew no closer, though the ship was swift,
The winds complaisant. As the moon declined,
I took her home, towards picture books and bread.