In My Irritable Youth
I was walking around inside myself one summer and couldn’t get out.
There were no maps of adulthood so I foraged for food like an animal.
I tried to explain my behavior by saying aren’t we all just animals.
One of my teachers said you mean metaphorically.
I shout literally and realistically.
(In my irritable youth I was hexagonal.)
Thirty five years later: You mean metaphorically says every day of adulthood and to adulthood I respond grow up.
Wilderness
Already one metaphor
won’t allow another to
so quickly or these metaphors, pile up like trains, jump the tracks
Our union meeting has resumed, thank god
what is discussed is
as important as the eyes of a mother
upon her metropolis: the city won’t eat
and throws a bowl filled
with lumpy skyscrapers
at a wall made only of summer air,
off in the distance, a tree silently dissolves there
You Get Paid
In ducks
in sighs
in mosquitoes but
it was worth it.
Shall we
gather at the river?
The definition of
happiness is watching
Filled With the Memory of Your Porcelain Abandonment
I am your animal filled with light.
My eyes are yellow flame.
In the night I
lurk among the flowers,
where they lie sleeping.
Inside each shadow there is an appointment I am keeping.
I enter the dark and
sit on a chair
made only of the evening air.
When the moon rises, I reach up to touch it. Then,
I chop off the summer with a hatchet.
Our train arrives at midnight, let’s catch it.
Go Ask Alice
Alice writes with glittery malice
lives in a mushroom shaped palace
knows what the power of the pen is
and never includes phallic symbols in her poetry.
Now
she calls her friend Dennis
they’re both taking tennis
and says in the humidity she finds solace.
Aubade
Some socks have trick locks.
We try to evade the reasons why.
It’s unnerving the sounds they make.
There are ten envelopes containing letters therein.
We try to contain our excitement but a breeze blows in—
the smell of apple pie.
Lots of people grok but few know.
trees sway pretty in the wind.
Eight-by-ten glossies of autumn encircling them.
Pops drops by to talk, drawing
Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in chalk.
We blast past it then dive. Glowing, alive.
He's a Real People Person
Here’s a city
hear the bells
it has its own velocity
and smells.
See the people
as they walk
a church and a steeple
outlines in chalk.
Where there’s want
there is crime
there will be no detente
no splash of lime.
While looking up
enjoy that view
in gazing downward
there’s more of you.
Why I Will Not Wear Lavendar
The horses had eyes of schoolyards
in the morning as I fed them numerals.
As we saddled up the mountains to ride
another me came from around a corner
shouting the test is today and you haven’t studied.
I respond to this unbelievable other
that I have learned the only lesson in life that matters:
no one is paying attention to anything
until the ladder of lightning
streaking across the sky
descends to let us climb
the tower in our hearts.
At that moment the sky winked
along and our lives seemed somehow enlarged
and our guns shot only dandelions
and our eyes were
finally innocent diamonds
dumb with wonder.