Who unlocks
the door to let you in, like a wet cat How did you lift the heaviest
season from my eyelids, sweeping away a whole cloud How do you
pollinate my blood so exactly with sanity

Someone’s unprofessional opinion
was to “relax” over matter. To sandcastle over
wave. They aimed to clean up a murder scene
from behind a plate of glass. It was my murder.

In the republic of poetry,
a train full of poets
rolls south in the rain
as plum trees rock
and horses kick the air,
and village bands
parade down the aisle
with trumpets, with bowler hats,
followed by the president
of the republic,
shaking every hand.

Forty years ago, I bled in this hallway.
Half-light dimmed the brick
like the angel of public housing.
That night I called and listened at every door:
in 1966, there was a war on television.

Why the young Brothers so big, what they eatin’,
why they blow up like that, gotta wear big white tees, gotta wear white-
skin sheets, like maggots, like lard, the domestic oil of death and klan
sweat, who blew them up doctored, who pickin’ them off like dark
cotton, make them themselves a fashion of profitable, soft
muscular bales, somebody got to clean this shit up.

You’ll need a talk, an oral walk,
Something natural and recognizable by your folk,
Something of music something of meaning,
A style capable of running-off at-the-mouth,
When Massa AmEuroBrit Lit irks you most,
A little something-something of ancestry
And the courage not to accept any award

Watching it get dark
the dog’s barking interrupted
we go to our death

Patters, paters, Apollo globes, sound
breaking up with silence, coals
I can still hear, entanglement of sense pools,
the way a cave might leak perfume–

From the sad fountains of Quebec
from the great lakes, the prairie
you reach this intermediate space
halfway between stopover and nulle part

On the blackboard there comes the couple
Trudging along rusty railroad tracks in sneakers
On their way to the annual money crop square dance.

How to tell fringe people from yourself, himself, us, you, her?
They hunt for clean central beds full of lovers to deceive.
When they enter rooms, the most valuable still-life shatters.
They scream “Trap!”, deliberately trip (won’t get up, ever leave).

Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat his
sweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son;
or the young woman who has set herself the task of scraping
her shadow off a wall….

Out of the golden West, out of the leaden East, into the iron South, and to the silver North… Oh metals metals everywhere, forks and knives, belt buckles and hooks… When you are beaten you sing. You do not give anyone a chance…