It isn’t enough we know this pain
down the ganglionic stem to its roots,
its intercellular ratchets and tufts, it
isn’t even enough the doctor mumbojumbos
various possible treatments, oh an entire
thriving industry of pills and saw-toothed pincers,
no what we want is a name

Sleep, sleep–then the kitchen trap
snaps, and my brain like the bait brie
leaps and lands spinning. Now morning
means a mess to sweep and a similarly
skewed conscience to tidy, so all night,
for the jumpy remainder of night, it’s
hazy half-dreams of Mickey from somewhere
out of a childhood Saturday, manly

To love the world is what you try to do,
describe the trash, the bombs, the fisted greed
when it does not love back, does not love you.

Eyes wide like an owl’s, an aspirin-pale face
foretells in lamplight how it accumulates age.
Somewhat masked, somewhat naked, there’s no way
to know what others see when looking at it.
All five of the body’s senses crowd
on this small planet a weather of hair surrounds.

A horizon line in everything,
and just that – one sun
that bursts…

My body is a commons.
You can pleasure yourself through me
like a haunted house at a theme park.
On the other end, it’ll be you all shaky.

One’s nakedness is very slow.
One calls to it, one wastes one’s sympathy.
Comparison, too, is very slow.
Where is the past?

Here’s where I lower you
into the drizzle
of the visible,
my eager one,
where I hold you out like a gift
to this water, out at the end of my hand, to steady you,

The animal kingdom is archived in the sky, imprinted clouds explicated in domesticated
poems: That rough hold moss perfumes a forest bangs in on thunder claps clasps
gives its way what was that blur that blew through here as if on a cloud?

At dawn the rain abated. I did the things
one does in daylight, I acquitted myself,
but I moved like a sleepwalker.

The grass below the willow
Of my daughter’s wash is curled
With earthworms, and the world
Is measured into row on row
Of unspiced houses, painted to seem real.

Darrell’s mother’s red dress was chiffon
and plunged at the neckline – a sleeveless job
that cupped her breasts with an X.
I was on my way for a carton of milk
when she swaggered out on our street…

All his life he struggled at how to ask,
unable to talk to his father.
Instead of the right questions, he learns to mimic

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone

I rub the dark hollow of the bowl
with garlic, near to the fire enough
so that fire reflects on the wood,
a reverie that holds emptiness
in high regard…

I know what winter is, today
at least, out here
walking the ridge of quiet trees,
heavyhearted and close to
mistaking for grief this snow
on my eyelid. But enough–