after Cocteau
A smoke stack crumbles.
A line sketch speaks.
The poet is a grid of wires
kissing the mouth on his palm.
He turns beauty into a marble stone
and throws it through a window
onto a stack of young bones.
Gamblers carry on
over the bodies of children
until the last card is dealt.
The poet smashes the stone
with a heavy mallet
until he himself is stone.
He cracks and falls apart
like snow mounds in the sun,
sinking into the earth.
What Were You Wearing?
That is the name
Of an exhibit
Displaying clothing worn
At the time of a rape or assault.
It is a common question
Asked about the
Victim.
For, of course, they
Invited the assault.
If you go to the
Exhibit,
It’s clear there is no
Set or defined appropriate attire
For assault.
So … one might as well
Dress
However you want.
For assault
Is not your fault.
But our society
Blames the victim.
Otherwise,
Anyone, at any time, in
Any attire, might be assaulted.
And THAT is not Appropriate.
after Steven Brown
There are cows everywhere
and crickets. I often wonder about
thousands of them in the woods, permanently
fed-up. They’re out there, fields of dry grass
or dark pine, owners of nothing
who’ve got it all.
All this articulation
Early morning, there’s
no such thing as exhaustion
on the side porch.
You will fall asleep in the velvety cove of a steer’s ear.
What happens when a muscle tightens
and steels and dries like a
stubborn desert butte?
Hemingway claimed
every man has two deaths:
in the dirt, then in the minds —
I raise him a third:
my being amounts to five feet,
my things, likely a five by five room,
but my hair clings to combs, carpets, clothes,
my sloughed-off cells swirl in dust,
my sweat and spit stick
to grass blades and pillow cases,
bike chains and mug rims,
my nail indents sit in pins, pen caps, stress balls,
my blood resides in sink pipes,
my fingerprints linger
on table edges and book pages,
flower stems and light switches.
The heavens marked my departure,
nature nesting my ends and starts,
and as the earth holds me,
as you once held me and I held you,
I owe the earth my embrace;
though I may stay a skeleton under stones,
my name, a whisper in scant memories,
trust, Hemingway,
that my touch is tethered:
in dirt, minds, and indents —
I persist in echoes.
is not a path but a map
of every motion
not a map but a labyrinth
a morass
of directions, repetitions
reversals
every fear, every wound
I haven’t let go
not a labyrinth
but a trap
every cigarette
every mistake
caught in a dysfunctional body
struggling ceaselessly back
to plasticity
and feeling
splayed out again on the bed
thrashing
