girls

i bet you look good
without all that makeup

Endless River

Tilt of the black plastic
ribboning through
Green split vein
Making it true

Cold season rain
Reminding me of

My company, myself
Accompanying myself

To the other countries.

Reading the paper on the living room floor (door open), like picking it up the paper at Kline Cafeteria (I never read it), it bought me time, sunlight streaming, and spring, oh my, SPRING, the cool air and all the hope, the hope, the love of hope.

"Setting determines gestures: we will build passionate houses."

Look Back in Acker

First, be spontaneous. Never say no.

o my friends,
to you, this one,
if i happen to die first:

i was looking forward
to eating lox and bagels
when we were sixty!

but thank god i died first
i couldn't bear it without you
when we're old and rickety

the things' way

teeth brushed, pajamas buttoned up.
teeth are the clean teeth.
the light off.
the clean sheets.
the dry diaphragm.

for the first time ever

yesterday was bleak
no one in the whole world wrote
even one poem.

rare

The big central public library
through this witless rain emerges
from behind the tall green trees.

What a rain, it moneys down,
and the paper cups are soaking
in the paper bag I carry.

It was three soups for six dollars. I am ready
for the library and I have a book already.
In my small book is a clue. It's the title

of a room and when I hand it to the woman--
to the prim and blonde librarian--
I have prised her like a switchblade.

first she flusters and she wonders,
then a blink blink blink detective.
"Well well! That room

is a secret."
Yes oh absolutely right.
get a room, and make it secret,

and then tell me all about it.
Let me tell you all about it:
She is glad that I have found it.

the night

in the night
it is very quiet

even the birds
are quiet

shh
shh

(in the night is very quiet even the birds are quiet)
(sh)

The Night

in. the night.
it is very quiet.

even
the birds
are quiet

shh
sh.


shh

The Night

in




the night











it is very quiet








even

the birds









are quiet












(handwritten): shh









shh

5:48 AM

while the silent storm of night gives way into a quiet blue

your face reveals itself in all its sleeping wrinkles

heavy underlids, smooth nose and forehead

someday i will look back at this moment and think

you looked so young.

Inventory

The things you loved
and love
cactus in bloom and
any type of careless face
the bask, the flash, and flask
America’s books, her birds –
not songs, but views
vistas of the universe
go on –

i was Gretchen

i was Gretchen,
but i didn't know it then—
Gretchen, i was you

it took centuries
for anyone to notice
that you were striving too

(maybe they were too busy with your golden hair)

at the end of the play
something holy happens
what could happen
in the middle of mine?

SAVED

Idea music & Ideal music

like The Pretenders singing The Rascals

or a woman performing surgery

on a snow child in Park Slope

there were berry colored lights

& a rose patterned sweater

with low hanging threads.

sharks

we murder the flood, we cramp down
to business.
we are a clean knot of sheep
gathered over
a dead wolf stink.

then again, purgatory could be on a bus

we have to do everything in our power to avoid rolling down the hill
inside,
warm and slow
a gentle sense of music drifting through

we are willing conspirators to this game
a family of kids waiting for the driver,
braking Buddha-like
to deliver us home safely
so we are content to sit
uncomplaining
in hours of traffic
waiting to get down the hill
to cross the drawbridge
silent
reading restaurant reviews
drowsing

walking would be faster
colder
and impossible
since we can never get off the bus
and no one can get on.

angle face

this one soars towards you as if puppetted,
shoulders cinched,
many kisses from tiny pinkened mouths,
and the buzz of dinner against a plate.

also it's buggy

as long as we wake up along the banks along the banks we’ll be fine
we’re muddy we’ve got water in us which is representative of experience
yeah we’re reeding we’ve got birds chirrup chirrup i’m not worried
about us, not even sometimes.

on a spectrum from intense to flitty

rhythmic fast feet
passion
building to climax
after climax
flashing eyes
wild skirts
machismo/feminina
frowning
tense eyebrows
eyebrow wrinkles
guitar, singing, footwork
tense, separarate fingers
back bends
low plies/ lunges
low leg
inwardly rotated upper arm
Spanish (speaking, looking)
perform what's been passed down
"really" Spanish
"really" gypsy
frilly skirts
black and red
flowers in hair
polka dots
big earrings
hair falling down
low bun

homogenization
exoticing

Working with B. W. J.

Onstage with him. Improvising. Then I flub,
so I get glib and gag. Normally we are tuned

so tightly that if one confides a fear of snakes,
the other hisses helpfully, shedding their skin.

Now I've overquaked. I've cracked like a bad bell. Choices loom.
Will he tear my mouth off? or push me down a flight

so I land, doublecracked, on my sensitive head? Not him.
He stoops over and gentlekisses my nervous clapper.

Offstage he rubs my skeleton. He lets me tug his beard
to prove it's real. He says something like, baby,

if we are stark with kindness to each other,
we will be painted lovingly by the truth.

Pulpo on the Mind

lizy bought a tin of octopus;
sat with me on church steps,
or might as well have been;
spread the octoparts onto a napkin
on the sidewalk; ate them.

the art of making dances

in the world there is no animal, human, molecule of water
that moves without a reason for moving
always with a specific design in space
with a relationship to everything that moves around it
and a particular energetic flow and rhythm
fast for hot
etc

Without all that
your dance sucks
and let's be honest
there's a lot of sucky art out there
this bit
not withstanding.

target

when then became of
my deep, abiding love?
with no target anymore
a million internet poems,
a spring or mire, blown
gasket, sensitive yea,
or ears ringing subway—
i turned inward and
questioned the word

what then became of
my deep, abiding love
with no targets left?
don't get me started
to get me, forget me

[he looks into the camera to sing
his girlfriend lives in denmark]

japanese death poem

no sign
in the cicada's song
that it will soon be gone

3

tucked in with jasmine
or soaked in ice
no wizards will save them
they'll never be perfect
half of us have them
and they'll never be perfect

Untucking

At night the breasts come out,
let down, reliable setting suns.
Or sinking moons.
The bodies come out altogether,
unfold along each other or the air,
and marriage becomes the bra,
the house the pants,
the body small within permitted nudity.

The breasts’ orbit is small.
They know the channels of air,
expect what current hits around 11:00.
Sometimes they mash the carpet
or watch as the sheets hover
against the husband’s back,
the view is white,
the air shakes.