Shutter as the bulls throat is slit I
take photographs of the hydrogen
o throne flare, when I O
It is they who have seen the fleeting side of us, the condom left like a snake run
over by a car. It is they who pick up the empty cans refilled with who knows what
near where wonder
wears inexpensive symptoms
size indicates age more so
Because your days were tethered
to oversized moths, or bleeding aluminum
awnings, we could only go so far
An economy of touches,
your hand, my hand
your hair, my hand
your swallowing throat,
my lips but no further.
Come spring, if we wanted it, there was work
at any one of those farms scattered like lawn darts
beyond the blacktop, sprawling mansions
It happens in a Hong Kong hooker hotel,
off Nathan Road. A round bed under mirrors,
girlie pinups gazing from candy-pink walls:
It was our age finally starting to show.
The airplanes overhead
filled with firecrackers and bone china
The battle is beneath us, internal
& spread all over the lawn, registered
in our nature to be the simplest seed
We were no longer in love. The sky, too, was beginning to show its wear. A silk lining could be seen through every slit in the dark green fabric.
Read MoreYou never claimed that God commissioned you to paint the screams of the animals being slaughtered. Your many persecutors whispered it in the street and outside your window.
Read MoreThe dancer every day striving for perfection but not
wanting to attain, be done, run out; yet wanting, if
the finish is the sun god. Every day, limb warm at bar
Read MoreThere was the car ride back from Arizona
or how the light just played like
a misfiring trombone that was the real stuff.
I painted you sunflowers, fat and rusty golden and broken stemmed.
You wrote me about why the war was wrong and I pictured your nipple hair.
He kills a hundred birds to do this. They are tiny birds. Boy uses a lot of glue but I can still smell the meat. The cage is shaped like a phone booth. It is big enough for two people but the sides are fragile.
Read MoreIn a violent sky I gunpowder in a sentence with you.
This house owes me: I once held walls.
Now my back is a mistake you made from scratch.
Todd is lonely. Todd is the only one awake
in the house; it’s 9 p.m. Todd is nodding
to the beat of the music. Todd is watching TV
At Miss Hooker’s funeral I’ll fall in
love with her all over again, red hair
and green eyes and freckles and her eyes closed
like they used to be when she recited
the Lord’s Prayer at the end of Sunday
School class and I peeked to see how she looked
since this shell’s
collapsed and I have been intoxicated
with this hard joy of immediacy and a world
without blunder or hesitation. It has been irritating —
Read More