My Long Poem

My long poem barked like a dog
Wore an orange madras headdress
Refused to change the light bulb. My long poem
Would not weep. Lilies begone, sweep your wilted
Birthday selves like balloons dragging the lake
For a child. Sweep your pitiful blue angels
Back into their chimney.
The foundation has soot like satin. My unfooting 
Begins thus. Scars begin moving
Of their own volition. Pitchy violins serenade
The skyline. Sandhill cranes are the purest
Invention ever known. The bogs are filling
With detritus. Hold up your bows
Put down your flags. There’s a runway running
Away from itself. The books are in hiding
The shelves remorseful. I cut up the dead
Flowers this time. They stung my hands
And restored my faith. Tomaž kept howling
Through the very still forest, Tomaž kept shouting
Over the deadpan earth. It was not fear it was not
Joy. The wine bottle was empty. The chimes
Fell from their noose, this World was killing us with its
Plastics. We were plastic suicides. An alarm
By the sealed door. A fireplace replaced the skull
Where is the bedsheet that will fit the brain
Why won’t my mother sleep? My father walking
All night into early morning. Who stole the afternoon
Sun from their village? Why are the fish dreaming
Of orange globes. There were hyacinths in my
Eyes, leftover from the art exhibit, wasn’t it a heart
Exhibit. The unbridled aesthetic, the tortured geometry
Of windowpanes. I lived inside his tear, he kept
Drying it, I became sandstone skin, I became an alley
Of a few trash cans, I became the fang of the monster
Murdering without agency, shaming without
Agency, haunting, no agency. My Agency was No Agency. 
I made very little money. I pushed leaden plows
I was dray and drayhorse. My hair kept falling out
In odd erratic places. How could I grieve
When the world was Untouchable and the new
Spaces in my head Unreachable.
Thin line. Vein of blue ice. Veins of blue ice
Broadcasting into early Spring leafless branches
At dusk.

*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

The river moved very slowly.
The machine guns were lowered, then raised. 

I moved slowly too

I didn’t raise or lower my head

I always needed water I never wanted to drink

Once, though, I drank voraciously tasting nothing 

Who killed the birdfoot blossom?
What stabbed my gloom repeatedly
Without effect.
Leave Violence in the Violets
Whiteshadowy eye
My torture.

Humanfaced Lion
Then a woman kisses a tree in the middle of the street
My heaven is a small bird powering through the sleet
My heaven an Empire of Worms, Wallace.
There are Knives Out in the House


§

I met a Hooded Voodoo
I made a friend then
Out of cotton and paint and string

What a small mouth had the deer
Outside my window
By the Elderberry Tree

Other beloveds:
Book and Light 
Shelf

There it was, the Quiet
The Dust
I moved off— 

The wealth of

*	*	*	*	*	*	*

Mice & Squirrels racing through Walls
What happened to their Earth, their Trees?
Small mouths crammed with wire and pink insulation. 
Human Faces frozen inside.
Colder. Suicide.


§

Soon before I turned sixty
I bought a white tablecloth with pale orange lines
And smoothed it out
Over the dining table. It was an unknown gesture.
I might have seen it in a film. I filled a bowl
With fruit and put it in the center.
Pale yellow daffodils I picked from the front garden
Floated in a red coffee cup of water on one end,
An old bouquet of flowers someone gave me
In a paper bag at a poetry reading
Stuck in a clear glass vase on the other end.
It was strange to move my hands in this manner
Strange to adjust the cloth, to push the chairs in
Strange to place four red placemats
On the table. And then to not want anything.


§

I loved you. really really really
Loved you. always. Even when I thought
You might be indifferent. Even when thought
Critical. Soon knew stiff and lonely
As a winter bloom. Many ghosts swaying
Or staggering around you.
And obliqued by the human racket in the house.
It felt almost illegal—
Those birds behind glass, the dying animals,
The man shocking himself back
To life repeatedly—on a chicken wire fence, on a horse wire fence—
Both electric, all—He who called himself
Your father. He was your father.
Soon felt the pushing into, the pushing off from,
Abuse. A delicate blue vein almost spiral
On your foot by the ankle. Sometimes I will never forgive
Your father for what he said to you. Other times
I hear him really just speaking to himself
And then I don’t forgive him for not speaking
To you, his son. But the real reality is
You knew how to sing. And you knew how to play
Piano. Guitar. And you painted. And you moved 
The objects to help them converse with shadows
And you made tea. Much tea. Motherwort and Lemon Balm
And something else I always forget, All of it rooted
Much made from the earth. I loved, loved
You. There was no better being that I knew, had ever
Known. How had you escaped from being
Deformed by circumstance, how did you
Remain devout to the cryptic, the stones and horses
Swimming together in the river. I knew you were
Human but the fact of our elision, me already more
Than half in shadow, you just coming into the light
Could never feel entirely real. But it felt really
Really. It felt really really the way reality
Should feel. And my love for you was that
The way reality should feel. The way it felt.
I made a cup of daffodils for you. You brought over
From the supermarket the weird green flowers
Of a stranger’s St. Patrick’s.

*	*	*	*	*	*	*

And now you’re here! Now gone, 
I turn the outside light off.
The moon’s enough, some days I say.
Others: Not enough.

I fear for a stumble, 
A fall

Where are you in your head leaving?
Leaving as the dead or as the joy
How odd the hedge looks in the dark

It separates a House from a Road. 

We travel more than stay.

You carry compartments of food
I offer you water

And then you go away.
Here’s a siren for your travels
Here’s the snowblossom moon not aforementioned
Here’s the piano, I touched the dark keys yesterday

Language did not unravel
Language did not choose

The handle to the shed fell off again 

The ivy swarmed and swallowed it

You and I we walk Eagle Creek we circle
Where the widowed swan floats
Where the thousands of egrets bank their bodies

No one is listening to this 
But Jerry and maybe 
Tomaž

*	*	*	*	*	*	*

Tomaž was as Topaz is
A gem that says “Fuck you, the world is wide, I’ll fling open my arms for it”

I’ll take on cursing
To preserve my mother’s memory

I’ll take on wind
Just to float and fly

I’ll take in Tomaž and Jerry and Tom. 
Today: mostly Tom

Who tilled and planted and watched
The basil grow

In awe.

Read more from Issue 22.2.