Live for The Epic –
never for the lone, ancient songs
that were sung
and summoned
to build it.
Slink close to institutions that be –
it will cloak your denial
in plausibility.
Love the single word –
forget its etymology
and live happily
inside an absence
of comments
and questions.
Then,
pathologize well –
disregard the witch,
brutally.
Later, the others will follow her.
as the years of your life wear thinner
and the month of May is an instant
and the winter is still longer than the summer,
occasionally, when the winter of your heart rears in summer,
you must clasp it, warming the ventricles,
smoothing your palms over its surface,
without care for the blood that will stain your hands.
and the words of your father will ring in your ears as you console yourself,
or the wisdom imparted to you through the teachers, the priests, the wretched and destitute,
through your enemies and your elders,
they will be the assuagement through which you are salvaged.
6.9.2009
I felt his eye
affixed and drinking me
when he offered his sunbaked arm
as rod and staff to hold me steady.
he said, "I'm comfortable with that", and so was I
as we traversed the scars,
the mounds the glaciers left.
I thanked him.
with his eye on me,
he wished me well.
with his eye on me still,
he smiled heat into me
until the day was done.
along the mounds,
the heat still lingers.
I wrote a poem about you after we had weakly trolled each other,
before giving up to plan our divorce party.
I wrote that the likes of me was destined to love the likes of you.
_____________________________________________________
I wanted to love you enough to divorce the shit out of you
and watch you dance with delight into your own accord.
I did love, I still watch, and I do love you still.
Nanette!
where are you
in how many places now
did you tell that Buddhist monk that you would soon loosen your grip
on all the world’s seams
finally discovering the truest thing to give
and the worthiest way to give it?
how fun it was
how lovely it was
how pink and healthy and young and naive
now it is grey and sick and old; glutted and undeceived
i must scream 