Poetry
four
CIVILIAN
Every now and then
wind works my ear
such wars I get to be
smash into my face
a cross-eyed
hummingbird, drunk
on busy-wingéd chaos
all up in my shit
all else is sleepless books
and reams to haunt
and pinhole cameras
for utter sky companionship
when I get fired up
all is permitted them
so unkillable, a sweep of tules
on dawn patrol
details at war with form
DENIZEN
Sand winds
smoke coming off of piles
the region secretes another
Desert Lakes Golf Community
proving the unseen
haven amused and exploding
blue-green askance, slope-up,
fan to foothill
do I want to get mixed-up
in this country's facts
some of its gods
cloud islands, skies in which
our grief has not yet started
and it's a good thing, too
surrounded on all sides by wind
graceful, illiterate
hammer
SITUATIONS AT HAND
The plastic cup gently touched
the ground but do not
feel too destroyed about it
some light touched the knuckles on your right hand when
the sun sliced the fog like that
maybe
you won’t care
that things had been
so touchable and alive--
read that like it’s nothing
go somewhere else to learn
one of us is always
trying to touch plants
gravestone rubbing supplies
bony ridges underneath
the you that likes wind
they avoid that one because of wisdom
and they look good doing it
touched in mind and forehead
I rise to the occasion: a shame and a freedom pop out together
unerring, like the touch of desert air conditioning
the thought was fairly earth-colored
in one dizzying encounter,
a particularly violent young amateur
touched the curve in my upper life
his finger
Dear sir/madam, mistook me
right there where the tooth touches the inside of the cheek
and a jewel touched the rim of the blue-white hollow in his neck.
Uh, yeah...Perfect amber.
typically, arms are raised to the sun
in a posture of joy and worship
~some light touches you in your chest.
Get back in touch with your part in the ongoing grass.
~
The trick is how not to lose your wits (etc.) to history
it was a miracle
he won’t feel that way when he’s young anymore
flickering
or or dread
or or a humor brushed-up against
it was so normal
to feel a slow kind of
‘being within’
or ‘hanging around’
that coarse lightness came
from the way she worked~~~~
“all this every day”
myself I need
to further
silence —
it has always been the wrong war
mothers curse us, curse sons
too innocent of our work to know how to be cursed by it
complain of too much howling
outside the outside
very late last night
one splutters about, knowing only the lover’s complaint--
it all started with those high weeds that leaned over
touched the trunk of that oak
again and again from that day forward
DEVIL MOUNTAIN LUNCH BREAK
An old and inedible bun
California buckeye
some annual grasses
knee high in cow parsnip
caked earth, she was just laughing
a tick engraves
the inside of my cuff
with its sword-like thingy
after a good while, she pulled
her foot from my breast
pocket at last and
we sat on the little
blanket from Oahu.
Seen and written
it's just enrichment
heard and tasted
tempered on the tongue
cheap and unrepeated
and old and unrepeatable
more of a fire color’s
relentless shape:
swarms are her gestures
so gnat clouds waft on by
I see her face in that drought year
this afternoon like that afternoon
or an X Ray of an iris
held up to the sun
but more beige.