ALL RESPONSES |
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in response to all:
I swear to god I held the door
for Lucy Grealy this morning at US Bank.
I know she's been said to be dead
but this was not a coincidence, I tell you
straight out. This was Lucy, at least the Lucy
I've read about, and she knew who I was too.
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Rainbows stretch over gray Minnesota,
painting depression, serenity, doubt
and elation on gessoed faces, each stroke
a wrinkle, wink, or grimace. One glance
and we see all things past, daubed on flesh
in pure hues that need no thinning.
Works of absolute passion, tinted
with ecstasy and grief, bear violet scars
as reminders of violence and pleasure,
with touches of prairie sunset
and vast Superior lapping lichened granite
to entice us to the mural. Bring your dreams
to exhibition, and we will apply
their blended spirits to canvas, stretched
across the frame of gray Minnesota. |
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Limbs so interchangeable
that Eli Whitney would have fired
in the air, taken aim from the
odd banks of New Haven, to see
if they were angels in sky-ships.
Color over color, a Rainbow Rapture.
Indecent, pronounced the Presbyterians.
Not enough rich harmony, sang the African Baptists.
Stolidly artistic, mused the Unitarians.
Too dreamy for words, argued the Jews.
Miraculosa! shouted the Mexican Catholics.
Let's go there and light candles.
Someone alert the editor of the Register!
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Bob Dylan sings
on the black vinyl LP
rhythm sounds
like a heart attack
vocal cords
like shredded wheat
his voice never bends
like a real person’s
just drips & breaks
every once in awhile
like blue icicle tips
on an old front porch |
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Back to the earth
how quickly we forget
the watery chaos
the primordial
reds yellows greens
the sinews taking liquid
shape the heat expanding
toward form breast
hip
jealousy
ovum
anger
fingertip
a sudden emptying
an embodied self
drawn forth
ruddy
still hot
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if I were a painting
made up
of L’s and rhythms
with quotes
around my intentions
then I
might fit
up on any wall
that is
given
(as if it was real)
as if
tension
had hold of my proper nouns
and I
drooling causes down a plane
fixed in
time every emotion
with means
mundane
(repeats again)
if I were a painting
with tears
dropping like sunbeams
of blue
like Miles Davis
had blown
me straight back to heaven
as soon
as I had landed
with glorious standards
unfit
for human kind
if I were a painting
so awe
inspiring
that news
became a lark, and terror became my mind,
if I
were a painting...
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It is midnight. Everything is silent, but every
part of me awake. My toes can’t find
a place to rest, my elbows feel like
seaweed, my neck is curved to the shape
of rock and foam.
I know God told me to take a walk
but I never dreamed I would get lost.
I had no idea leaving Eden could be
so hard even with the woman’s hand
in mine, the seeds we carried
away in a basket.
I can’t seem to open my eye, the dark has
absconded with all my passions. I am bereft
and blind. But gradually the earth has promised me
shade in the desert, food for my hungry
children. I don’t know why I am beached
upon this guilt. I can’t remember if the
way back was strewn with
rose petals or ash.
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As the three-headed dancer, as Europa
caressing the head of the bull,
as abbottess the sheperdess, as woman
so lonely or so horney
she kisses the head of a hat rack.
These are dire times, my friends.
Stinky armpits. All that’s clear
is these acts performed by women.
Does it matter, their effrontery?
Their bravery, their losses?
Blue and red, yellow and green,
all the primary colors tell us
they’re mixed to make something new.
The smooth black in onyx and velvet
and cosmos frames as always the worlds within. |
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I am certain
Earth is in the middle.
It has to be!
Because the title hints it?
No! That is the only way
it can stand between
Man--or is that Woman--
and God.
But I don't see Him
on the Right,
therefore,
He must be on the Left,
or someone switched
the parts of the triptych.
Now that would be
beyond crude. |
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For Sun God
Waking
we hear one true thing
the crash of waves on rock
there are the tops of mountains
in the sea, sun-painted
and we have seen the detritus
of sea in the canyons
God is the lavender
flowering of the waves
we, being here,
are the flowering of God.
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there’s nothing left to say
even in the air, the taste
of what we’re in for is ordained
Mars, the closest it’s been
for hundreds of years, is no more red
than my seventy-eight year old father
is these days
let us not discuss nations or age, his intrusions,
nor even if our dwindling moments together
will fall or somehow disappoint
for now, the man is a study,
a genuflection if you will,
between two sad stones
who have been next to each
other for years, yet slowly moved
apart by swelling
and in any given instant, we will begin to transfer
to the outer reaches of our galaxies |
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being a dancer
too much of her
life revolved
around her body
she wants
the second
half of her life
to be about
her soul
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From there to here,
from here to there,
funny things
are everywhere.
-- Dr. Seuss
My face is red,
because I'm mad.
I'm mad because
my eyes are blue.
You made the laws
you thought were true,
that made my blue eyes
hurt by light,
so now I seek
the black of night.
Sometimes I wish
that they were green,
but you were mean
and made them blue.
You made them blue
to make me mad,
so now my face is red.
That's bad, because
I broke your laws
and fled into the night
away from painful light,
away from yellow, green and
you. |
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In the magic ring of the bar, all things are equal.
Name and rank and the rest of the comedy
sink away with the first pint... To my right
the Harley-riding Vietnam vet tells me
the bastards haven't got him yet,
while the other side, a girl cajoles me to ring
a cowbell hung from the piller; her friend says No!
You'll have to buy everyone a round!
So I buy her a drink for warning me.
Some regulars spill in, want the channel changed.
Time wanders. My chance acquaintences grow lively
as your priest in the center turns and turns about
pulling engines, mixing gin, uncorking bottles.
We commune with you, and you fill us with life. |
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Her theremin voice haunts me
in black and white science fiction films,
siren modulation
captured in wavering vinyl,
in stellar windblown robes
descending,
smiling ghost
from another heaven.
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New year blues hover;
truth, compassion skate away.
Hope wanders poemless. |
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for Sun God
Strangers sat naked, their lines melting,
blood slipping through twisted veins.
We had the night, a neon soup warming
cold flesh. Wine-darkened thoughts
passing encoded in other words.
When dawn came knocking we found we were
clothed all along. Words were only words.
Bitter winter blew through the seams
of our coats as we stepped outside
and started cars. The sun-god crested
the horizon, puny and pale, hung over,
his promise of Spring a foolish boast.
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Response to Ordinary Appetites
She makes love to you
with the force of the tide
her moon
face framed in flame
rises
over you until you
understand
you’re underwater
your lungs full of brine
as if only the deep drink
can quell your ordinary
appetite |
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when elvis took his third
college drawing class
he put his mother behind him
for a good long while
and instead envisioned the anger
he had for a father
as lines and color
and spaced them about
on various sheets of paper
neglecting to hold them
close to his warm body
in the same way that he
had been held at arms’ length
by his father’s belief
for so many years
ever since he was thirteen
even though the old man
had tried to crush him
through faith in biology
and quantitative principle
through string theory
and numbers and science
all flawed in their
incompletion, elvis now stood
before his rhythmic energy
spread on a page
his sketch a belief in
itself
an expression of order
that spoke not of a maker
but of things even
he had not figured for
in the equations and proofs
that his biology pounded
and elvis looked at the mess
of wavelengths and smudges
that had sprung from the coolness
that he had become
by this time and
there was no chaos
that could bump and climb him
without being
and elvis saw this
and what art he had become
and it was good.
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we are all little creators
wanting to offer up something
to prove that we have
lived
even I am drawn to do this
gluing the puzzle down on a board
so that it may never be played
again
and my footsteps crumble concrete
walking down sidewalk after sidewalk
almost as if saying--I am
here
all the while not realizing
that my mother remembers me
even after she has gone
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We need to start treating each other
as if we are all that is left, as
soon enough, it will be true.
That is why I called, really
but my words were different--
full of praise for how you
sprang Dad from the clink
on his mothers ninety seventh birthday
and how you calmed her
when she turned ninety seven years
and one day
when she realized her
only living son would leave her with
the forgotten ancients on Christmas
who count the cars coming
across the bridge for hours on end,
even worse still, that he was
getting another divorce.
The hotel operator patched me through
to his room, and we talked about how Florida
is having a cold snap.
I laughed and said
--You wanna talk about cold?
Falling into that role given to
anybody living Up North by
anybody living Down South, which is
That of Author of the Book of Cold, and it was
a good change, to take the role instead of
waiting for it to be given, since
isn’t it better to give than to recieve?
We reached our high of 3
before the sun came up
and he said
--Its all relative
I suppose he’s right, all things being equal.
When it comes to weather, shouldn’t we all just agree?
I imagine him in his box of a room,
unhappy with the cleaning service, an
empty can of tuna stinking up the bathroom,
his weary shave kit splayed open to
reveal brass nail clippers, saved change
and the baking powder salt mixture he
uses instead of store bought toothpaste,
Heater kicking out that neglected
used every 8 months or so smell,
unable to leave because all he has is shorts and a T-shirt
bare and hairless legs prickled from the chill,
shivering underneath the floral duvet,
waiting for you to bring him a sweater. |
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Because I see wild mustard returning to the hills and think of you
Because the blue hills are like the shoulders and slope
of your back as you sleep
Because for one sunset we sat on the rim of Bryce Canyon
iridescent in scarlet and coral to watch a blackbird
settle its ragged body into a crook on top of a pink pillar
and saw all around us this me and you
I think of you now at the jungle’s edge and miss
the way your body anchors me to earth.
In everyday life we fall into bed exhausted,
forget the other’s body in a country of dreams
but now I miss your underwear soft from
a thousand washings, the socks you still wear
from stores long closed.
Because I love to smell you naked after running
when you wear the light of freshly pressed olive oil
I miss the weight on your side of the bed.
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i pity the moon
each evening she backs away
across the sky like a scared puppy
we don’t really deserve her, the way
she rolls around in space like a mother
who’s lost an only child
probably a greedy child or maybe
a grown boy
someone who didn’t love her
the way a child is supposed to love
a mother, the way she loved him
i read somewhere a thousand years ago
the moon was somehow closer,
that the universe is speeding up, causing
the moon to move farther away
it scares me to think what will happen
when the moon exceeds that final circle
and disappears
what will we look to for love? no one will write songs
anymore, lunar goddesses will cease to exist,
heaven will cry
i harbor secret pity for the moon
she keeps the oceans from swallowing
themselves; she is everything, yet
nothing
like a mother sitting by herself on a wooden bench
in a large park
alone with her yellow thoughts
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as inspired by the middle panel, in particular, of Back to Earth
Back to Earth, having spun our flesh
on the evening star and from the calyx
rimmed bowl of sun sucked our humor,
spent our liquored pride, skin kindled
on the rub of love's pricked heat, we
fall, to wallow now in a thicketed
pool, nursing our mottled ache.
Gorged against a blue-steel sky,
the moon, hung hammered milk-copper,
ghosts across the pond as a slow skipped
coin and shimmers thru the bowered
trees, melting their colors down, wan
shades of leaf and blossom and fruit
all cooling to a purple slag before
inking into unfathomed night.
We slip then, into the waiting water,
wash ourselves in moonray reds and lunar
blues, rolling round and fish belly
white as we slide beneath the shadowed
droop of shoreline flowers. Lily heads lean
ripe to the water's ripple, and gazed upward
at the stamen's swollen nod we realize
that this too is how stars are born, from
the ecstasies of atoms spilled then drawn
together to collide, as when moondust meets
the milted spurl of a comet's passing tail.
We know then in our conjoined breath
a force no less than the waltzing of worlds,
as somewhere deep in heaven's open eye
a new star winks in, an old winks out.
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Running late this morning.
It was 7:00 A.M.
When I walked out the back door, facing east,
My heart began to beat strongly.
There was a soft blue light
Behind the houses and trees,
The color of beginning of dawn.
The days are getting longer,
And I feel it.
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Dionysus. Dionysia.
Wine-dark gropings
for temporary, uncertain joy--
one endless ritual fuck
crazed with pomegranate
wheels the pulp of grapes.
I have your name, Denise,
but have not found the
face I had before I landed
in the whirling compressor
of your gravity rainbow cosmos.
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there she is again
momentum is her goal;
either that or utter sustainment
we understand her dismal lack
of options, her teasing shapes
we make adjustments to her seasons,
use our memories like a dance of doves
toward sunset to explain the aftermath
of things: smoke or death, maybe
the shadow of an elm or rain falling
through the sidewalk cracks in my brain
my very idea of nostalgia is changing;
it’s no longer a saxophone or trombone,
distorting the tempo of my past
it’s more like winter falling on a frozen earth,
shivering in the horror of passing time |
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Sitting alone on a broken wall
under a china-white sun
in La Chartreuse de la Verne,
I watch a nun duck beneath
a blue-green lintel (that mottled
stone unique to this region).
Her purpose sought within
the cool dark room beyond,
I watch unnoticed. But
her long hard shadow
touches me like a black ray.
For a moment she denies me
the certainty of sunlight
and her God breathes once
within that heartbeat.
And then she’s gone and
the raw engine of the sun
turns the world again.
Later, in the barred
and spotted light of
ancient cloisters closed
round terraces of olive trees
hoarding crosses, a warm
ambiguous breeze turns over
leaves, raises dust,
transfigures heat into gold.
But later yet, seated
at the border of God’s
promontory, where fallen
walls square shoulders
with the primal fixity
of uncut limestone, there
the fume of holy order
dissipates. Where cork
and chestnut trees grow wild
across the folds and pits
and fissures of this valley;
where base physics drains
the sap and salt flies in
the Mistrale, there the snake
drops eggs , cool-white amongst
roots and butterflies
blow like embers. In the throat
of the lizard a pulse beats slow.
And through the distant veil
of plainsong barely heard,
the thermal voice of
original earth whispers,
wordless, unarticulated. And
within it there is nothing
of praise or supplication, no
grammar of hope or expectation,
no syntax of desire. This is
the uninflected voice,
the broken consonants
of falling water, the endless
vowels of the wind.
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