Shut the Door

It's better now, our misfortune,
far better than a politics against
freedom and the poet under siege.
It's better now, our resistance
and dialectics of falling syntax,
better than the human agenda-driven
voices. Better now can we sense how
the heart is losing as if it isn't.

The lord of the clouds built
on a world of stray dogs
a mad, haunted life.
But children don't fear his art--
its magic and nameless intensity.
A child rotates sad tales,
and adults rotate old traps.
There's a keyhole they've forgotten,

and there's my story--
a mile down the wrong side
of half a memory stuck in the future.
I don't want to sing that song.
I want to dance, to drift
in brooding rectangles
where no one is waiting to be found.

Harsh Babies

It surprised no one--
the hang of feeling,
the medium of passion.

In the cold, those
harsh babies--bloated,
gaudy--claimed commitment.

With the bottle, the smell
of private love, lean,
drooping too large--
chemistry liberated.

After the war,
he did not speak. Life,

its routine tidiness,
stifled the peace.
His first love, old,
bought secondhand silver.

With some guilt,
no outward hostility,
he accepted affairs.

Exhausted, his forgiveness
lay propped up. He squeezed it.
There was nothing.

Makes me smile

Mary, did you know?

You Fall Here

You fall here soon enough.
In the middle of the night,
into the beat you labor--
draw rhythms and waves.
There's always space
for what you don't understand
to find an opening. Alone,
simple and sad, you can't go
backwards flaming bombs.

I tried

Folly

Quickly
the mind cuts
passages,
framing lines
with gaps.

Loss is an effort
I could resist,
but don't.

Along the tone
I write--
strong, cold,
skeptical
come to mind.

Amazing mystery,
the naked I.
What folly the critique.