What kind of a man are you
with your hands around your knees
strangling them helpless knobs
they ain't even got
tears for you
What kind of a man are you
with the neanderthals gone
and you not even mourning
what kind of man
sees every day someone worth loving
and stays at home
avoiding sleep

Alright, of course: the moon.
Orange, large, over the houses and the trees, made of rocks, and cheese.
We go on.  Tell stories.  Because of course. The moon. Above.
The moon, of course, is
dare I go on.
The fucking audacity.
The moon's alright without us.
So. Stretching. Tired. Awake.
Avoiding sleep.  The moon remains.
On deathbeds, all around the world
the moon observes.
We say: "how beautiful."
Of course we do.  We say we're blue. We say death comes to trees and houses, orange hospitals.
Love comes under the moon,
sweaty and knowing, or secret and pining.
We can't escape it. Most of us don't bother trying. I try reading, but my fingers cross the page
and hide the text. Eclipsing it.
Crickets, outside singing. Being eaten. Eating. In the snow they're silent.
The snow, of course, is white, and pure.
The moon is cold.
These words make fun, but even in passion, yearning for the words that make moons,
am I embarrassed at my inadequacy. Or glad to reflect her.
Pale ghost of a pale ghost,
I'll sing. Like a cricket.
Call my mate.
Summer's closing, and I haven't once been lower than
the grass.

in south philly
the traffic from snyder sometimes carries
sounds of wheel and horn
people shouting
a block away, through the window you can
hear the neighborhood ebb, flow like quiet night tides
and a white door hangs crooked in the bedroom frame
in the hall the cat sometimes charges
like cavalry up stairs

in bed in the dark

two leaves on a twig of the pear tree

resemble a butterfly, landed and stretching 

i realize my glasses are on

take them off

the shapes of the world diffuse to grey cloud

in bed in the dark

surrounded by murk

like a fish in the deep ocean

the ghost of other lives

as i remember,

My parents divorced, they told me - maybe they said "separation"
and I wept for an hour or two
and then was fine
a pink book on divorce "for kids" had terrible cartoons. Worse text. I took it for amusement, let it go.
I had a new place to walk - a mile or two north. new routines, imposed. as the old routines were imposed.
I lost no control. gained no control.
what love was there remained, or didn't fall.
fights, arguments, thrown furniture, drunk slobbering hollers continued.
escapes were the same. time was slow.  sleep came uneasy.
I remained myself.

as I remember

"no way in hell" her father said.
I'd never visit. and I wasn't strong enough (so I remember, so I told myself, so I remember telling, myself)
to dissent - which this time occurred to me.  (so here it's special. as I remember.  I'd imagined rebellion, as a life choice, not kicking, but living it)
nevermind though. thought of moving up. never asked if I'd be wanted. stayed at home. wept sometimes.
became more distant from myself, as I remember. here. I wanted to be someone. I lived outside that want.
We never spoke again, after we last spoke. she and I. or that old me.  as I tell it now.  from what I remember.
there was a day spent in her town, we met and saw swans, and I didn't understand, how what seemed like a lovely day was not a sign of permanence. smiles and ease.  I've never understood, as I remember.

Then the jobs came and passed.  before and after. always fired, or disappeared one day, embarrassed, too much lateness, or argument.  One place I'd cleaned and would later pass, walking, daily, glancing over, not approaching. exit myself.

at least one river, called me in, to stay, as I remember. didn't do it.  or I did, and doing so, split, the body that drowned, the body that stayed. ghosts split apart, as I tell it.

as I remember it, I was baptised there. Immersion, mikvah, ritual drowning, shamanic practices cut you up (as I read, as I remember reading, as the words became a way I had been, as I remembered while I read, for I can remember remembering.  So doing, writing new stories, climbing the ladder to

in that river, I drowned and was reborn, never having leapt.   so lived.  so died.  so each day, as I remember, passed.

There was a time, as I remember, wholeness was me.  I'd think and do. I was myself. These days I am not myself. I am not what I would do.  This is adulthood. As I remember learning.
Respect for the wish of others.  Or for plans.  As I remember being taught to understand. Being proud to learn.

Outside could be any weather.
I could be any name.

As I remember wishing, I sit.

Poor israel.  No return will make your eden green.

i could have hugged
i yelled.
or left
or blamed
maybe I wasn't there, but
wooing
or swimming in a pool
of gin
i could have
but
where are you
i am writing fragments
another you
painting
another you
a party
another you
will marry
i'll make it right
we'll live
some other life
the dirt won't know
who's buried
be my grave
and I'll be
born

and by the way (wherein I wish I were a 'better' writer)

I've been gardening.
the handles of the hoe, fork, rake
have torn my skin to blisters.
on my right, on the thumb, just below the web
the skin is gone
is dark, is shining wet
and if I stretch my fingers wide
the skin splits.
cracks.
whole skin stretches
this, beneath, this partial skin
breaks like utah plains
and oozes
the breakfast I've wolfed
has let me leak
through a patch
of burned lost paper
red.
some people grow bone when wounded
a genetic defect
I leak, which is normal
and I stretch my fingers
breaking and tearing myself
which is normal
old scars dot my hands
around the new break
and perhaps minerals in the soil
perhaps my own chemistry
the wrecked layer sparkles
like rumpelmintz

no dignity in counting

I wrote 100
now a big deal: 101
but I'm standing over a bowl of water
observing my own urination
and I want to spin words around the pee stream
how the light catches
one side smooth
the left rough, beading
gravity and light and surface tension
time, processed through cells
the water of romulus and
what tornado took away rome's first
cumulonimbus
Coriolis
beauty in the small things
words to catch moments
flies in amber
101st poem:
inelegant words
for an elegant moment
100 miracles in a watery fall

jade plants drop leaves
those shrink, send roots
what's the interplay?
those tiny hairs, the dirt
do they welcome one another?
resent the water lost?
or
like so many exchanges
is someone eaten
is earth waiting
for the moon to sleep

I don't want that blood in my mouth

One learns to ask permission
before that, what?
Hug; kiss; send love notes. Real cute when you're four.
visit? eat. run, explore! and somewhere
sinks in: "ask first"
"please" = magic
which is bullshit.
magic = life.
love maybe.
please is devil's music
when you say it, his horns grow
but they don't tell you
so you learn
bathroom hands get raised
"may" precedes "why"
and in the night
at 2 am
you don't send love notes
without asking
please

I'd like to put my fist through
lots of things
punching air feels powerful
no resistance - present
no resistance - possible
so punch through
doors
walls
time
there's no resistance
walk back to paradise
the angel's gone fishing
eve's lonely,
like you

lyrics spin, repeating
lyrics spin
outside's a stoat winding branches
think's he's smoke
sings lyrics
repeating
"go back, go back, wait"
he sings the words I want
the weasel
trees in a rubble hill
mid city
left by accident, by oversight
til someone finds an opportunity
trees get to sway
and host stoats,
in my dreams the trees can rustle a capella
the weasels can whisper
(eat eggs)
but I'll hear (go home)
when there's no home left

arsonists burn down the places they most
wish to live

the thing was milk white
it slid and curled,
 in and out of sight
round the base of an alanthius
 up the bark
round the branches
like light on water
I saw it
because I would not sleep
afraid of another day
cycled like a dream
when those hands
whose grip meant place
were gone, and I'd gone drifting
on the chop cold lake
with boats on the bottom from the dawn
of colonial time
and small boats from before and bodies
of believers, of the damned
of holy water love
all drowned like
clouds
dream mud dreams
forget their first morning
knowing the difference between tomorrow
and smoke