to want or to be wanting

I think of you
and Frank Ohara
Morning

which was his
but has been mine
and I think is yours
now especially
as you are

death and fog
have been heavy
this week

if any of us
has been able to see
far past the near
shore
I doubt it
                         ----------------
  certainly not me              If I could be your anchovy
   filled as I am                   in a second
    with ambition                 I would

for a taste of you
 or anyone                  
                     I'd do
    in bed                    much

         still
         instead
         I don't
     

Poem or facebook status

Dear Callabash
 I've been flirting with
Productivity
 For years
  Should I accept
   She isn't into me
    Or will we someday tell our kids
     About my funny
      Stalking

extraction and edit from 7/2011

In the beginning

The first man stood in the heavens.

On the bones of his ancestors

Lucifer fell 

angels hurled mountains of cheese

A giant leap

The rind of the moon makes pungent stock.

The necklace of the moon wins suitors.

The gown of the moon frustrates fathers.

The howl of the moon is the wild call.

The moon sees the one I love.

There's a rabbit in it, and a man, and a spider.

the celestial choir

 and the whirling dust and the planetary punctuation,

 is loved, 

has been loved, 

will be loved

in the disparation.

Edit of 6/10/12

No I                           No I(.)Am not(.)these words
not am                               Am not(.)dying.                                
dying and                              Am (not) dying.           these words dying.
these words                                          dying these words.
are always hers                                                           these words are (always)
longing ex                                                                   these words are (hers).
tolling
idolatry
as without                             As (always) without her.     (with, as without) her, these words are.
her these words
and cells                 these words are cells. are these words cells? prisons (or) blood. prisons (for blood)
send the signal                 these words are cells for blood
blood flow                          these words flow?
winter                                                             (fall?)
does not sum
the whole of
silence
to come                              No I / am not / to come /
                                             (fall of a sparrow)



"I am not dying.
These words are cells.
Winter does not sum the whole of silence."

Where else I'd write a poem

I'm instead inspired to stillness

A feeling of immobility

A sure knowledge of

Wanting

To wait

A poor swimmer - edit

pressed to you
 naked
we are as near
 as though we lay
on the far shores
 of a river.

Shanties for Landies - 1

We'll stay where we are and we'll live and we'll die here.
We'll stay where we are and we'll never more roam.
When you work for your bread there's no time for adventure
We work til we're blasted and then we go home.

Parts in Reflection

I. I. I.

I'm extended.
I'm contracted.
Self views self
views part by part
a mirror of myself in a mirror
tight shiny pores of a brow under quarter inch hair, a bare
shoulder with a spider of dark lint drinking the sweat
an other shoulder: peripheral view: deja, already, yet...
 blurred.
 Memory's less silver than tin:
 was it of my body, of the image?
 Was the image of my body,
Was the body mine,
was the body of my image,
 in his image,
my body
was
warped
a reflection of glass and looking. To Become.
Multi-Limbed                                                              (in secret)
As Kali. In her image. Wearing her skulls. I wear them. They wear me.
                                                                           (out).                (out.)
her. (an enthusiasm, possessed) by
her e. (an enthusiasm. possessed of                                                                                                                                          
 her memories,
    small and large objects
 tarnished love                            a missed affair,
                       misplaced papers.
These once were shaped                                          one
                    wore differences, but are        become
 brothers.
unfinished books and dead relatives        all                      

II. An Epilogue. II.

And here the bathroom light is harsh    (there.)
And here the crickets are. preparing. their autumn threnody.
       here I'm round faced 15
               I'm 35 and rounding second base
Here        these words my thumb is weaving. for the web. on a phone.
                                                            /remember the spider</>
I snored once in a West Philly studio on my way to Mars.
     this is a true story, compressed.
              I was there.

III. Afterthought III.

 a beginning breeze sways the yellow "no outlet" sign beyond my window
 planted like an obscene sunflower by the wood mulch where I found a dead possum to plant with a sapling of black walnut.
Round that tree will pups of foxes, skunks, and groundhogs play, together as I have seen them, when the tree is tall and I am reflected in stone

memorial day essay

They Uphold and Protect Our Freedom.
They are Heroes.
Happy Memorial Day.
In which we memorialize the living and the dead alike.
There’s little distinction between our collective national commendation and extolling on one hand of Armed People abroad and our excoriation and indifference towards them at home on our other hand. Both treatments live in our use of that little word Hero. Our Armed People are Heroes more than we, because, in our stories, they have gone out into the world, and encountered death, and returned changed. That change real or imagined is tragic in a personal sense, because in this story where they are Heroes, they are no longer of us. We can extoll them but we can’t understand them.
As tragic, more tragic, differently tragic, is the source in our souls of this ongoing personal need to sacrifice our children to Heroism: we feel enslaved, perceive ourselves as inescapably burdened. The common cycle of economic debt is embraced by a people who have come to view themselves as indebted to the larger society for their very existence: if we are to be so much as fed, clothed, loved, we must EARN it, and this might be a positive value if the earning were possible. But nothing is asked of us, other than to competitively succeed over our brothers, and nothing is given to us but with the demand that we do what is asked of us.
We have no freedom to search, abroad or in ourselves, for the witches, the talking animals, for the Ogres of Death which would grind our bones to a heroic rebirth. We have no freedom. We have no time. We are Working.
Enter the Armed People, who accept a higher call. Who march as god’s own soldiers, armored with our Ideology, who march right out of our lives onto the pages of Grimm’s Be All You Can Be commercials. Once gone from our sight, they embody the freedom and action and triumph of will, the Puritan Strength of our ancestors courses through them, and through them we revolt in our spirits against the Oppressors and Evils of the world, and through them we are made Free.
And if they return?  How should we meet their eyes?
If they have done all our hearts have demanded, their eyes will shame us with knowledge and strength we were too timid to embrace. They were never really like us at all, or they would not have left, or we would have gone too.
If they meet our eyes as equals, more horrible. Did they fail? Were they undeserving? Was there never really a chance, no higher thing for them to find or become? Did we risk them for nothing? Did we cower at home from nothing?
Better they should not return.
No wonder we most revere the dead.
Their Ultimate Sacrifice:
Our Ultimate Sacrifice.
May the smoke of our offerings please them in Heaven.