p l a i n e r

arriving with all that force

He's photo in the traditional sense.

                (and then)

He brings a mess of it with him in a pouch.

        (and then)

He unlikes an orange ball and shares it.

                            (and then)

Two crows farting around in our perfection.

Two tall maples decidedly blown and incorruptible.

Two parts illegible here.

                                                (and then)

He's caught some of the upside down.

        (and then)

He's fully embedded. Human and dissolved.

you are active and incompletely

Which again when I stopped. As the over-ratement of an uncle

truly an issue of the newer next to the up and coming. Just

because some of my brightest friends can't take a poem out

and read it and read it and know doesn't mean the simplest

one can't. This time or this time or this time or this here.

Words and pictures nobody understands reflected in windows.

Makes one happier in being the work. Just and quiet. Just

 

so.

the second I put a hand on it it

I.

Yes. Crime is bad … that's why we call it …

alone in this country where … I finally stood

phonograph in the back room … curtains had that smell

of bodies in white gowns on gurneys waiting for …

worshipping sandpaper … this right from a dream

you can wreck a hip doing that … you know

The sky is up … that's why we call it …

 

II.

No. As if O'Hara or Koch never wrote a word. Jimmy Schuyler neither. Or forget them. What about freaking Willy "The Daffodil" Wordsworth? We require a solid … some person … not some damn gassed up oracle unsexed and all … well … you know.

forth to the moral awash in green species

who'd rapped in virtue come

        like a river like a ledge

sparking forty fresh exceptions,

        a long trembly physics of grace,

genuine and particular, cuckoo

        of the breed, dark in risks,

an egg and a flinch, portent

        of, hintful toward, bent over

a puddle … not only in thought

        but here for which books yearnt

long ago and always … a blue

        joy touched into comedy, rapped

into sense, danced from all

        stopping

stop all that damn burning burning

What they have in their ears they'll shout

if they have to. The good life smokes us

some mountaintop moments carved in lots

of threes and sevens. A lot of time. I'd add

a fracas of gnats to my anthology just

to guess that one kind soul might save

the earth at last. This then will probably

save the earth at last.

when you begin to make a change

you can only say it one way but when you see it

full of cracks … ledges tipped this way & back

… you understand how far away … we've come for lunch

and of course … we read for phrases … a thought

lost for tall grass and wild bergamot … say it

this way … and please review our tense magnificence

once … before our next meeting … call me back

here they are these titles you asked for

… Simple Language Paste

… o i see how this works

… Seeming Wise & Coded

… pretty wrecked without some persian freshness

… Set Up for Three Weeks

… a well-known figure in a goldfish

… The Whale Person Implicated

… now for the old worst film 

… Where the Singing Fleur Went Wrong

… how to and then of course

... O Not Now It's Too Uncanny

… can't be cute & allusive in the same

… Can't Beat the Windrows

… stopping torture in these rooms

… I'd Never Use the Word That Means To Rot

… conversation and misunderstanding

tradition

dream kid whispers speak up dad … hushed what … speak up

three gardens

1. Important mainly because of the words in the message.

Rising a bit. Then

smaller even down to the tiniest parts

and why happy. To notice

ash in my newspaper cuffs. Even smaller as

kids take legal beatings. Small as

enough and done with it.

Then rising a bit.

2. Important mainly because of the people in the conversation.

Well, you can't just come right out and say it, can you?

I want to grow in love my love for you and your love for me and well all of us. In love you know. Alive.

You know I'd die for you. That extreme. I'd break everything for you.

And then the world went green (like in Spring, not Whole Foods). It felt unnatural. Or 

I thought I closed that door. The garbage is out.

3. Important mainly because of the message in the words.

Look at this. I mean. Look at it all. This is Life, dammit. And it is not simple. It is complex and. It hurts. When it's easy sure the ground breaks open like apple brown betty. But when it's tough. Somebody ends up crying. All the carefulness in your pockets will not change that. What this crucifix this empty tomb says. Try harder. Then stop trying. And 

true feelings

All small and about the same as a tarp thrown down

then let anything happen. We're ready for blue or white.

Unimportant pieces. What one marble says tapping the others.

whatever its place

I was listening to it

and then the world 

was afraid I was afraid

of the world spent

into something I'd

understood as small

a step away from that

I was one person

on the ride I would not

stand up except to say

nothing you can hear it

step away into one leaf

for the moment for any

bit of it not to say

it's likely that one

should never say

ever again the sentence  

an absurd commitment

to any world of no

wind-blown branches

water burnt stone

lively dirt or

breath of it

not in the strictest sense

In seeming ... you and the light

        can pretend to be allies … compatriots 

                even in the arms of say morning …

and then you'll feel okay and solid. So

        now you've thrown some wisdom away

                for the sake of noting How Shallow This

then seeping into a honey locust maple

        a branch of cedar hemlock or the spider

                made to order for the morning's game.

Long breaths now. 

i'm sorry to start praying this way

These pronouns stand for the community that I presume

even in the middle of a great funk of loneliness and pricks

against anyone's ballooning ego. This waiting like Beckett's

waiters. Less than an hour of it. And I forgot to say how

it's his birthday and I suppose I'm still angry or what's

the correct protocol around These Imprisoned and rightly

so. Disappointments. We've made them of the disposable parts

of ourselves. And these we've assembled to offer here. Now.

thank you inside and out

Asserted and standard we block the story with our faces. We go on
blocking and asserting, standing up for all the truth we spent on

the nuisance of becoming whole in an optional portrait, our plots
I MEAN MINE our plots come second. Our faces come first because I

enjoy mirrors more than just about anything: your mirrors come or
matter the most. Then MINE which are of course overfed and softer

because we accept this softness as necessarily parting from youth
and a tale of Deliverance bright and custardy as a minute in MINE.