Because I am a boy, the untouchability of beauty
is my subject already, the book of statues
open in my lap, the middle of October, leaves
foiling the wet ground
in soft copper. "A statue
must be beautiful
from all sides," Cellini wrote in 1558.
When I close the book,
the bodies touch. In the west, ...Read more

That Bruegel painting
of hunters returning
in winter, the filmmakers
go nuts for it. A sad rabbit
on a stick & more. It's like
really in there, tonally-
a male, disappointed
group trudge towards
a more lighthearted
communal flurry, women
and children full of fire
upholding weird ...Read more

for a bottle of red
a coat hanger
the school gardener
would make us boys a
skeleton out of
that coat hanger
working with pliers
a bunsen burner he
bent metal round
around through gave
wire ribs a pelvis a
skull it was a game
the shed was hot
you had to unlink
his...Read more

The clouds' disintegrating script
spells out the word squander.

Tree shadows lie down in the field.
Clipped to a grass blade's underside,

a crisp green grasshopper
weighs down the tip,

swaying between birth and death.
I'll think of him as we clink

glasses with the ...Read more

Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast
And the harbor's eyes.


About This Poem
"Lost" was published in "Chicago ...Read more

after Robert Francis's "Silent Poem"
rain storm rock pore flow path earth crust
thrust fault drip slope trough dam blue ooze

tile floor stained glass sitz bath rust stain
sun porch deck chair sky light gas lamp

foot bridge leaf twitch dirt trail red oak
white tail ...Read more

of water with a bed of rock barely visible
from your surface. You are the only dark body
of water in a desert littered with bleeding cactus.
At your collarbones you carry a gulch, held up by a thread

of hair. You travel days drinking only from yourself,
because you are this land's only dark body

...Read more

gasp of impact, temblor of thud-
the beast drops on the blade of hood,
ribs rip from their roots, hearts seize,
the windshield goes dark as an eyelid
curtaining to a horizon of blood,
black glass laced with lightning-

I am hit with wheel, steel, doe
embracing me backward as speed
crushes me ...Read more

All day on all my days,
the lives I'm not to process wash in;
anxieties lullaby on
and quite like to be gotten among;

but now-and now-one old,
abundant flower just screws up the room.


About This Poem
"I'm not always so keen on notes to poems, but it might amuse the reader to know ...Read more

Locked in the beauty of the pearl, far from frail,
these people who claim to love us still
they don't give up much, do they, sealed? To eradicate class-
the looking glass of it, the complex glare: "Let me introduce
xxx, impoverished poet." Winter let up
like a terrible religion. In its wake, a politics came,
...Read more

Outside the rain upon the street,
The sky all grim of hue,
Inside, the music-painful sweet,
And yet I heard but you.

As is a thrilling violin,
So is your voice to me,
And still above the other strains,
It sang in ecstasy.

About This Poem
"A Musical" was published in "The ...Read more

What loin-cloth, what rag of wrong
Unpriced?
What turn of body, what of lust
Undiced?
So we've worshipped you a little
More than Christ.

About This Poem
"In Particular" was published in "The Book of Repulsive Women" (Guido Bruno, 1915).

About Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes was born ...Read more

Somewhere someone rises
far earlier than you before
the faintest glimmer blues
the darkest dark wakens
without alarm without body
roused by the nightingales
neighbor friend or stranger
who hasn't seen his sunlit
children faces a cold sink
oh caffeinated sleepwalker
march daily industry ...Read more

Steamtown National Historic Site was created in 1986 to preserve the history of steam railroading in America, concentrating on the era 1850 through 1950.
We weren't supposed to, so we did
what any band of boys would do
& we did it the way they did in books
none of us would admit we stole
from our brothers & kept ...Read more

Another year is coming to an end
but my old t-shirts will not be back-
the pea-green one from Trinity College,
gunked with streaks of lawnmower grease,

the one with orange bat wings
from Diamond Cavern, Kentucky,

vanished
without a trace.

After a two-day storm I wander the ...Read more

There used to be no one here,
where cypresses and oaks play
shadow puppets on sawgrass.

You heard the music before
I did: tambourines, pan pipes.
Remember how I woke clean

to meet you each morning?
The dew and the dust?
Remember how you'd catch me

as I fell from trees? ...Read more

The dead bird, color of a bruise,
and smaller than an eye
swollen shut,
is king among omens.

Who can blame the ants for feasting?

Let him cast the first crumb.

~

We once tended the oracles.

Now we rely on a photograph

a fingerprint
a hand we ...Read more

Great carnal mountains crouching in the cloud
That marrieth the young earth with a ring,
Yet still its thoughts builds heavenward, whence spring
Wee villages of vapor, sunset-proud.-
And to the meanest door hastes one pure-browed
White-fingered star, a little, childish thing,
The busy needle of her light to ...Read more

How strange, how passing strange, when we awake
And lift our faces to the light
To know that you are lying shut away
Within the night.

How strange, how passing strange, when we lie down
To sleep, to know that you are quite
Alone beneath the moon, the stars, the little leaves,
Within the night.
...Read more

The eye chews the apple,
sends the brain
an image of the un-apple. Which is similar
to the way I throw my voice
like a Frisbee, like salt
over a shoulder, a birthday party
where someone's brother
is grilling hot dogs, a little speed
in his blood,
some red balloons. The eye
is the most ...Read more