Transubstantiation
We were everywhere, sent from here, sent to there, left to fade after the war.
What did you do, coming home from the wake? Did you lay down in the sun, asleep in the eel grass, creeping toward a mourning of that night, a pregnant future, dry light driftwood on a beach under the darkness of a new moon?
We drink hurricane lanterns inside your pink wax, touching each others terracotta dust, glitter and disco feeling the soft inside of cracker lips lumbering towards the west with a change of substance.
I begged that you trust your memory, unlocking the door to let me in from our close distance.
I came like a dwelling wound, eyes removed by the lamp in your iridescent space, I came home from the war, bandaged in your skin.
The Groceries
What will we do with the groceries?
It is night, tonight’s the night:the last night of our house.
The kids like pasta twice a week,
and we did for the thousandth time
and then this night for the third
in a row, have that. And then it
was movie night, for the last
time family movie night
on this purple couch with that
yellow starred green blanket and
the love to slumber under
after a bowl of popcorn,
sleeping into the epilogue.
You were already gone to sleep,
as you do. When did that start?
It must have been a night
like tonight. Maybe that night
was the last night, maybe
it was the first new moon.
To bed I carried the kids, but then
had to sleep on their floor,
as always. Friday was ghost stories
at camp, again. They believed
something would come back
from the dead to steal them
in their sleep. But now they are
sleeping. I know the sound, its
always there, your sound,
as if you were a baby,
I was here when you were a baby
and all it took was shhh and holding
you close to my heart. Then the ghosts
dissappear. Will they tomorrow?
Only for my baby, but
not for my darling.
This Digital World
War runs across my life-
from the deserts of Vietnam
and the meadows of Death Valley
to the drugs the surgeon
took to get off before
before he operates tonight.
I miss you, and me.
That's easy, so I confuse things,
elaborate, artificialize
nothing more than the curve
and shape of visible light
on desire's skin.
This digital world
lingers
and does not bring
us closer together.
There are images of bodies
in my hand, in every hand
across the Earth and Space
and back to my birth
in a river in Vietnam
for I wasn't born where my mother said,
she was drugged, the hole I came out of
was not even my father's heart
but his brother or his cousin
or the shame-son thrown through
the hooker glass and foster class
the one whose all adrenal
by the third grade and looking
to numb the knees with pearl pellets,
kids who work, floating in famine ribs,
whichever one made the wall
with a bullet to his own brain-
I mean the one's born to death-
cold rain raising their multiple surfaces
tiny hairs, tiny ridges on nipples
crevasses, curves, shadows leading down
into irregular holes
they're our bodies
in this digital world, they are ours
by a touch of glass, by the ether
we breathe, in interring the entertainment
of their death.
This war lingers in a country
addicted to heroes, everyone a hero.
Patches on their skin, the diminished
heroism of a sick nation, for there is no honesty
before a burning gasoline corpse
gang raped and smoldering,
only a cry that all the others
must be heroes. Must be heroes I see.
I see with a camera through the pinhole,
my mustard seed, the puberty of the digital earth
making war sculptures with the vacuumed dust
falling off our human footprints.
I see the lingering jar, leftover hearts,
meat drugged to numbness,
pet to desire, satisfied and sleeping
knowing the bleeding mouth is down river
and if they want authenticity
they can wear the war on their skin
and by the safest edge through an advertisement
leave the death to the dead, selling indeed
and walk on the sex sore gasoline dress, meat separated from bone,
was only that, some deed sort of sordid, the sum of
breaking entertainment news meant for the head.
This digital world lays down in me,
for I have trouble separating,
its a shy heart that is not shy
but built with hurt, a day when love did not matter.
We've built enough of these kids
to feed the earth forever.
I need my body,
my heartless body,
to have its light escape,
poured onto you.
I only see
my self with the help
of telescopes.
Every love song
reminds me Spring is mostly precept,
do not confuse my ideas with your love songs-
do not confuse yourself, my love songs are:
a rainy night, the wind and the sound of tires
that crush of noise shattering inside the right ear
and bouncing quiltedly around your gaps,
every sad song
reminds me of a question: When will this end?
We are torn apart, by ourselves and more than
slightly separated, beyond repair,
its what marriage becomes when its reduced
to a carriage of arrangements, but we are torn
and it was all from the war,
the war I was born into,
the way it lingered
by the presence
of conflict, bombs,
some scholar might say
the sweep
of world events;
yet it is back
to the feelings
of distance, the desolation
that you are
not here and may not
be, that causes
an unspoken anguish
I can share with no one, because I never know
who you are. You change with the view,
a line of red corduroy along the edge of a leg
then a curve of hair reading from a page,
the curve of the page, a parabola
of a new sweatshirt zipped, a curve
in a hood, a behind the shoulder one of these,
a lean I lean to see,
more words to hide a feel
I do not know because it landed like the Fleet
and flew away with the evening,
another thing, a distraction, something green
and the thing in itself, this very artifice
of ink where I pretend
this is all so much more than loneliness
in a blended erasure of exhaustion.
And they say this digital world
brings us closer together,
"they", I demand, who? who?
And yet when we talk,
I at night
and you
in the morning,
message by message,
it is only the distance
that is illuminated.
I see these threads
we make
unwinding finally,
back to a river in Vietnam,
a bear, a mountain,
drinking the cold
the rain heavy that built
and overflowed
too close to the mouth.
Sunlight breaks from a horizon
only in my closed eyes-
a memory of hazel-
water desert, brown gold
glass, hair dust
sand, and we just break apart
you're beautiful the way beautiful
is beautiful if its gone.
Somewhere a surgeon is removing
gloves
and even though those hands
were deep in the blood,
they are dry with a pale dust
that ends without ending.
This is the war.
from the deserts of Vietnam
and the meadows of Death Valley
to the drugs the surgeon
took to get off before
before he operates tonight.
I miss you, and me.
That's easy, so I confuse things,
elaborate, artificialize
nothing more than the curve
and shape of visible light
on desire's skin.
This digital world
lingers
and does not bring
us closer together.
There are images of bodies
in my hand, in every hand
across the Earth and Space
and back to my birth
in a river in Vietnam
for I wasn't born where my mother said,
she was drugged, the hole I came out of
was not even my father's heart
but his brother or his cousin
or the shame-son thrown through
the hooker glass and foster class
the one whose all adrenal
by the third grade and looking
to numb the knees with pearl pellets,
kids who work, floating in famine ribs,
whichever one made the wall
with a bullet to his own brain-
I mean the one's born to death-
cold rain raising their multiple surfaces
tiny hairs, tiny ridges on nipples
crevasses, curves, shadows leading down
into irregular holes
they're our bodies
in this digital world, they are ours
by a touch of glass, by the ether
we breathe, in interring the entertainment
of their death.
This war lingers in a country
addicted to heroes, everyone a hero.
Patches on their skin, the diminished
heroism of a sick nation, for there is no honesty
before a burning gasoline corpse
gang raped and smoldering,
only a cry that all the others
must be heroes. Must be heroes I see.
I see with a camera through the pinhole,
my mustard seed, the puberty of the digital earth
making war sculptures with the vacuumed dust
falling off our human footprints.
I see the lingering jar, leftover hearts,
meat drugged to numbness,
pet to desire, satisfied and sleeping
knowing the bleeding mouth is down river
and if they want authenticity
they can wear the war on their skin
and by the safest edge through an advertisement
leave the death to the dead, selling indeed
and walk on the sex sore gasoline dress, meat separated from bone,
was only that, some deed sort of sordid, the sum of
breaking entertainment news meant for the head.
This digital world lays down in me,
for I have trouble separating,
its a shy heart that is not shy
but built with hurt, a day when love did not matter.
We've built enough of these kids
to feed the earth forever.
I need my body,
my heartless body,
to have its light escape,
poured onto you.
I only see
my self with the help
of telescopes.
Every love song
reminds me Spring is mostly precept,
do not confuse my ideas with your love songs-
do not confuse yourself, my love songs are:
a rainy night, the wind and the sound of tires
that crush of noise shattering inside the right ear
and bouncing quiltedly around your gaps,
every sad song
reminds me of a question: When will this end?
We are torn apart, by ourselves and more than
slightly separated, beyond repair,
its what marriage becomes when its reduced
to a carriage of arrangements, but we are torn
and it was all from the war,
the war I was born into,
the way it lingered
by the presence
of conflict, bombs,
some scholar might say
the sweep
of world events;
yet it is back
to the feelings
of distance, the desolation
that you are
not here and may not
be, that causes
an unspoken anguish
I can share with no one, because I never know
who you are. You change with the view,
a line of red corduroy along the edge of a leg
then a curve of hair reading from a page,
the curve of the page, a parabola
of a new sweatshirt zipped, a curve
in a hood, a behind the shoulder one of these,
a lean I lean to see,
more words to hide a feel
I do not know because it landed like the Fleet
and flew away with the evening,
another thing, a distraction, something green
and the thing in itself, this very artifice
of ink where I pretend
this is all so much more than loneliness
in a blended erasure of exhaustion.
And they say this digital world
brings us closer together,
"they", I demand, who? who?
And yet when we talk,
I at night
and you
in the morning,
message by message,
it is only the distance
that is illuminated.
I see these threads
we make
unwinding finally,
back to a river in Vietnam,
a bear, a mountain,
drinking the cold
the rain heavy that built
and overflowed
too close to the mouth.
Sunlight breaks from a horizon
only in my closed eyes-
a memory of hazel-
water desert, brown gold
glass, hair dust
sand, and we just break apart
you're beautiful the way beautiful
is beautiful if its gone.
Somewhere a surgeon is removing
gloves
and even though those hands
were deep in the blood,
they are dry with a pale dust
that ends without ending.
This is the war.
Glazed Looking Glass, Into A Window of Looking Past
We
have broken you
we
brought you in
that Saturday
a night
with August chill
clay
and stardust started
water on the spinning wheel
and we
have broken
your heart
Did we bring you along
only to set you in front
of the grindstone?
No, we thought
we could simply
love you and enough
would be the grasp,
that bubbles reflect
the light coming
in through the exhausted
shades,
that we could resist
the dissipating days
You
did as well as
we could
as good
as we would say
with the fork
and you resisted
and changed hands
and it was good,
you got the fork
You
did what you should
and we
have broken your heart
You held up your hands
and wrapped your arms
as we asked,
you held the ball
and moved to the left
you did everything
and we
changed directions
we
let you play
with remote controls
and then suddenly
there was no television anymore
We have broken your heart
we have taken your smile
and replaced it with a long
thoughtful glaze.
We have set you
on the road to
discipline and madness.
Save your rainbows, push
the callous fingertips
through the knitting
and speak with your own
angels, bring your smile
back from that distant
place the back
of your eyes have retreated
into, bring your mind back.
I can not bear the thought
of bare art, of admitting our divorce
of admitting my part, my part was it,
it watching your heart break
across the kitchen table,
my dear son, falling
as if the Fall now is,
falling apart.
have broken you
we
brought you in
that Saturday
a night
with August chill
clay
and stardust started
water on the spinning wheel
and we
have broken
your heart
Did we bring you along
only to set you in front
of the grindstone?
No, we thought
we could simply
love you and enough
would be the grasp,
that bubbles reflect
the light coming
in through the exhausted
shades,
that we could resist
the dissipating days
You
did as well as
we could
as good
as we would say
with the fork
and you resisted
and changed hands
and it was good,
you got the fork
You
did what you should
and we
have broken your heart
You held up your hands
and wrapped your arms
as we asked,
you held the ball
and moved to the left
you did everything
and we
changed directions
we
let you play
with remote controls
and then suddenly
there was no television anymore
We have broken your heart
we have taken your smile
and replaced it with a long
thoughtful glaze.
We have set you
on the road to
discipline and madness.
Save your rainbows, push
the callous fingertips
through the knitting
and speak with your own
angels, bring your smile
back from that distant
place the back
of your eyes have retreated
into, bring your mind back.
I can not bear the thought
of bare art, of admitting our divorce
of admitting my part, my part was it,
it watching your heart break
across the kitchen table,
my dear son, falling
as if the Fall now is,
falling apart.
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