1
Alone, in grief and
silence, the poet builds a
fire that warms many.
  2
My lamp bathes itself on the carpet
like a water buffalo,
my tee-shirt is stained with rice steam.
All the inanimate objects in this room
are busier than my neighbors
who distrust me and theirs
so surely the times we speak are painful.
Down here near the beach,
lost among the motels
it’s just as I expected,
they are strangers even to each other,
share nothing except
the calm moment between changes,
information and circumstances
going useless as two elevators together.
  3
The mirrors might reflect sound too,
delicate coils beneath the glass
absorbing the clatter of images.
Every room quadraphonic
at times, it would be more than eyes can do,
it would be more costly than most resonant things.
  4
I’ve just been
past another of those burnings.
Unnameable trees,
vortex of a diamond,
the lion at wood’s edge
turns back the rind of a cannonball
and gnaws.
  5
In a spirit world we corner
each other, they and I,
small men and women in pine paneling
squeaking if a wind twists them
or feels the sweat trickling
down their ribs;
the degrees of gold,
plumbing that channels people
through the musical buildings
of blood banks,
blackened birds that leave the sidewalks
clean beneath telephone lines.
So, I’m living a nobody
in a glee of death surprises,
the Yellow Pages alarming the fingers.
  6
I emptied my neck of hard braces
and sucked in the muscles
till my body was a piece of flint,
I took the jerk from my movement
and melted the arrogance
in a hallucinated return
to the several beaches of my sprouting.
But it was the same,
what did it get me?
now I call to the wolves
that made me split my skull
and then seep out through the chinks,
I tell them their women are too beautiful for them.

Leave me here
to make a copy of it all, boys,
the endless howling is for me, boys,
I need the bad light and the heavy clothes, boys,
to make a dent
where you only pull chunks
from a wedding cake.
Bring the shape out of the clay, boys,
leave the clay in one piece, boys,
get into the boat and sit calm enough
to drift across the lake,
if you can,
boys…

This goes on and on into the games
and the stands
and into the burnished trophies,
small rings if acts serving themselves,
bodies losing time.
  7
All at once or one at a time
the lights have eyes
like the beaming from a goshawk’s eyes,
who can believe any of this?