but I awoke to no words and wonder left.
"Home World"
...equal measures
of air and earth
came to me
precious enough,
I wore them
well knowing
my thoughts
would think me
hollow, exiled
to the abandoning
company
of all
my illusory
ends.
last lines of "Ode on the End"
(double spaced in the original)
down that rabbit hole my liege
I'm a camera gathering brightness
"Bi-coastal Fleshings"
Were we the land's
before we were landed?
"The Winged Words"
Where is my field of wheat,
my flock, my ocean,
my arsenal, my knight errant.
"Ode on the Son"
I dreamt
a petal's depth of hatred
hovered at my ear
while vagaries worked
to rough me up.
*
A girl,
I have seen tragedy
consider being
such as we are.
"Ten Still Petals"
and know again
there's a place for us, and such
a country.
end of "Underlying Assumptions"
(double spaced in the original)
Come along, you can join us
if you lose that proclivity
for worship--any medium size
planet will do. Just think,
four walls and a microwave
could really keep us busy.
end of "Studio Life"
(doubled spaced in the original)
I grow phallic
with each dissemination
"The Removal of Enlightenment Safeguards"
It's as if to be real
you and I must garner backers
without a rib to call our own.
We make ripples
with daily effort and then suddenly
flood the place with anger.
opening lines of "Ode to Protest"
(double spaced in the original)
enough
ignorance
to fell unclouded truth, truth
like a tunnel to the heart
fluttering
*
punished dreamer
failed redeemer
man, or country
"The Ballad of Her rePossession"
(double spaced in the original)
...in the frozen field of aim, beside the gift of all intention
perhaps I'll cry away the day
perhaps I'll choose a different wreck
perhaps I'll live this appalling destiny
in the economy of night.
the end of "Wake"
(double spaced in the original)
I suspect the water's edge is enamored of the water,
a quiver on the surface tells me not the wind
but the wish to drift will devastate the sand.
It is the future's focal infection, this insistence on death,
like when my mother and father cradled me
as the answer to each other's desperate tread towards union.
For this is a universe where things are not apparent
in their cruelty, but continual, and the sweetness of order
is increasingly evanescent. If I could hide this day forever
from the pleasure of renewal and banish all contingency
from happening I would, but I have never seen planet X
or the wooden ships on the Eastern horizon.
Up until now my life has faced West, sequestered
reason reaching for an injudicious kiss.
second and final stanza of
"The Waver in the Orbit of Uranus Becomes Unexplainable"
...we have built what we imagine
others building. Behind other
summer-lit windows
there must be wall paper
worth waking up to....
*
It was
the year the phones went dead
on Mother's Day, though most mothers
preferred fully realized human potential
to letters home or regular calls.
"Lucky So and So"
