Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie

That means no where I come from.
I am cold, out waiting for the day to come.

I chew my lips, and I scratch my nose:
feels so good to be a rose.

Oh don't, don't you lift me up
like I'm that shy, no no no no no,
just give it up —
There are bats all dissolving in a row
into the wishy-washy dark that cannot let go.
And I cannot let go,
and so I thank the lord, and I thank his sword!
'tho it be mincing up the morning,
slightly bored

O, morning without warning like a hole,
And I watch you go.
There are some mornings
when the sky looks like a road.
There are some dragons
who were built to have and hold.
And some machines
are dropped from great heights lovingly.
And some great bellies ache with many bumblebees
(and they sting so terribly).

I do as I please.
Now I'm on my knees.
Your skin is something that I stir into my tea.
And I am watching you
and you are starry, starry, starry
and I'm tumbling down, and I check a frown.
That's why I love this town.
Well, just look around
to see me serenaded hourly!
and celebrated sourly! and dedicated dourly;
waltzing with the open sea —
clam, crab, cockle, cowrie:
will you just look at me?

The Book of Right-On

We should shine a light on, a light on.
And the book of right-on's right on,
it was right on.

We should shine a light on, a light on.
And the book of right-on's right on,
it was right on.

I killed my dinner with karate —
kick 'em in the face, taste the body;
shallow work is the work that I do.

Do you want to sit at my table?
My fighting fame is fabled
and fortune finds me fit and able.

And you do say that you do pray,
and you say that you're okay.

Do you want to run with my pack?
Do you want to ride on my back?
Pray that what you lack does not distract.

And even when you run through my mind
something else is in front; you're behind.
And I don't have to remind you
to stick with your kind.

And you do say that you do pray,
and you say that you're okay.

And even when you touch my face
you know your place.

And even when you touch my face
you know your place.

We should shine a light on, a light on.
And the book of right-on's right on,
it was right on.

Sprout and the Bean

I slept all day
I woke with distaste
and I railed,
and I raved

That the difference between
the sprout and the bean
it is a golden ring,
it is a twisted string.
And you can ask the councillor;
and you can ask the king;
and they'll say the same thing;
and it's a funny thing:

Should we go outside?
Should we go outside?
Should we break some bread?
Are y'interested?

And as I said,
I slept as though dead
dreaming seamless dreams of lead.

When you go away,
I am big-boned and fey
in the dust of the day,
and in the dirt of the day.

And the Danger! Danger!
Drawing near them was a white coat,
and Danger! Danger!
Drawing near them was a broad boat,
And the water! water!
Running clear beneath a white throat,
and the hollow chatter
of the talking of the tadpoles,
who know th'outside!
Should we go outside?
Should we break some bread?
Are y'interested?

Bridges and Balloons

We sailed away on a winter's day
with fate as malleable as clay;
but ships are fallible, I say,
and the nautical, like all things, fades.

And I can recall our caravel:
a little wicker beetle shell
with four fine masts and lateen sails,
its bearings on Cair Paravel.

O my love,
O it was a funny little thing
to be the ones to've seen.

The sight of bridges and balloons
makes calm canaries irritable;
and they caw and claw all afternoon:
Catenaries and dirigibles
brace and buoy the living-room —
a loom of metals, warp-woof-wimble.
And a thimblesworth of milky moon
can touch hearts larger than a thimble.

O my love,
O it was a funny little thing
to be the ones to've seen.

O my love,
O it was a funny little thing,
it was a funny funny little thing.

'En Gallop!'

This place is damp and ghostly
I am already gone.
And the halls were lined
with the disembodied and the dustly wings,
which fell from flesh gasplessly.

And I go where the trees go,
and I walk from a higher education
(for now, and for hire).

It beats me, but I do not know.
And it beats me, but I do not know.
It beats me, but I do not know.
I do not know.

Palaces and stormclouds
and the rough, straggly sage, and the smoke
and the way it will all come together
(in quietness, and in time).

And you laws of property
you free economy
and you unending afterthoughts,
you could've told me before —

Never get so attached to a poem
you forget truth that lacks lyricism;
and never draw so close to the heat
that you forget that you must eat.

Emily

The meadowlark and the chim-choo-ree and the sparrow
set to the sky in a flying spree, for the sport of the pharaoh.
Little while later, the Pharisees dragged a comb through the meadow.
Do you remember what they called up to you and me, in our window?

There is a rusty light on the pines tonight;
sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow, into the
bones of the birches, and the spires of the churches, jutting out from the shadows;
the yoke, and the axe, and the old smokestacks, and the bale, and the barrow —
and everything sloped, like it was dragged from a rope, in the mouth of the south below.

We’ve seen those mountains kneeling, felten and grey.
We thought our very hearts would up and melt away,

from that snow in the nighttime,
just going and going

and the stirring of wind chimes
in the morning
in the morning

Helps me find my way back in
from the place where I have been —

And, Emily, I saw you last night by the river.
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water —
frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever,
in a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky’d been breathing on a mirror.

Anyhow, I sat by your side, by the water.
You taught me the names of the stars overhead, that I wrote down in my ledger —
though all I knew of the rote universe were those Pleiades, loosed in December,
I promised you I’d set them to verse, so I’d always remember

That the meteorite is the source of the light,
And the meteor’s just what we see;
And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee.
And the meteorite’s just what causes the light,
And the meteor’s how it’s perceived;
And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void, that lies quiet in offering to thee.

*

You came and lay a cold compress upon the mess I’m in;
threw the windows wide, and cried amen amen amen.
The whole world stopped to hear you hollering.
And you looked down, and saw, now, what was happening:

The lines are fading in my kingdom
(though I have never known the way to border them in);
so the muddy mouths of baboons and sows, and the grouse, and the horse, and the hen
grope at the gate of the looming lake that was once a tidy pen.
And the mail is late, and the great estates are not lit from within.
The talk in town’s becoming downright sickening.

In due time we will see the far buttes lit by a flare.
I’ve seen your bravery, and I will follow you there

And row through the nighttime,
so healthy,
gone healthy all of a sudden,

In search of a midwife
who can help me
who can help me,

help me find my way back in.
And there are worries where I’ve been.

And say, say, say, in the lee of the bay
don’t be bothered.
Leave your troubles here,
where the tugboats shear the water from the water
(flanked by furrows, curling back, like a match held up to a newspaper).

Emily, they’ll follow your lead by the letter.
And I make this claim, and I’m not ashamed to say I knew you better.
What they’ve seen is just a beam of your sun that banishes winter.

Let us go! Though we know it’s a hopeless endeavor.
The ties that bind, they are barbed and spined, and hold us close forever.

Though there is nothing would help me come to grips with
a sky that is gaping and yawning,
there is a song I woke with on my lips,
as you sailed your great ship towards the morning.

*

Come on home. The poppies are all grown knee-deep by now.
Blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow.
Peonies nod in the breeze,
and while they wetly bow
with hydrocephalitic listlessness,
ants mop up their brow.

And everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour;
butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours.
And my clay-colored motherlessness rangily reclines —
Come on home, now! All my bones are dolorous with vines.

Pa pointed out to me, for the hundredth time tonight,
the way the ladle leads to a dirt-red bullet of light.

Squint skyward and listen —
loving him, we move within his borders:
just asterisms in the stars’ set order.

We could stand for a century,
staring,
with our heads cocked,
in the broad daylight, at this thing:

Joy,
landlocked in bodies that don’t keep —
dumbstruck with the sweetness of being,
till we don’t be.
Told: take this.
And eat this.

Told: the meteorite is the source of the light,
And the meteor’s just what we see;
And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee.

And the meteorite is just what causes the light,
And the meteor’s how it’s perceived;
And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee.

Only Skin

And there was a booming above you,
that night black airplanes flew over the sea.
And they were lowing and shifting like
beached whales,
shelled snails,
as you strained and you squinted to see
the retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry.

You froze in your sand shoal,
prayed for your poor soul;
sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl.

And when the bread broke —
fell in bricks of wet smoke —
my sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke.

Then there was a silence you took to mean something:
Run, sing,
for alive you will evermore be.
And the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulking
has gone east,
while you’re left to explain them to me —
released
from their hairless and blind cavalry.

With your hands in your pockets,
stubbily running
to where I’m unfresh,
undressed and yawning —

Well, what is this craziness?
This crazy talking?
You caught some small death
when you were sleepwalking.

It was a dark dream, darlin;
it’s over.
The firebreather is beneath the clover.
Beneath his breathing there is cold clay, forever:
a toothless hound-dog choking on a feather.

But I took my fishing pole (fearing your fever),
down to the swimming hole, where there grows a bitter herb
that blooms but one day a year, by the riverside —
I’d bring it here:

Apply it gently
to the love you’ve lent me.

While the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed
and the string sobbed,
as it cut through the hustling breeze.

And I watched how the water was kneading so neatly,
gone treacly,
nearly slowed to a stop in this heat;
in a frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath.

Press on me,
we are restless things.
Webs of seaweed are swaddling.
And you call upon the dusk of the
musk of a squid:
shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib.

Rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes,
I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it!
Smell of a stonefruit being cut and being opened.
Smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking

And when the fire moves away,
fire moves away, son.
Why would you say
I was the last one?

Scrape your knee: it is only skin.
Makes the sound of violins.

And when I cut your hair, and leave the birds all of the trimmings,
I am the happiest woman among all women.

And the shallow water stretches as far as I can see.
Knee deep, trudging along —
the seagull weeps ‘so long’ —
humming a threshing song —

Until the night is over, hold on,
hold on;
hold your horses back from the fickle dawn.

I have got some business out at the edge of town,
candy weighing both of my pockets down
till I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them
(and knowing how the commonfolk condemn
what it is I do, to you, to keep you warm:
Being a woman. Being a woman.)

But always up the mountainside you’re clambering,
groping blindly, hungry for anything;
picking through your pocket linings —
well, what is this?
Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?

I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain.
Little sister, he will be back again.
I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain.
Spiders’ ghosts hang, soaked and
dangling silently, from all the blooming cherry trees,
in tiny nooses, safe from everyone —
nothing but a nuisance; gone now, dead and done —
Be a woman. Be a woman.

Though we felt the spray of the waves,
we decided to stay, 'till the tide rose too far.
We weren’t afraid, cause we know what you are;
and you know that we know what you are.

Awful atoll —
O, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow!
Bawl bellow:
Sibyl sea-cow, all done up in a bow.
Toddle and roll;
teethe an impalpable bit of leather,
while yarrow, heather and hollyhock
awkwardly molt along the shore.

Are you mine?
My heart?
Mine anymore?

Stay with me for awhile.
That’s an awfully real gun.
I know life will lay you down,
as the lightning has lately done.

Failing this, failing this,
follow me, my sweetest friend,
to see what you anointed,
in pointing your gun there.
Lay it down! Nice and slow!
There is nowhere to go,

save up;
up where the light, undiluted, is
weaving, in a drunk dream,
at the sight of my baby, out back:

back on the patio,
watching the bats bring night in

— while, elsewhere,
estuaries of wax-white
wend, endlessly, towards seashores unmapped.

*

Last week, our picture window
produced a half-word,
heavy and hollow,
hit by a brown bird.

We stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake
and pant and labor over every intake.

I said a sort of prayer for some rare grace,
then thought I ought to take her to a higher place.
Said, “dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you,
and though you die, bird, you will have a fine view.”

Then in my hot hand, she slumped her sick weight.
We tramped through the poison oak, heartbroke and inchoate.
The dogs were snapping, and you cuffed their collars
while I climbed the tree-house. Then how I hollered!

Well she’d lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two;
then saw the treetops, cocked her head, and up and flew.
(While back in the world that moves, often, according to
the hoarding of these clues,
dogs still run roughly around
little tufts of finch-down.)

And the cities we passed were a flickering wasteland,
but his hand, in my hand, made them hale and harmless.

While down in the lowlands, the crops are all coming;
we have everything.

Life is thundering blissful towards death

in a stampede
of his fumbling green gentleness.

You stopped by;
I was all alive.
In my doorway, we shucked and jived.
And when you wept, I was gone;
see, I got gone when I got wise.
But I can’t with certainty say we survived.

Then down and down
and down and down
and down and deeper,
stoke, without sound,
the blameless flames,
you endless sleeper.

Through fire below,
and fire above,
and fire within,

sleep through the things that couldn’t have been,
if you hadn’t have been.

And when the fire moves away,
fire moves away, son.
And why would you say
I was the last one?

All my bones, they are gone, gone, gone.
Take my bones, I don’t need none.
Cold, cold cupboard, lord, nothing to chew on!
Suck all day on a cherry stone.
Dig a little hole not three inches round —
Spit your pit in a hole in the ground.
Weep upon the spot for the starving of me!
Till up grows a fine young cherry tree.
When the bough breaks, what’ll you make for me?
A little willow cabin to rest on your knee.
Well, what will I do with a trinket such as this?
Think of your woman, who’s gone to the west.
But I’m starving and freezing in my measly old bed!
Then I’ll crawl across the salt flats, to stroke your sweet head.
Come across the desert with no shoes on!
I love you truly,
or I love no-one.

Fire moves away. Fire moves away, son.
Why would you say that I was the last one?
Last one?

Clear the room! There’s a fire, a fire, a fire.
Get going,
and I’m going to be right behind you.

And if the love of a woman or two, dear,
could move you to such heights,
then all I can do
is do, my darling, right by you.

Go Long

Last night, again,
you were in my dream.
Several expendable limbs were at stake.
You were a prince, spinning rims,
all sentiments indian-given
and half-baked.
I was brought
in on a palanquin
made of the many bodies
of beautiful women.
Brought to this place, to be examined,
swaying on an elephant:
a princess of India.

We both want the very same thing.
We are praying
I am the one to save you.
But you don't even own
your own violence.
Run away from home —
your beard is still blue
with the loneliness of you mighty men,
when your jaws, and fists, and guitars,
and pens, and your sugarlip,
but I've never been to the firepits
with you mighty men.

Who made you this way?
Who made you this way?
Who is going to bear
your beautiful children?
Do you think you can just stop,
when you're ready for a change?
Who will take care of you
when you're old and dying?

You burn in the Mekong,
to prove your worth.
Go long! Go long!
Right over the edge of the earth!
You have been wronged,
tore up since birth.
You have done harm.
Others have done worse.

Will you tuck your shirt?
Will you leave it loose?
You are badly hurt.
You're a silly goose.

You are caked in mud,
and in blood, and worse.
Chew your bitter cud.
Grope your little nurse.

Do you know why
my ankles are bound in gauze?
(sickly dressage:
a princess of Kentucky)?
In the middle of the woods
(which were the probable cause),
we danced in the lodge
like two panting monkeys.

I will give you a call, for one last hurrah.
And if this tale is tall, forgive my scrambling.
But you keep palming along the wall,
moving at a blind crawl,
but always rambling.

Wolf-spider, crouch in your funnel nest.
If I knew you, once,
now I know you less.
In the sinking sand,
where we've come to rest,
have I had a hand in your loneliness?

When you leave me alone
in this old palace of yours,
it starts to get to me. I take to walking.
What a woman does is open doors.
And it is not a question of locking
or unlocking.

Well, I have never seen
such a terrible room —
gilded with the gold teeth
of the women who loved you!
Now, though I die,
Magpie, this I bequeath:
by any other name,
a Jay is still blue

with the loneliness
of you mighty men,
with your mighty kiss
that might never never end,
while, so far away,
in the seat of the West,
burns the fount
of the heat
of that loneliness.

There's a man
who only will speak in code,
backing slowly, slowly down the road.
May he master everything
that such men may know
about loving, and then letting go.

Have One on Me

From the courtyard, I floated in
and watched it go down.
Heard the cup drop;
thought, 'Well,
that's why they keep them around.'
The blackguard sat hard, down,
with no head on him now,
and I felt so bad,
cause I didn't know how
to feel bad enough
to make him proud.

By the time you read this,
I will be so far away.
Daddy longlegs, how in the world
am I to be expected to stay?
In the night —
in the night, you may hear me call
Pa, stay your hand
and steel your resolve.
Stay where you are,
so long and tall.

Here's Lola — ta da! — to do
her famous Spider Dance for you!
Lighten up your pockets!
Shake her skirts and scatter, there,
a shrieking, six-legged millionaire
with a blight in his sockets.

Miss Montez,
the Countess of Lansfeld,
appealed to the King of Bavaria,
saying, "Pretty papa,
if you are my friend —
mister daddy longlegs, they are at it again! —
Can I see you?"

Poor Lola! A tarantula's mounting
Countess Lansfeld's
handsome brassiere,
while they all cheer.

And the old king fell from grace,
while Lola fled,
To save face and her career

You caught a fly, floating by,
Wait for him to drown in the dust;
drown in the dust of other flies,
whereby the machine is run,
and the deed is done.
Heaven has no word
for the way you and your friends
have treated poor Louis.
May god save your poor soul, Lola.
(But there is nothing I adore,
apart from that whore's black heart.)

Well, doesn't that just beat all!
Miss Gilbert,
called to Castlemaine
by the silver dollar and the gold glitter!
Well, I've seen lots,
but never, in a million years,
would think to see you, here.

Though the long road
begins and ends with you,
I cannot seem to make amends
with you, Louis.
When we go out,
they're bound to see you with me.

At night, I walk in the park,
with a whip,
between the lines
of the whispering Jesuits,
who are poisoning you against me.
There's a big black spider
hanging over my door.
Can't go anywhere, anymore.
Tell me, are you with me?

I called to you, several times,
while the change took place
and then arrived, all night,
and I died.
But all these songs,
when you and I are long gone,
will carry on.
Mud in your eye.

You asked my hand,
hired a band.
"In your heart is all that you need;
ask and you will receive," it is said.
I threw my bouquet,
and I knocked 'em dead.

Bottle of white, bottle of red.
Helpless as a child,
when you held me in your arms,
and I knew that no other
could ever love me as you loved.
Love me as you loved.
But help me! I'm leaving!

I remember everything,
down to the sound of you shaving —
the scrape of your razor,
the dully-abrading black hair
that remained
when you clutched at me,
that night I came upstairs, half-dead,
and, in your kindness,
you put me straightaway
in the cupboard,
with a bottle of champagne,
and then, later, on a train.

It was dark out, I was half-dead.
I saw a star fall into the sky,
like a chunk of thrown coal,
as if god himself spat
like a cornered rat.

I really want you to do this for me,
will you have one on me?

It was dark; I was drunk and half-dead,
and we slept, knocking heads,
sitting up in the star-smoking air,
knocking heads like buoys.

Don't you worry for me!
Will you have one on me!

Meanwhile, I will raise my own glass
to how you made me fast
and expendable,
and I will drink to your excellent health,
and your cruelty.
Will you have one on me?

— helpless as a child,
when you held me in your arms,
and I knew that no other
could ever love me —

From the courtyard, I floated in
and watched it go down.
Heard the cup drop;
thought, "Well, that's why
they keep them around."
The blackguard sat hard, down,
with no head on him now,
and I felt so bad,
cause I didn't know how
to feel bad enough
to make him proud.

Well daddy longlegs, are you?
Daddy longlegs, are you?
Daddy longlegs, are you proud?

Divers

The diver is my love
(and I am his, if I am not deceived),
who takes one breath above, for every hour below the sea;
who gave to me a jewel
worth twice this woman's life (but would cost her less
than laying at low tide,
to see her true love phosphoresce).

And in an infinite regress:
Tell me, why is the pain of birth
lighter borne than the pain of death?
I ain't saying that I loved you first,
but I loved you best.

I know we must abide
each by the rules that bind us here:
the divers, and the sailors, and the women on the pier.
But how do you choose your form?
How do you choose your name? How do you choose your life?
How do you choose the time you must exhale,
and kick, and rise?

And in an infinite capsize:
Like a bull tearing down the coast,
double hulls bearing double masts—
I don't know if you loved me most, but you loved me last.

Recall the word you gave:
to count your way across the depths of this arid world,
where you would yoke the waves,
and lay a bed of shining pearls!
I dream it every night:
the ringing of the pail,
the motes of sand dislodged,
the shucking, quick and bright;
the twinned and cast-off shells reveal a single heart of white.

And in an infinite backslide:
Ancient border, sink past the West,
like a sword at the bearer's fall.
I can't claim that I knew you best,
but did you know me at all?

A woman is alive!
A woman is alive;
you do not take her for a sign in nacre on a stone,
alone, unfaceted and fine.
And never will I wed.
I'll hunt the pearl of death to the bottom of my life,
and ever hold my breath,
till I may be the diver's wife.

See how the infinite divides:
and the divers are not to blame
for the rift, spanning distant shores.
You don't know my name,
but I know yours.