I walk all night
along the street
craving
to expose the dime
burning my pocket.

Adorned white horses
prance, jingle
bridlebells, raise
hooves, eyes
sapphirebright.

What to do
when ratiocination
swallows its own
stinking breath,
frog-gutted, tummied,
waits to feel a straw
shoved up its ass
threatens to burst,
unless additional
pressure is produced.

If my hair were gray
and longer
if my will were
stronger
and I had no debts. . .

It is the wolf,
keen moonhowler,
that we seek,
and a stance
in a field of stones,
and rain, drizzling
sleet   hail
and at last a cave
of guano   fragrant
the debris coughed up
by owls (sweet small
deer devoured), a
nest of leaves,
and a shewolf braced
on all fours, pumice-toned
udder exposed, nipples
erect, at right angles,
to be sucked gummed
by desperate ones.

Dreams
fall out of the nest
of chaste moments.
Slate-colored proprieties
at last
drown
as the mouth
dribbles   runs with
fresh white wolfmilk.

O beautiful severed head of hog
O skewered lamb-throat, marble eye of
duck, O meadow-freshened hare
suspended
O lovely unplucked pheasant
ripening in the gloom
O gracious suckling pig upended
O twisted tail erect
and pinkish goudged-out hole
O graceful nub of sow tit, merry xylophone
of fractured ribs
O rib ends smarting where the saw
has severed you
O pleasant rind of fat and rosy spume
along the incision sliced
from genitals to snout

O livers tumbling, O clattering
jewel of pancreas and
ligaments of stomach wall
O golden brains emplattered
O calf-groin hacked in two
O carcass spiked, with legs
encased and tied about
with paper, hanging on the wall
O sheep form, severed shoulders,
O ham string of ox,
O whitening lyre,
O steer loin pierced, O haunch,
O ribeage disembowelled
O glorious trays and juices, heaps of
lambhearts, chicken livers,
gizzards, claws
I see you all!

1

There is a line across the lake
hues of blue walking in
groups of three. No one
gouges his eyes to
stop the streaming or
grips his guts
as though they were
spilling through. None
bears a pack. Their path
is sand and stone; it is not
golden.

What thrids the eardrum? chugs?
makes motors whir? why do I see them,
Sunday travellers?

2

There is a lake between us.
Lilies float on it and the broken
wafers of the minnow’s dinner.
There is a pole warning swimmers.
The depth is real — struck by oar,
plumbline, foot of human; and yet
no one tries to cross it.
A fact of life gone
never to be repeated.

3

A boy goes past
shuts out the procession
the warning pole, the deeps.
He moves propelled on metal
crutches. Thighless
he has the shoulders of a man.

4

The walkers move again, intact,
their eyes averted. They would miss
whoever tried to walk on water,
water blue-chill even in late August:
boys from camps have failed
to taint it, and the mud
has long since settled
where the last angler caught
the last fish planted
for his pleasure. But see,
out where the weeds are growing,
that fringe of yellow
which irritates the calves of
swimmers (the spot where boys
beat captured frogs to death),
out past the sand, neck
deep, by a submerged log,
where a screaming child is pointing:
the water is a deep cold gray.

I am neither whole
nor broken am at an
impasse of energies
taken by the throat
by nothing
except
from the inside
within the throat channel
brass fingers are
squeezing my windpipe
raking nails through
nostril passages
working towards the
brain, its interior ocean

where there is
trembling: soft plantain
wavering. sponge-diamond
brain resistant to
crumbling

but not resistant to
polyp growing
or to fish
slicing through
frisking
over and in
between the
halves.

He watched the she-goat, glimpsed
Her nubbed and ochre horns, her
Low-slung womb, her nipples laden,
Thrust against her awkward legs.
She would not make the hill:
The cracking fire would bring her down:
Her unborn young in the ripe
Swimming sack would never know
That rudest shock: Death would
Drown them, a slow gurgling
Of wine death-water.

A chill sped through the palace.

It was noon. The white sun clung
To the Sudanese earth.
A fringe of color where the powdered
Sky merged with the earth-heat
Marked the enemy: spots of black boil,
Lava spots under the glaring day.

He took the glass from the desk
And held it up: a one-humped
Camel, legs apart, tail high,
Urinating in the sand. He brought
The glass away. How silent in the palace!
The distant guns.

The goat stopped beside the gate
Where no one was and pressed her
Mouth against her side. How many young
She might have birthed! And milk
For the doomed, the starving of Khartoum,
Quivering before the rain: the steel
Thrust through the bowels, the mace
Against the brain.
O Khartoum! Folly and Khartoum!

Someone rattled the door — or
Was it the wind?

Slowly Gordon turned,
Took up the book where he
Had put his sister’s name, Augusta.
He closed the book. Nothing would be pure,
Neither east nor west,
Nothing but man’s folly, and
The breaking bones.

Once past the gate, she paused:
The slate-grey path to Cairo
Or the sedge and grass beside the river.

So inviolate in the sun. She chose
The water and the dun hill to it.
She moved, her legs out of rhythm,
Birth-heavy, mired in effort. She was a
Quart of ground, dun-colored, the
Tips of her nose and ears like pebbles,
Her udders spots of gravel
Tinted by the sun.

When would they come? The enemy? The
Force?

She had reached the crest, her
Flank revealed, her head towards
The blue-green water of the river.

Gordon braced his hands against the ledge;
A distant bubble moved, a wedge of
Shadow stirred by the wind fell
Through the yard. A flash. A flick of
Dull orange heat. A dust of
Plaster fell across the view, then
Cleared. The goat, fecund, carrying sin,
Crumpled like paper in the wind.

The Arabs were moving now.

1.

Here’s where the
African sat
wearing a panama hat.
There’s where the
bull broke his knees,
stoned.

animal St. Stephen and
even-tempered slut
of my uncommitted heart,
my hands flap at the wrist,
the limber gristle
of my back slaps;
as I walk my leg drags.

2.

I won’t be god this time
or even godly
will follow the circus
to higher ground
will eat fire, steal
the dwarf’s barbells,
devour the fatlady’s
chocolates, race
into the forest
on the barebacked stallion.

Water leaps
from the pool’s hands
spills over logs and boulders.
There are children in the forest.

A cinder-colored rock
shaped like a man’s head
submerged to the chin:
his mouth rides clear
chin sucks water in
swirling around it
pinched nose
eyes inset over the ridge
of the nose, left eye
suspended, forehead,
a goudge.

Eddies swirl
past a nut-strewn
hemlock bough
out of lip-reach.

I am with him. I taste
the nuts. A needle
cuts my eye. I thirst.
Scarlet grips my tongue.
I spit lung substance —
hemlock kernels cracked
and broken — spit this
onto stone where rain
will wash it down
into the mouth slaking hunger
intensifying thirst.

Cayenne sheets
hot nostril-seizing pillow
cooking blanket
at 4 a.m.

Over the lake
the sun thrusts a finger
towards a pooped-out
crescendoed metal
neon moon expiring —
beak eye and gizzard
of dissolving moon.

And there is nothing
I can do, no thing
but scratch hot meat
and curse.

I want to split a mountain
to see Darwin’s finches
discover each other at last
fuck and carry on!

But I am cautious.
A bird flutters in
glues its breast
to the slick postage
stamp of my soul
dies in absentia
so to speak timidly
extinguishes this
summer-blazing cinder
lamp. I arise
tramp around, a big
middleaged brontosaurus
on the rim of a tar pool,
wagging a sticky-coated,
smoked, plastic wrapped
in juices tongue.

To see
what you have never known

or
at least to modify it.

There is
honey
on the lips of the young

boys blazing
on their way
to thorns

girl-cacti
bearing plastic
flowers.

Let the
mountain roll
fold triple crevices
out of bleeding canyons
dump
termagant storms
smash
against one another
drain
green sputum

Let the dun-roofed buildings
collapse into bone
let the scrotum swing
swell tighten its fibers

Desert-slaking meat
lying out there in the sun

We wander among.

a phantom
is on the roof

he rubs his
glans
with a
thistle and

grinds
his claw
along his
perineum

the air screams
blood
drips down
the window
the roof trembles
the night rips out
its bowels

we are falling

helmeted men
pummel us
with truncheons

If forced to
I could hold my brain
in my hands, encompass
the cells of it honeycomb
sponge.

I crave
those feasts spread out
down the streets, beneath
the trees, in rooms.

Alas! books pall,
hunger is my doom.
I move on craving.
The more I know
the more I learn
to need.

I must lose this self
flutter down
s i n k
down into that image God
down through kelp
past red liquorish pods
wavering on stems, great
fan-like plants as flat as
green starched lace, to that place
which the church may only indicate
and reason shaft its arrow towards,
but where the self alone
immersed floats
for eternity.

In the end
a man
loves himself
alone.

The elements, and the stars
though stronger and more beautiful
than he, rest, blow, quench, burn
and glow for him alone — he thinks.

Strangers, tribes and crowds
he frowns upon, transcends.
The lucency of God floods over
them and him, illuminates his wit,
shines dimly by comparison
on theirs. Out of His tolerance
God lets them be.

His relatives one by one
he drops; and learning
he ignores, and art (for
insight twists his heart ).
He shrinks, like lead
boiling down. “I shape
the universe!” he cries.
Scales over his eyes
remove all doubt.

In the end
it is only himself
he sees
loves
thinks about.

The eternal sense
has scribbled his own thoughts
on this world, filled every page.

Reading as we run
we miss the syllables,
believe we grasp
connecting tissue, act
as though we share
in a universal mind.

But what do we find?
Were we to stop and read,
or build a temple, enter,
and contemplate, our pleasure
would crumble. Stumbling
out into the sun
with ruined eyes
we would curse that
idiot, despise his
arrogance for being
so like us — the sentences
dim, phrases askew,
connections illusion.

Presumption!
to think to slake grief’s parched
rattle, rub trouble’s nose in joy,
wipe the wind’s spittle from the
face, wring palatable juice
from anguish, drown the human
throat in a wash of ichor!

God is our director
and nature is his troupe.

He bellowed through his
megaphone, let his hand droop,
waited for space, a stage, to form
and set each star, creature, entity
in its chalkplace, gave each
his singing, talking role, or
screams, signed on his son
as prompter for the
divine comedy, and stuntman.

When the show closes
aided by various assistant
directors: Buddha, Mahomet,
Aimee Semple MacPherson, He
will make academy awards
reserving for himself
(stagemanager, writer, lighting
technician, and director)
gold statuettes — human forms
to grace the livingroom
of the eternal cold.

This beautiful world is truly God’s creature,
God’s image, praising God whose type it is.

And we are this creature’s worms;
vile families of us sink mouths
into the pink lining of its guts,
sate ourselves, flex elastic tails,
quiver. Why should we know its
intellect or its love?

There is a spastic worm
with a brittle head and pinchers
adrift in my own gut;
he does not know me,
heart nor brain, nor
does he care to; and when I
think I hear him howl
and wish to comfort him,
he crunches on, wreaking
his mischief, becomes
my brain’s thief. The brain itself,
though, he knows nothing of.
We must be circumspect;
we are at best live
on this great body, sniff
the warm hair of its crotch,
its malodorous armpits,
settle in, pitch about, suck.

Proud man, pluck up your gown,
look down, learn what part
you really play in this
vast scheme of things; feel the
microscopic mouth attach itself
to your hairy balls.

We should not have gone.
I should have expected
crows not swans to keep
the time, observe the
icecube dying in
the glass, the clock
hand embedded in
the shoulder.

Your intensity
glows with the hue
of a burner freshly
off, extinguished;
my gaucheries hiss
as water-drops upon it,
bounce and roll, hiss
bounce and roll. In
the presence of
near-strangers, others,
our beakers form
alchemical drops distill
what we are able only
partly to conceal: a
measure of ourselves,
isolated yet close.

I need you
to extinguish the light
to curl close again
lie silent — the
whisker of a mouse —
beside me. This interval
of hours — the brown taste
in the mouth persists —
which has wrenched the
sprocket from the chain,
means that we cannot
go on again until
we are restored
to love, to that
before the debacle.

Trees
seem to
follow you

worms bleed
on the sidewalk
out of morning
crushed into
fat thumbends pulp

I descend

noise rages
over the fire

they are closing
the canyon again

smothering out
the word — that we
lean towards
each other
sway

all this
as I follow
as your arms swing
scatter water-reflections
of charged rock:
the design of a
pomegranate split open

what ruin shoots
towards you walking,
strikes my skull,
pits sword to skullbone,
spears down
the gristle of the
spinal track?

observe the dogs
trying to screw
hung up rod to anus
anus to rod
beneath the
magnolia tree

we slip into morning
into afternoon.

night comes on
we halt
on the walk
beside the lamp
before the lighted shop

the sun has dropped
you cannot see

I lift the eyelid
scan for the lens
locate it
where fine hair
begins
wonder
how to move it
to its place
without impacting
grain soot scratch
of diamond on
gelatinous glass.

glass moves
rising adhering now

I touch eye-water.

night comes on
it is the skin
that fails to
let us in.

The Wisconsin lodge
that Dillinger shot up
where he slept with
Evelyn Frechette
in a musty bedroom
hung with staghorns
is legend, has become
locale.

Last week there were
arbutus, this week violets,
and next there will be snow.

Here was Robin Hood,
thirsting, despising law,
loner, who by miracle
knew and fled,
left Evelyn behind,
her and her friend.

And snow follows snow.
Flickers peck the trunks
of evergreens seeking
grubs and nuts
stored there by squirrels.

Bears lie fallow,
the paps of summer
in their dreams. Skunks
garner oil, rub their
legs together to
quiet the seeping.

I did not see the pustules
on his jaw, the chipped tooth,
the crooked finger, the fact
that he had clap. His hands
were beautiful. His breath
as fragrant as one of
Solomon’s lovers.

And his picture
on my bedroom wall,
pasted to the corrugated box
smashed flat and nailed
to the two-by-fours to
keep out cold! How immaculate
his stance before his flivver!
Felt hat back
on his head, shirt sleeves
rolled above the elbow,
trousers high on the waist,
a band, Hollywood style,
set with pearls to hold them
tight. His legs spread wide,
and, held even with his navel,
his tommy gun. Again
the stance, a perfect V,
zodiac man.

What had gone wrong
at the forked bridge
outside the town? What
had transpired at
Sunday School? Was it
poverty? Despair?
The wheel at the fair?

The gingerbread man
rides the stream
on the slick nose of the fox,
Robin Hood romps in a costume,
Arthur in armor.

I

He told me to hold the knife,
and the pan. I heard the click
on wood of the bullet inserted,
rammed. Saw a flicker thrash
in a tree beside the trough,
saw a grain in the sow’s mouth,
felt my guts slosh.

“Stand back,” he said.
Waffled snowtrack
pressed by his boots and mine.
Blood and foam. “Keep the knife
sharp, son, and hold the pan.”
One of us had shuffled,
tramped a design,
feet near the jackpine.
“She’ll bleed slow.
Catch all the blood you can.”

A rose unfolded, froze.
“Can’t we wait?” I said.
“It should turn warmer.”

Spark, spark buzzing
in the dark.

“It’s time,” dad said, and
waited.

II

Bless all this beauty! preacher
had exclaimed; all sin and beauty
in this world! Beast and innocent!

Fistbones gripped the foreshortened
pulpit rim. Thick glasses drove
his furious pupils in.

III

Dad brought the rifle to the skull.
The sow’s nose plunged into the swill,
the tips of her white tallow ears as well.
Splunk! Straight through the brain, suet
and shell. Stunned! Discharge of food,
bran. Twitch of an ear. Potato, carrot,
turnip slab. “Quick. The knife, the pan.”

He sliced the throat.
The eye closed over.
Hairy ears stood up, collapsed.
Her blood soured into gelatin.
She had begun to shit.

IV

We dragged her
to the block and tackle rig.
We tied her tendons, raised her,
sloshed her up and down.
We shaved her hair,
spun her around, cut off
her feet and knuckles,
hacked off her head,
slashed her belly
from asshole down through
bleached fat throat.
Jewels spilled out
crotches of arteries
fluids danced and ran.

We hoisted her
out of dog reach
dumped her entrails
in the snow
left the head
for the dogs to eat —
my mother disliked headmeat.
The liver, steaming, monochrome,
quivered with eyes.
We took it home.

V

I went to my room.
Tongues licked my neck.
I spread my arms.
threw back my head.
The tendons of a heel
snapped.
What had I lost?
bit bridle rage?
fowl-trap, sow’s squeal,
cracked back, cartilage?

Preacher in his pulpit
fiddling vestments aflame.
He, blazing, stepping down
to me. Hot piss came.
I knelt on the floor,
bent over, head in arms.
Piss washed down, more.
I clasped my loins, choked
cock, scrotum. Arm crossed
over arm. And I cried
(dry marble) loving my guts,
O vulnerable guts,
guts of creatures.

The day was like pewter.
The gray lake a coat
open at the throat. The border
of trees — frayed mantle collar,
hairs, evergreen. The sky dun.
Chilling breeze. Hem of winter.

I passed the iodine-colored brook
hard waters open
the weight of the sow’s head
an ache from shoulder to waist,
the crook of my elbow numb;
juices seeping through
the wrapping paper.

I was wrong to take it.
There were meals in it.
I would, dad said, assist
with slaughter, scrape off
hair, gather blood.
I would be whipped for
thieving from the dogs.

I crossed ice
which shivered, shone.
No heads below, none;
nor groans — only water, deep,
and the mud beds of frogs asleep;
not a bush quivered,
not a stone. Snow.
Old snow had formed
hard swirls bone
and planes with
windwhipped ridges
for walking upon;
and beneath, in the deep,
bass quiet, perch whirling
fins, bluegills, sunfish,
dim-eyed, soaking heat.
Mud would be soft down there,
rich, tan, deeper than a man:
silt of leeches, leaves
tumbling in from trees,
loon feces, mulch-thick,
mudquick, and lignite forming,
cells rumbling, rifts.

I knelt, chopped through
layers of ice until
water, pus, spilled up
choking the wound. I widened
the gash. Tchick! Tchick!
Chips of ice flew.
Water blew from the hole,
the well, a whale, expired.
My knees were stuck to the ice.

I unwrapped the paper.
The head appeared
shorn of its beard,
its ears stood up, the snout
with its tinkertoy holes
held blood, its eyes were shut,
there was grain on its mouth.

It sat on the snow
as though it lived below,
leviathan come for air
limbs and hulk
dumb to my presence there.

I raised the sow’s head
by its ears. I held it
over the hole, let it go,
watched it sink, a glimmer
of pink, a wink of a match
an eyelid. . .

A bone in my side beat.