Corpus

Forgive it when it fails at first. Forgive
it when it fails again. Don't fight. Allow
your soul to know it doesn't fully live
here in this disappointing body. How
exquisite is your soul? Look at your kid,
too open and too bright to fit inside
her body, glowing with the thing you hid:
your light. Your inner light. You learned to hide
it when you learned to hate yourself. Who taught
you that? Try self-help books, try seminars,
try meditation--anything that ought
to give you back to you. You came from stars
and back to stars you'll go. And everything
between depends on you remembering.

S70

They detailed her at Genie Lube before
we left. Her white coat glimmered in the street,
reflecting Austin's August sun and, more
abstractly, hope. We held hands in the heat
and sped toward California with the child
asleep in back, the bug-eyed dog beside
him panting, Why? You drove her with a wild
intensity until we reached the wide
West Texas desert. We were astronauts
escaping boldly from an atmosphere
like glue. My Swedish rocket suffered lots
of damage on reentry, though, and where
she landed, here with me, it's not a place
for elegant, pale ships from outer space.

Bloggers

Those clever little devils tap out words
into their glowing units all across
the USA. They pick like greasy birds
at every hopeful seed I want to toss
into the soil for flowers. Why? Like me,
they love the body more than they love soul.
Instead of letting words dance themselves free,
they make them move from pose to pose. No hole
too deep to fester in. No mask too fierce.
So cold, encoded in a streaming new
facade: let that be me. I'll learn to pierce
you with my wit. I don't, I won't love you.
No way. It's time to make an ordered art
out of my mind and let that stand for heart.

Brief History

You came to me stoically, all white
turtleneck and boat shoes, ennobled
by real beliefs and crisp logical talk.
You let me be superior to you in
beauty and in mind; I needed that.
Against my cynical backdrop, we
entered love's zone, propelled along
by unseen forces, our bodies turning
in an eerie dance.

After the neutral beauty of lovers,
we became man, wife. Child: he came
later, sealing our transformation.
I do what he demands, what you expect,
what life insists I do. In this old
walled structure, I envy even the dog.
Her brown eyes bulging, she slurps
at the water of freedom. I served
it in her plastic bowl at four o'clock.

One Thing Right

To dream myself into a purple night
after a torrid, swirling golden day--
I only ever got that one thing right.

The blinds admit a crystalline white light.
I shiver in my new blue bed and stay
to dream myself into a purple night.

I wake up late and mad, and start to fight
about some stupid thing, but mean to say,
I only ever got that one thing right.

I traded gold for gold and breadth for height,
and here I need the spine I let decay
to dream myself into a purple night.

I found my paradise and bred delight
in Austin's sound, its sweet, its sweep, its play--
I only ever got that one thing right.

So now I sprawl here sickened by the blight
of beauty you call California, and I pray
to dream myself into a purple night.
I only ever got that one thing right.

April 7

tulips and phlox
blinded under snow
crust, yellow heads
bent ponderously, purple
buds hidden bewildered
as I am

the fir tree
cautiously waited
to unleaf
but the flowers
rushed into exuberant
blooming; short life
when you're a flower;
less to lose; carpe
etc.

I stood before two picture
windows anthropomorphizing
and theorizing
because the past keeps falling
over me out of season

every year not my year;
death hovers, a winter cloud
near my hopeful body

time to get more seeds (pills);
but they only recycle what
exists; they add nothing

I perceived no spirits
animating this still
mixed scene; surely
spirit of snow
spirit of flower
spoke into it

But I'm butterfly
grown old
netted in material
reality
in unexpected
thoughts that freeze

I looked for the easiest
way out when the mesh
enveloped my wings

and wound up dead again

Trinity

sweet Sublimation, how
I miss You, miss
hovering above my
details, my load,
my loss.

yet this body
remains t/here,

below,
with Child

and Work
(the hunter
thrashing
through
my serene
forests,

slashing
at my commitment).

captured, I am
rent
in three:

madonna,
magdalen,
me.