those over-loved darlings I failed
to kill before too late. Too bad
I’m sentimental and lonely
and find my vices won’t keep me warm
anymore, but sometimes laughing, as
ink creeps out so confident from
a rust red pen that’s sharp as an old love,
turned, and will return the favor if
I stumble in the middle of these feet
but mostly it seems to demand
storms and mountains crumbling and
it’s hard to make due with so few
and abandon them hopeless of revision
for sixty trillion springs or more
Tag: feet
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I decided I would give up
writing the musical about
Charles Guiteau and the prose-poem book,
Twice as Nice as Mice on Ice. Who
knows what’s best and what’s a mistakenearly every bit of gold I’ve
chased has curled to a brown leaf in
my little claw but I’ll give those
old groans some sound and rough shapes andpadding for their feet as they find a place
and sing them to sleep if they let me and
maybe after years of shufflingwe’ll have a little machine that
sweetly encircles it all
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it then sails over that hill like hot oil
down your leg but you need to get dressed for
the evening execution though since our
cat food is gone perhaps first a stroll
to the river past the perimeterguards and through the rubble passage in the
southwest corner where hopefully
our stash of obscene poetry journals
is still intact in rooms so completelysimilar to this dusty light we may
have been poor and by god we will be so
again but where was I goingwith this nearly full skin the sky
is getting dark the bushes full of feet
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Some mornings it takes only half
a word and the rotten dough starts
its sticky churn—a squirrel darts
blindly into the street—crows laugh—bubbles that smell like blistered feet
pop pop pop. The dough grows until
it overflows and spills its fill
from patio to doorbell. Beatthis image down and let it rest.
Don’t blame the tattered recipe,
flour, or salt. In an hour I’ll plea
for sweetness like a man possessed.I see the mess these thought have brought—
Bread that’s just holes. I’m glad we fought.
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All of the Above
the epic I am planning as I shop for pens
with golden accents. Perhaps if not for the dog’s
unspeakable licking. But at the end
of the day what.I know that look the crab apple
felled by lightning. So many deardead dogs later still in one piece
and place hands empty soif the usual resins from a walk
through the oldish pines should refuse easy
removal there are two options neitherof which but these days with the funnels we
must wear though who would know as long as you
can smize through hours of unneeded meetingslike one of those knives for chestnuts
which gave her hunting a slight edge
so she fed and bred better her
descendants had the same feature
that time licked into the precise
claw you see before youthen brave the cloying perfume of
seeping garbage trucks to catch a
meager and reluctant yes you
can cut them off or use this corrosive
but how will you feel one day when feet are
back in fashion
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Sonnet
what prize did you hope to hold in those smooth
hands for the plan sketched in cloud and unbuilt—
what melody might have flown forth if you
freed yourself from petty politics of
the boardroom and tested those scrawny wings—
but you sat with a job safe as socks and
a single number near the cold solsticenow in the damp the aches where you bend while
those black glacier teeth topple in tepid
tea you mumble to the cat it wasn’t
all bad these bloody feet could still march this
hand salute the lurking shadow who smiles
at the coughing cubicle dwellers soon
to be churned into cheap fertilizer
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it then sails over that hill like hot oil down your leg but you need to get dressed for the evening execution though since all the cat food is gone perhaps first a stroll to the river past the perimeter guards and through the rubble hole in the southwest corner and hopefully no one else has found this place with its improbable stashes of obscene poetry journals good to eat for 1,000
beers we drank in rooms so completely similar to this dusty light we may have been poor but by God we can still be now where was I going with this nearly full shopping cart the sky is getting dark the bushes full of feet
rabbits in the parking lot obscured by the halo of the horned moon
other animals 