BLCKDGRD
Kings & Criminals Who Are Extinct, Who Disdain This World, & Who Rot, Corrupt & Shallow, as Fields I Disced
I've Never Been an Old Woman Knitting By a Fire But I've Played One in Images Where It Meant Being Foolish, a Mistress of Distraction's Indirection
It Is the Lumps and Trials That Tell Us Whether We Shall Be Known and Whether Our Fate Can Be Exemplary, Like a Star
Although I Mean It, and Project the Meaning As Hard As I Can Into Its Brushed-Metal Surface, It Cannot, in This Deteriorating Climate, Pick Up Where I Leave Off
My Poem Would Eat Nothing. I Tried Giving It Water But It Said No
If a Man Among You Got No Sin Upon His Hand Let Him Cast a Stone at Me For Playing in the Band
We Are Afloat on Our Dreams As on a Barge Made of Ice
Justine called on Christmas day to say she was thinking of killing herself. I said, “We’re in the middle of opening presents, Justine. Could you possibly call back later, that is, if you’re still alive.”
You're the Only Serious Person in the Room, Aren't You, the Only One Who *Understands,* and You Can Prove It by the Fact that You've Never Finished a Single Thing in Your Life
one poem that had been over for centuries spelled wrong
The Sedate One Is This Month's Skittish One
“He’s dead,” he said. “No, he’s not. I just saw him move his arm,” I said. He removed his pistol from his holster and fired a shot. “Now he’s dead,” he said, or: Born Eighty-Two Years Ago Today
The Recital of the New Optimism Was Oft Interrupted, Rudeness in the Ramparts, an Injured Raven That Needed Attendance, Pre-Op Nudity
So Is Your Judgement Shown Presumptuous, False, Quite Vain, Merely Your Own Sadness for Failed Ambition Set Outside, Made a Philosophy of, Prinked, Beautified in Noble Dress and into the World Sent Out to Run with the Ill It Most Pretends to Rout
Forgetfulness That Seeps into Our Outline Defining Our Volumes w/a Stain
The Poet Is a Radio. The Poet Is a Liar. The Poet Is a Counterpunching Liar
Trees Outside the Window and a Big Band Sound That Makes You Feel Like Everything's Okay, a Feeling That Lasts For One Song Maybe, the Parentheses All Clicking Shut Behind You
I Must Concentrate on How Disappointing It All Has to Be While Rejoicing in My Singular Un-wholeness That Keeps It an Event for Me
falling into a set of holes whose structures are predictable, ideological, and long dug, often falling into this set of structural and impersonal holes
His Escape Is Planned. It Requires Only One Leg
Ghostlier Demarcations, Keener Sounds
Nearly 80% of the Denizens of the Deep Can Produce Their Own Light But Up Here We Make Our Own Darkness
It Would Be Tragic to Fit into the Space Created By Our Not Having Arrived Yet, to Utter the Speech That Belongs There, for Progress Occurs Through Re-Inventing These Words from a Dim Recollection of Them, in Violating That Space in Such a Way as to Leave It Intact
The Grass Is Still Hungry Above You, Fed By Your Death
sleep at this closed hour many enemies
a line of faces borders the strangler's work
When They Shout It Is Usually Addressed to the Dead Body Who Owned This Body Before Us
I Sense a Heaviness in Your Light Play, a Wish to Stand Out, Admired, From the Throng
The History of Revolutions Is a History of the Orthodox Weeping Over Their Faltering Orthodoxies:
No, It’s True, No One Should Be Writing Poetry in Times Like These, Dear Reader, I Don’t Have to Tell You of All People Why
quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat
I built, of blocks, a town three hundred thousand strong, whose avenues were paved with a wine-colored rug and decorated by large leaves outlined inappropriately in orange, and on this leafage I'd often park my Tootsie Toy trucks, as if on pads of camouflage, waiting their deployment against catastrophes which included alien invasions, internal treachery, and world war, or: Born 101 Years Ago Today
It Hurts, This Wanting to Give a Dimension to Life When Life Is Precisely That Dimension, or: Born Ninety-Eight Years Ago Yesterday
It’s Like Being Left Out in the Rain, and Coming to Understand That You Were Always This Way: Modern, Wet, Abandoned, Though with That Special Intuition That Makes You Realize You Weren’t Meant to Be Somebody Else
There Were No More Dreamers Just Sleepers in Heavy Attitudes
Who Would Be Released From a Silver Skeleton?
When I Was Driving Once I Saw This Painted on a Bridge: "I Don't Want the World I Just Want Your Half"
Give Me a Name; I've Never Heard My Voice or Seen My Face
Thirty-Seven
The Failure to See God Is Not a Problem God Has a Problem With
At First, as You Lie in Bed in Your Motel Room or Mobile Home It Merely Disrupts Your Sleep, Your Nervous System. Later You Kill Your Dog and Wife
And if to withstand this nocturnal pollution of the tiny wanton stars with bent hook clauses of misprision I’m supposed to sing the melody of an unexpecting part. . .
Rest and Look at this Goddamned Wheelbarrow. Whatever It Is
Do You Want to Go Down to the Pits of Yourself All Alone?
Embers of Rain Tamp Down the Shitty Darkness That Issues From Nowhere