Don"t take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal —

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain —
And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,
with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,
with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness

They were driving into the mountains, suddenly married,
sometimes touching each other"s cheek with a fingernail
gingerly: the radio played ecstatic static: certain roads
marked with blue enamel numbers led to cloud banks,
or basalt screes, or dim hotels with padlocked verandas.
Sometimes they quarreled, sometimes they grew old,
the wind was constant in their eyes, it was their own wind,
they made it. Small towns flew past, Rodez, Albi,
limestone quarries, pear orchards, children racing
after hoops, wobbling when their shadows wavered,

I hate you,
How the children plead
At first sight —

I want, I need,
I hate how nearly
Always I

At first say no ,
And then comply.
(Soon, soon

They will grow bored
Clutching your
Umbilical cord) —

Over the moon,
Lighter-than-air,
Should you come home,

They"d cease to care —
Who tugs you through
The front door

On a leash, won"t want you
Anymore
And will forget you

On the ceiling —
Admittedly,
A giddy feeling —

Later to find you,
Puckered, small,

Miguel might, if he speaks English, call the colors
of ukuleles stretching their necks from yards
of canvas duffel yoked across his shoulders,
auroral azul, cherry pop, or mojito green,
under this Pac Heights sky where the awful rich
snap their heels past shop windows, past goatskin bags
and spiked heels that bring them closer to heaven,
fibristic sheets of celadon paper from Zhejiang,
FIAT cremini, and Cinco de Mayo gelato.
Smiling past them, he passes with his happy load,
a display model whole and nude in his hand,

Use me
Abuse me
Turn wheels of fire
on manhole hotheads

Sing me
Sour me
Secrete dark matter"s sheen
on our smarting skin

Rise and shine
In puddle shallows
under every Meryl Cheryl Caleb Syd
somnambulists and sleepyheads

Wake us
Speak to us
Bless what you"ve nurtured in your pits
the rats voles roaches and all outlivers
of your obscene ethic and politics

Crawl on us
Fall on us

In siftings of chromatic sediment
Shed by the winter hours as they decay,
With slow descent
Light settles through the lower sky in peach,
Then mauve, then pale self-abnegating gray
Against the water, now that day is spent
At Bennetts Beach,

Under the high withdrawing blueness, band
On band, like layers in a decorative
Bottle of sand,
Enclosed beneath the heavens" dome, as though
This were the perfect realm in which to live,
Preserved, unburdened by the least demand,
Or wish, to know —

And simply be. Along the beach convene

In front of the craft shop,
a small nativity,
mother, baby, sheep
made of white
and blue balloons.

*

Sky
god
girl.
Pick out the one
that doesn"t belong.

*

Some thing
close to nothing
flat
from which,
fatherless,
everything has come.

The palm tree exposes
a large number
of loose, carved spines

out of pleasure?

Boredom?

*

To start over
in the carved moment
is to take cover.

*

A solid short woman
in a pink wool suit

proceeds —
anxiously? doggedly?

alone

up a sidewalk
laid down for her.

(We don"t believe it.)

There are two kinds
of choices,

pirate sources say:

unconscious
and desperate.

Until wolf-light I will count my sheep,
Adumbrated, uncomedic, as they are.
One is perdu, two, qualm, three
Is sprawl, four, too late,

Night is already a thirsty county in Texas,
Salt flat and unremitting
Blacktop dry as my mouth,
And your elastic vowels, my genial,

My electric ghost, my
Radio"s lonely station. Because the spectacle
Of suffering corrupts us, all punishments

If I stand
alone in the snow
it is clear
that I am a clock

how else would eternity
find its way around