Haven’t they moved like rivers—
like Glory, like light—
over the seven days of your body?

And wasn’t that good?
Them at your hips—

isn’t this what God felt when he pressed together
the first Beloved: Everything.
Fever. Vapor. Atman. Pulsus. Finally,
a sin worth hurting for. Finally, a sweet, a
You are mine.

It is hard not to have faith in this:
from the blue-brown clay of night
these two potters crushed and smoothed you
into being—grind, then curve—built your form up—

atlas of bone, fields of muscle,
one breast a fig tree, the other a nightingale,
both Morning and Evening.

O, the beautiful making they do—
of trigger and carve, suffering and stars—

Aren’t they, too, the dark carpenters
of your small church? Have they not burned
on the altar of your belly, eaten the bread
of your thighs, broke you to wine, to ichor,
to nectareous feast?

Haven’t they riveted your wrists, haven’t they
had you at your knees?

And when these hands touched your throat,
showed you how to take the apple and the rib,
how to slip a thumb into your mouth and taste it all,
didn’t you sing out their ninety-nine names—

Zahir, Aleph, Hands-time-seven,
Sphinx, Leonids, locomotura,
Rubidium, August, and September—
And when you cried out, O, Prometheans,
didn’t they bring fire?

These hands, if not gods, then why
when you have come to me, and I have returned you
to that from which you came—bright mud, mineral-salt—
why then do you whisper O, my Hecatonchire. My Centimani.
My hundred-handed one?

American they said + + but Horse I dreamed
                                                                                 , and Horse became

                        ++            ++            ++
+  ++       +++     ++     ++    +++       ++     ++
               +            +++                           +++             +

+ + + I was cleaved + from human-earth + + +
Redsap lymph calcium + + + Atlas and femur
            , A new Chaos—
+ come forth + through the world’s foaming + crust
            + + then licked + into my roan skin

+ + + A flesh being bearing + its first dreamSelf + + +

I came to life + + how stars appear—
            , Of dust + +

collapsed + till struck
                                    +        + +
+ ++              +     ++ to light + + +       +
       +      ++   +        +            +   +     ++

            Dream-erupted—
, Gila Monsters + lavablack + +

                          +++ Land +++ +++ +++
                                                      , All its thunders + + +

            In this great magnetic field + +
I am a knowledge system + + +

My hair is a tangled Mojave Dictionary + + +
            , And my tongue + is a danger + +
I speak a darkwhip + into the haboob’s goldthrob + + +

This valley’s bright-weather is my ceremony + + +
, Flashflood + is my medicine—
            + + how I clean myself of Self

+ + + America + + Hoard of Property + is a debris
            + of my cells— limestone + + wound-porous +
sea-floor + + basalt + trilobite + camel bones +                          
            , glass and Blackmountain + + +
                                         +
                                    + + + +
                              + + + + + + +

+ + + We professional mourners + +
            crying for our lives + and for hire + + +
From dark-colonies + in the caves behind our hearts
+ + we weep the sun to fall + and bats into the sky

+ + + We weep the saguaros to bloom + Eastward
+ and moonwhite + + soft-petaled wounds +
            circling their night-wrists and crowns + + +
                        Grief is our lush and luxury—

            , The strain + of anything + that grows
+ + + Sand rose + + iron wood + + smoke tree + + +
We tend dune-gardens + from Deadlands + +
            till the halite beds + + reap selenite thorns +
from the horned toads’ backs + + + 

+ + + In the a.m. heatwarp + vultures 
+ ripple the violet skydome + + +
A swarm of bloodgloved-archivists + + +
            They sky-write                                  + +
+ + + + +                     + + +                   + +
            + + +      + + + directions—
                + + + +                        + + + + 
          + +                                            + +
    + +                                                        + +
, To the museum , To the university
            , To the hospital + + +

In this Epoch of Citizenship +
I must arrive everywhere twice—
            , Occupied and Unceded + + +
One hand The Comet + +
the other hand + Who Makes the Comet Come
+ + + So call me Lodestone + or Alone + + +
            Whisper me +
                         , Secret Magnet + + +

In pink twilight + + my love and I are effigies
            + + leaching salt +
through our terracotta hands + + +

My language clays + + and maps +
amaranth lather + along my thigh—a migration
            + of Exile—
, A self-determined Relocation of pleasure—
                         , wantneed + + +

We are the origin + + oxygen + and always becoming
            + + + Bloodworms
+ from which new land might grow + + +
            , How we make soil + +
then mud where we laid + + +
Alchemy of our wet denim skinz + and gravity + + +

We pulse animal and sensual + + +
            Thundercats of love + greening the desert—
, Pale grasses + fruit in my breath
            + + grey-green along the belly of the nightbranch + + +

            We are + unacreable
+ + + We abrade + the transit + the survey
+ + hold tight and repeat ourselves +
            in crystal lattice + + +

Come morning + + + Come Mercurylight + + +
We are blessed and scattered + + +
Shards + of a horsehead + water jar—
            , Lonely for a body + + and aching +
for the cool taste + and shape the first water once took + + +

This Nation + is a white bright + magnesium
            + NDN burn + + +
I fume and illumine + in its quantum-arson—
            , Indian Iron Alchemy Horse + + +

+ + + My brothers are the Cold Killers + +
shovelers + of silver anthracite + +
            fuelgods + of the midnight train

            + boxcar + jumptrack + jolt-light
+ + + Vaporing + + nightsalt + to cloud—
            , Mustanging + + +

Every desert highway is sacred +
            and gas station pumps + break our hearts + + +
We have pedal bones + white doctors call coffin bones
+ + + That’s why I’m always dying—

+ + + That’s why—
, I’m always halfghost + + half-back + + half-dressed
+ as the war party who will return—
, With a full tank of gas + + +
            , And a stick of scalps + + +

Tonight the city + + is a tectonic bone radio—
            , Our ancestors are on every channel + + +

Scorpions whip and fluoresce + from the shadows of Settler houses
Green-eyed wolf spiders + emerge from their dens +
            to join the dark hunt + + +

The midnight train + monsoons + around the bend
+ + recognizes me + as a relation + and cries +
            Chuk+Shon     Chuk+Shon     Chuk+Shon

            + +     + +        + +     + +        + +     + +           
            + +     + +        + +     + +        + +     + +                       
            + +     + +        + +     + +        + +     + +                       

+ + + We are each + the other’s + passenger + + +

+ + + On the horizon + my warriors volcano + + +
            + + + I shatter cinders + from my hair
+ + I’ll watch them eat the day-aliens with flame
            + + + American + NDN + horse pyre + + +

The Hohokam canals + crack awake + +
gush their ghostwaters + through the settlement streets + + +
            blister + and boneflower + + +

I war whoop out + into the empty + displaced hip +
of the Ghost-sea + + and the Ghost-sea +
            war-weeps back +
spiraling + the etched shells of my ears + + +

+  + + A + M + E + R + I + C + A—
, Haunted hotel + shiprock + rockwreck + ship of fools + + +
            , Little giant cemetery + of braids
              + +       + +       + +       + +    
                x           x            x           x
             +++     +++      +++     +++
                x           x            x           x
              + +       + +       + +       + +
                +           +          +           +

+ + + Beloved Occupiers + + I am posting notice—
            , There is no more vacancy + + +

When this world has ended + I will carry my people + Home
+ + +

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

^{A penny for the Old Guy}

                              I

We are the hollow men 
We are the stuffed men 
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when 
We whisper together 
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass 
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour. 
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost 
Violent souls, but only 
As the hollow men 

                              II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams 
In death’s dream kingdom 
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are 
Sunlight on a broken column 
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are 
In the wind’s singing 
More distant and more solemn 
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer 
In death’s dream kingdom 
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves 
No nearer—

Not that final meeting 
In the twilight kingdom

                              III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are 
Trembling with tenderness 
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

                              IV

The eyes are not here 
There are no eyes here 
In this valley of dying stars 
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places 
We grope together 
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless 
The eyes reappear 
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose 
Of death’s twilight kingdom 
The hope only 
Of empty men.

                              V

Here we go round the prickly pear 
Prickly pear prickly pear 
Here we go round the prickly pear 
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea 
And the reality 
Between the motion 
And the act 
Falls the Shadow

                                  For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception 
And the creation
Between the emotion 
And the response 
Falls the Shadow

                                  Life is very long

Between the desire 
And the spasm 
Between the potency 
And the existence 
Between the essence 
And the descent 
Falls the Shadow

                                  For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is 
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends 
This is the way the world ends 
This is the way the world ends 
Not with a bang but a whimper.