Love is a flame that burns with sacred fire, 

And fills the being up with sweet desire;

Yet, once the altar feels love’s fiery breath,

The heart must be a crucible till death.

Say love is life; and say it not amiss, 

That love is but a synonym for bliss.

Say what you will of love—in what refrain, 

But knows the heart, ‘tis but a word for pain.

People always tell me, “Don’t put the cart

before the horse,” which is curious

because I don’t have a horse.

Is this some new advancement in public shaming—

repeatedly drawing one’s attention

to that which one is currently not, and never

has been, in possession of?

If ever, I happen to obtain a Clydesdale,

then I’ll align, absolutely, it to its proper position

in relation to the cart, but I can’t

do that because all I have is the cart. 

One solitary cart—a little grief wagon that goes

precisely nowhere—along with, apparently, one

invisible horse, which does not pull,

does not haul, does not in any fashion

budge, impel or tow my disaster buggy

up the hill or down the road.

I’m not asking for much.  A more tender world

with less hatred strutting the streets.

Perhaps a downtick in state-sanctioned violence

against civilians.  Wind through the trees.

Water under the bridge. Kindness.

LOL, says the world. These things take time, says

the Office of Disappointment. Change cannot

be rushed, says the roundtable of my smartest friends.

Then, together, they say, The cart!

They say, The horse!

They say, Haven’t we told you already?

So my invisible horse remains

standing where it previously stood:

between hotdog stands and hallelujahs,

between the Nasdaq and the moon’s adumbral visage,

between the status quo and The Great Filter,

and I can see that it’s not his fault—being

invisible and not existing—

how he’s the product of both my imagination

and society’s failure of imagination.

Watch how I press my hand against his translucent flank.

How I hold two sugar cubes to his hypothetical mouth.

How I say I want to believe in him,

speaking softly into his missing ear.

                                   Give up      the brain 

        Offer down its clumsy

meditations      its blurred face

                      of fury      its hellbound 

      policies bugged into my throat

        Cough out

that sickled attitude      the ragged shelves

                    downing my ankles      every 

            era of hibernation

It’s all in the performance      the butcher 

      operating on slabs

of my identity      the bereaved dissecting

                      memories of an octopus

                        Lift out      far from of it 

      Careen the elbows      out of murk

                        with wine       taken by

                              the midsummer full 

                              moon

Constantly stoneward

                        hunting toward heartstill

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them- selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

Fools, fools, fools,

Your blood is hot to-day.

       It cools

When you are clay.

It joins the very clod

Wherein you look at God,

Wherein at last you see

       The living God

       The loving God,

Which was your enemy.

That slick monster sat down with us all.

A man wants to know mouth-first

           what my face does looking at him,

           if my eyes are cogitating wells

of sweet soup. He imagines me forward

then bent as in over. The idea is I’ll say yes, 

          go to the car for unbuttoning

          but a wife flashed back in the way.

So I don’t visit the details of convention.

When I say I like a man who knows

           what he wants, there’s nothing more

           about him to like. Nowhere else to be,

I stand under the snow face-

first, the mouth my summoning shrine.