Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.

xxxix

The hard edge of historical light, it waits up for us

all night. Here’s one brutal but apparently

necessary historical bargain: I said that the energy

between you and the person next

to you is truer than it is real. This is not a randomly

existing fact. It’s a collectively and intelligently and menacingly

cultivated feature of our lives. Fugitive fact.

This puts you both—puts

us all—in peril, yes, but protects that energy between us.

If it were the other way, if that living thing between

us had become more—even as—real as it is

true we’d be more protected than we are

but that thing, that sacred being

-between would be endangered. The intelligence

of collective action knows, somehow, that that

kind of security is far more dangerous—the kind of danger

people become to themselves, then to each other,

the kind they become to each other, then to themselves—

than the peril in which we stand now. That’s a hard

historical edge to stand near, real talk, that’s the broken

back of a mother—black—skipped across a wit-quick crack in the sidewalk. 

If you often find yourself at a loss for words

or don’t know what to say to those you love,

just extract poetry out of poverty, this dystopia

                            of civilization rendered fragrant,

             blossoming onto star-blue fields of loosestrife,

heady spools of spike lavender, of edible clover

                            beckoning to say without bruising

a jot of dog’s tooth violet, a nib of larkspur notes,

                        or the day’s perfumed reports of indigo

                                in the gloaming—

              what to say to those

                           whom you love in this world?

Use floriography, or as the flower-sellers put it,

Say it with flowers.

—Indigo, larkspur, star-blue, my dear.

To be able to see every side of every question;

To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;

To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,

To use great feelings and passions of the human family

For base designs, for cunning ends,

To wear a mask like the Greek actors—

Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle,

Bawling through the megaphone of big type:

“This is I, the giant.” 

Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,

Poisoned with the anonymous words

Of your clandestine soul.

To scratch dirt over scandal for money,

And exhume it to the winds for revenge,

Or to sell papers,

Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,

To win at any cost, save your own life.

To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,

As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track

And derails the express train.

To be an editor, as I was.

Then to lie here close by the river over the place

Where the sewage flows from the village,

And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,

And abortions are hidden.

I have wanted other things more than lovers …	
I have desired peace, intimately to know	
The secret curves of deep-bosomed contentment,	
To learn by heart things beautiful and slow.	
 
Cities at night, and cloudful skies, I’ve wanted;
And open cottage doors, old colors and smells a part;	
All dim things, layers of river-mist on river—	
To capture Beauty’s hands and lay them on my heart.	
 
I have wanted clean rain to kiss my eyelids,	
Sea-spray and silver foam to kiss my mouth.
I have wanted strong winds to flay me with passion;	
And, to soothe me, tired winds from the south.	
 
These things have I wanted more than lovers …	
Jewels in my hands, and dew on morning grass—	
Familiar things, while lovers have been strangers.
Friended thus, I have let nothing pass.

They come home with our daughter

because there’s no one at school

to feed them on the weekends.

They are mates, and like all true

companions they are devoted

and they bite. We set their cage

on the kitchen table and wait

for the weekend to end, for our girl

to fall asleep so we can talk

about god while the rats lick

the silver ball that delivers

the water one drop at a time.

There are so many points on which

you and I disagree: the value

of a clean counter, the purpose

of parent-teacher conferences,

what warrants a good cry or calling

you a name so cruel I make myself

whisper it through my teeth. God

is the least of it. When I think

I’m so angry I could hit you

in the face, you turn yours to me

with a look of disbelief. The rats,

meanwhile, have turned up the volume.

Tick, tick, says the silver ball

as their teeth click against it, thirsty

as ever, thirstier still at night

when the darkness wakes them.

And during the day, when they’re curled

together in their flannel hammock,

head to tail, two furry apostrophes

possessing nothing but each other,

paws pressed together as if in prayer—

to what gods do they prostrate

themselves then? God of fidelity? God

of forgiveness? I lied when I said

I didn’t believe. Who—even me,

the coldest of heart—could turn away

from a sea parted, bread that multiplies

to answer need, water transformed

to the sweetest wine, the kind

that tastes better for each year

it’s been left in the barrel?

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.

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.

The first deer had large teeth and no horns and

were not afraid.

The first deer did not have enough fear

for the men who needed them

to survive.

A woman decided to let the men eat

a grandmother decided her deer shall have horns

and be afraid

someone’s mother decided the men shall eat

and shall be feared.

*

A man thought wolves should be used

to cull the herd.

And we who had been catching water

dripping through stone

in the homes we dug

out of the earth

we licked our long teeth clean

            and set to work.