100 Notes on Violence [24] (audio only)

So we shoveled it. Climbed over it. When a boy's loved 
he is loved. We kissed him at the countdown

then we went to bed. 
Then I woke and on the screen 

an executioner 
whose wife for him 

was worried. Both on and off the screen

there was still a lot of snow. I went out and stuck my hand in it, 
felt around for a handle. None.

So I picked myself up and walked to the bank. Does it seem 
I am alone? No, not alone. The wind was a friend. Dying and down. 

I bent over,

I listened to the flow. Home, yes, but leaving. Home, sure, fine, but, 
where's the bathroom? Where's the light? Anyway, 

the soft swell said, lisping its S’s, Anyway, 
if you're at home here, you're a guest.  So I bowed. I said 

I'm sorry if I bore you. Broad, 
the river belled in a thud of sun. 

I climbed aboard, I rowed. A border flew open like a cough. 
I leaned back to balance 

my heavy brown oars as they dipped
to green and red furrows of light between water mounds. 

My boat rocked, steady, un-steady. 
Was I welcomed? It seemed I was as I gripped 

and privately beheld. 

The night soon lost its head. I said,
I'm here. Pulling up now,

parking, looking 
for something to eat, to redeem. 

The wind shook the seedpod but the seedpod 
wasn't moved. 

And though I thought I'd done the damage I was born for, 

there was still so much to step through, 
so much to mar.

*



First: The blinding of the citizens

Second: The common plague of worms

(like lute strings, they must be plucked and the wounds spread with fresh butter)

Then: 


This amorousness



*



Old woman cried and was fed her peas—

a worm in mud finding its way around my roots—

or deeply asleep and thus resistant to being read as a morally triumphant being,

she buries her mirror

The sermon says, "there is no you, so no way for you to fail or fall"

In Normandy we bought fish and cake

and the children rode the carousel

These are the dreams we return to:

bread in the sun, oil in the water 

glass in the foot

Blood modifies blood



*



"Let me be my own fool," sitting on the newspaper 

perchance in love with an embryonic heart

prepared to beat 2.5 billion times, and that's all



*



Nothing betray us


But I love the moment when the boy looks down at a homeless man's shoe 

and imagines traveling to the center of the earth, hanging on the shoelace like a rope

        1. It does not take much

        2. Half an hour here, half an hour there

        3. It’s not a “presence” I adore

        4. The erotically swollen moon

        5. Let me go, friends, companions

        6. The soldier watches his kid in a play

        7. He seems nothing less or more than “foreigner”

        8. Grass. Dirt.

        9. The bottle broke and all the women gathered shards

        10. The effect was of inflation

        11. There was only one alive moment in the day

        12. Either I loved myself or I loved you

        13. Just like a mother to say that

        14. “Do you become very much?” she wrote