MOVEMENT II.

Undulating vision
of "Moonlight" 

Sonata—
ancient dark cliffs

of such
exquisite grief—

why must your
perfect country

heedlessly
keep rolling? past

its last and
sheerest rock face.

SLICK

how the
ostentatious rustle

of overhead sun-
bleached silver leaves—

like thick rain somehow
thoroughly falling

on a calm and cloud-
less cobalt day—buffers so lovely

the dark
trill of me weeping—

like a
lost and a terribly

private child—sequestered
in the

middle of this
public street.

AVOCADOS

Over time, every 

one must 

collapse.

 

As if by many

serene degrees, one

gradually yields—

 

while another

does not; first, it's

impervious—then 

 

it just rots. But

time itself

glows unremittingly

 

green—

a tear-shaped 

lump

 

that will not 

ever just 

relax.

 

MEDITATION

Near enough to the
clamor
and hiss of civilization

to throb a little
with the rumbling
of each passing train, there's always

an ocean—
weathering
the occasional rain,

warm and
thin, which sooner or later is
sure to be falling

faint across its gray
waves
of headstones.

SCHERZO

Nonchalant neighbor-
hood coffee

shop menu board—
lattes cost five dollars,

crescent rolls aren't even
listed—and you

squint and bite
your lip a bit and don't so much

hear it but
feel this strange hollow

bell tolling twelve noon twelve noon twelve 
noon in the

pit of your
stomach or soul—and just for a little

distraction, you wish
you could

tell this
to Frank O'hara.

A SHOT IN THE DARK

Sometimes I wonder
what—need
would look like

if you could
step back
and look at it sketched—

entire,
and bounded, and
all at once
across a single sheet of paper;

because all
it ever
sounds like is—
the strain of one line

necessarily inheriting
the
tune of another.

LOVE LETTER

Dear X, I can't stress
enough that I'm

no longer the same
person I used to be.

For one thing, I get off
to bed much earlier.

For another,
all night, the best I can do
is lie

flat awake and wonder
about you—
while the thunder

booms its consecutive
far-off
black mushroom
cloud epiphanies; only they're

speaking all at once, and their words
are so loud, and too close together,
and spouted far

too quickly
for me to catch many
of the nitty-gritty details.

But one
thing about this still strikes me
as being
more or less interchangeable:

my apprehension
of the falling rain,

might be
the same place
where the rain is falling.

I don't mean:
maybe internally,
I am actually the same
person I used to be;

I mean:
maybe it is—sincerely

raining
here, inside me.