THE SECRET IDENTITY OF THE BOY

39

There is no need

for a backcloth crowded
with happenings, it

is already unwelcome

to me to recall
so much feeling

If there is a suture, a word
that bridges, that
laughs at its necessity

it is this
one: already

40

Let’s go crazy

I am my
mother’s child, drawn
to avoid good

timing, an initiate
of dreams, remunerator
of objects

to which I earnestly
address myself

I can’t tell

if it’s a metaphor
when the rapper asks

Can I live?

41

To say that language
kills does not
distort the truth—I don’t

believe in magic, but I do
believe in Jack Spicer

I’ve been losing
days this month, tomb
days, a squid

embracing an octopus gracing
the wall, pigeons
sleeping on the sill

but I know the secret
identity of the boy

who buried the forgeries
in a rusted antique can

of tooth powder
and that’s got

to count for something

AN IMMEDIATE CARTOGRAPHY

35

Woke from a nap to the image
of a woman I had loved

naked on a couch, her hair
touching her breasts, a lightning

storm over Quepos, over
the Pacific Ocean behind her

What would it mean
for this to be a secret?

I want to negotiate
the obtuseness
of winter, seem unable

to do so, so
must listen

for the lusty salutation of spring

And when it returned we
were not so much
relieved as we were relived


36

When a single sparrow
perceives danger, the whole
flock warps

into rearrangement without having
seen a thing—how
much do you trust phantoms?

An immediate cartography

Insect scissors

and and then sky and

If you think
you’re not thinking
when you’re dancing
think again

My heart’s been one beat
too loud every
four, it’s effusive

knock troubling, the used-car
balloon gorilla trembling
its back to me through the window

of the train over
the Gowanus Canal

These words are holding
something by the middle

edges folding
over the edge

37

Dear Dear,

I had the same dream again last night. Except the servants had all become furniture. And when the world was to end, a low, insect-like song mysteriously recuperated it. This time, as the lights flickered against the walls they made a tiny film. A woman and an ibex transversing a frozen lake. When the power failed, the woman and the ibex were instantly plunged into the water. That’s when the song began. At first I thought it was the sound of ice fissures slowly zigzagging toward the shore, but the film was already over. I went to the window and peered into the darkness. The song seemed to be coming from outside. I stood back and kicked through the pane, which shattered silently on the rocks below. Except they weren’t rocks. Or they were, but they were covered with jellyfish. Piles and piles of them. Red. Hypnotizing. A sea of arms endlessly lapping. There was a second film within this movement. A man in a boat on a roof. His hand writhing like a snake before his face. The boat rocked back and forth. There was something about his expression that told me the world would not end. There was something terribly exhausting about his need to convey this.

38

I possess only distances

You and I both

know this is only
true in that it

is accurate, just as poetry is nothing
more than numbers, algebra, geometry
arithmetic and proofs

There is no separating me
from an economy

of me, blue
jeans, sweat beads
a knuckle airily

popping, record
player broken, the flitting
exigencies of song

arbitrarily carried by the street below

The mugs in the cupboard
shutter as a train
passes, the shifting limit

of equilibrium ceaselessly
lurching askew

I ask you to devise a monstrance
in order to bear
necessary questions

I ask you to think of the soldier
as a prosthetic

I ask you to remember the ending
of Cobra Verde, how Kinski finally collapsed
and the terrifically deformed man quit

his pursuit to gaze upon it

These surprises return
us to the galaxy named Fangs

A scorpion
A panopticon

I ask you to prepare an aperture

I ask you take my hand

I ask you (whispering) which
is the way that leads

me to you?

A HISTORY OF SECRETS

30

I thought
to people

the poem
to a ripping

point only
to find it

taut again—
pirouette

31

Oakland to Brooklyn—

The paradox: through attention
one becomes altogether

distracted, adrift
amidst the configurations

as bodies insist and persist

The woman once
asleep in her
green shirt startles

into seeing

I read Creeley on Whitman
Wright on Louise
Baudelaire on inebriation

Tenebrous light on my lap
arriving from the wing

cabin arid

descent
iridescent

32

(today)

They took down the Psychic sign
but the homeless man persists

in his hunt for visions

mouth and nose enveloped
by a bobbing brown bag

(many months previous)

A man named Hans
was limping
in the marathon

I was crying
I always cry

at marathons

(death)

We feel greener as pain
dutifully circulates

futile little
flowers bending

interiorly

(tomorrow)

Kirsanov, Cavalcanti, Franju

33

It was a concrete poem
a snail in light bulbs

While the lovers were out
of focus they multiplied

The homeless blond tipped
into the river as cats

watched from the drainpipe

Paris and Peking
were the only cities left
with names

Baudelaire claimed urchins
were able to read

time in the eyes
of stray cats

34

Chance enchants

Watched a hippie self-destruct
and smoked my last rooster

When we choked
ourselves as children
we had no idea

we were initiating a politics
of consciousness

we had no idea
we were initiating a history

of secrets, though

we were well
aware of the redundancy

Becoming a fly
means making tremendous sense

Becoming an eye
means secreting invisibilities

I’m not really flying I’m thinking!

I HAVE FELT THE NECESSITY FOR A CHORUS

24

Her breastbone pushed
up at the point
where her heart would be

Think about this page
as parts of
a non-pragmatic

map of the body, of both
our bodies, or the one
made when these compose

Rhythm is rhythmic
because it is erotic

Is erotic deterritorialization

that which
we call love?

(I want to music)

If so let
us flee from
the refrain

Let’s

25

I wished not to live
in a bathysphere

nor in the lines
of a caravel

I spent 32 days
without seeing a lick
of land

(the fat yogurt moon)

My father and I sawed
boards, painted them black
to fashion a bat’s house

When the bat died
we shook him out

(the black soda moon)

or else we filled our socks
with dirt, tied
the color-ringed ends

and flung them into the moonlight
for a sonar-trained tooth to catch

to watch, to prod
not to let the bat go

(the drug dreg moon)

26

It’s Saturday, so I go
to the park, where bulldogs
whine at the clop

a horse makes—when
I see a horse I
never see a horse

The sun forgets
us and fragile

illuminations from my lamp
appear in the window

across the street

Harangue
Lollipop

Orange tongue

Thus I steal
with relaxed muscles

allowing each miniscule parcel
to pierce me with the thrill

of its transference

Thus I have felt
the necessity for a chorus

27

When the Catfish
is in Bloom
the afternoon

drags saturnine in its blue
housedress, sunlight
shouting through the leafless

trees, an improvisation
voiced by ice

What is it not to teem?

I like to think of the intuitive
fret beneath our words

the way a voice slides only
to lift at its reticular

convergence

When I ask Gerald how
it’s going, his reply is always

the same: never
better

Gerald’s name is like a moon
also: Orange

28

Before I hear it, I experience
the lull before
the kettle’s whistle, even

over the lower
hiss of the radiator

My apartment is full of snakes
and birds, clocks and trash
made into art, or relatively I guess

lull
guess
kettle
hiss
full

Lorraine says February
is expanding

The ad says you may
experience faintness

I faintly recall walking
naked past the day trader

and as such there
is no nothing—it all

depends upon placement
the situations of the eye

ear, finger

provisional strings
looping to cross

at momentary nodes
of attention

Lorraine
recall
all cross
looping
attention

29

We awe even
at the airport

terminal’s chaotic banality—such

is it that
I refuse to

duplicate the world, starting
with the word, deflecting

instead
He said

fastened to a dying animal
but I think fashioned or

not
at
all

FORTUITOUS NOISE

20

Up the River
Big City Blues
Love Affair
Three on a Match

Ed said
to magnify stingrays
so I did

Why is it so simple
this thinking
of outrageous brutality?

The rain returns
frozen, sparkling noisily
in the empty fireplace

at work and at home

I scale the fire escape
in order to scrape
the bus engine again

with my breathing

It’s a terrible and wondrous
weight, this
ceaseless mingling

in space

21

A marvelous barbarism
A blue pill
A precarious accord

Then it was night
again, every negated thing

testing shadows
against our brown stoop

I, who even
today am frightened
by carolers—

their terrible singing grins

In an amnesiac land:

amnesiac oranges
amnesiac bridges
amnesiac glaciers

22

One must be very humane
to say “I don’t know that”

Is there use
in telling

others the words
of others?

Are we allowed to imagine
Adam as a child?

I name people’s cats
I name them: Dirtwater, Thirsty, Cloud with Bones

As a child I wondered endlessly
over the pronunciations

of words such as ‘the’

If we move fast enough
in arbitrary ways
nobody will see us

I dreamt I was entered
by the spirit
of my grandfather

which called itself a current
of fortuitous noise

23

Sexual music—is there any

other kind?

Birdsong
Eyesong
Amsong

The musicality of animals
oscillates in compulsion
like an eyelid

The choreography of the tick
is not small

because it is (relatively) small

The choreography of the tick
is small because it is

not restive

Art is of the animal

instantaneous