AN OLD SONG

for Ed

Charming our notice
A gaping shoe listens
The universe piqued
By objects in reverse

Merciful cumquat
Gutted by a thumb
Milady loves another
She used to love none

Under the gangplank
Angered by fortune
Lace-lipped penitents
Settle for a cur

Sentiments are heavy
Marsh-drowned youth
Rank and disheveled
In the outfield at dawn

Ukulele lately
To strum in a bathtub
Battered by a strobe
Shutters through sun

Clad in a pantsuit
Saturn rising slowly
Fat guys in malls
Trying on hats

Merciful stovetop
Tugboat torch song
Every Mississippi
The day starts o’er

A grapefruit split
By margarita teeth
Part of me wonders
Another part sleeps

FURTHER HYPNOPOMPIC REVELATIONS

We wake late

Like all

Sojourners

Into the already

Deepening fray

A country at war

With ideas

Which induce it

To explode

Those

That would do

The same

We wake late

Like all

Sojourners

Dislocated

By history

And devoid

Of land, of what

Can we call

The root

Of this waking?

The body beside us?

The rent waiting

To be paid?

The work to be done

In the district

We can’t afford

To live, to where

Would this waking

Allege us

And who deem

Us the bearer

Of the where

And how

Could we really

Say it was ours?

ξ


Again awoken

By the exterminator

His ear punched

By a diamond

My hair jutting

Tangential

To what thought

Seems to course

And return

The axons that

Writhe and conduct

These figures

Into their dim

Recognitions

The fire the myelin

Yields into form

As the silent waves

Of shock shake

Sleep from thought

Flinging amiss

Or caught in the traffic

Of expectation

Which is itself a form

Of belief, often

I have brought my hand

To my face only

To find briars of hair

And what man

Doesn’t but constantly

Find himself

A beast?

FURTHEST HYPNOPOMPIC REVELATIONS

The eyes open

Amid a dash

Of percepts

And the terrifying

Deduction that

Things have verily gone

On without you

The neck more

Crowded with hair

A mouse desiccated

In its gluey end

The cars have all moved

To the near

Side of the street

Hugging the trash

And rain has glazed

Into bubbled plates

On the freezing ground

You can hear

A car startle

Into empty alarm

As often we might

In this trauma of days

Not dying

Unlike the kitchen’s racket

Which soothes one

Into pattern, into sense

As the coffee sputters

In its particular

Way, day-old, reheated

Turning the heart

Over with its promise of

velocity, lift, loquacious

Recommitment

To the dreams that

Have only half

Left us and so desire

Their hypnopompic revisit

Before the body

Is appropriately clothed

Or the mind

Which is nonetheless

The body is itself

Swaddled into its habit

Of traffic and passage

The light like

A scaffold

Hinting the cathedral

That is Brooklyn noon

While the toaster smokes

And the cat sings

Like a skittering quail

It is time I think

To wake my love

Who sleeps late

Under the doused lighght

In a torn T-shirt

Warm like a stone

Or a hood or

The sound of Bettye

Swann’s voice

When she begins

“Then You Can

Tell Me Goodbye”