GROSS EXAGGERATIONS: PART I

And then to wake molecular in the fetid
gaze merger of trees, I wrest my wearisome ear
from the window’s distant thunder. A woman walks
this town on death’s whooshing blade. I don’t seem to know
Her. The rain begins and everyone else begins
acting like children. It makes me feel Antarctic
to stand in between so much electricity
but I swore I would never be afraid to leave
the bed. Thought-buzz, air-split, pain-spark, throat-fire, waking
molecular in the fetid gaze merger now
neon by day. It was my birthday weekend’s dead
celebrities: men whose anvil voices led them

to a rupture of blood. But I was not feeling
ungood. My cat had taken to sleeping behind
the television. The newspaper contusions
slipped yellow and festive into a new conjure
song for those who would remain animals in spite
of wealth. To wake molecular, to dust the trees
with eye-blear, to stand incarcerated only
by virtue of one’s heart, which spurned all metaphor
to beat on, to bruise, to wake in the rhythm of
a body turning force in the trees’ fetid gaze.
A rupture of blood in the air. A blindness caught
in the leaves. A manner in which to obviate

the sex of dying. The streets weren’t easy. Blinking
wasn’t easy. To know one would forever lurch
forward, oblique, wasn’t easy. Looking out from
a moving target without violating some
body near constantly wasn’t easy. It was
wonderful. Waking molecular in a crash
of sense, not worrisome for the fragments or each
simmering affect shook loose from the dumb-mirror
that had been paid to stand where we could point with ease.
No! No standing, no shooting, no sinking, never
another coaxed boat of sense to moor in time’s mud.
Only this nerve-cape, only another flung veer

for the seer to follow. To look we must grow
weary of looking. The cat does not avert her
eyes. When I was a child I understood how
not to breathe. Now that I’m a man I find myself
taut at each swerve, unable to liquid sideways
to solidly slosh where a miracle might pass.
But as the trees in the leaves wave my mass also
finds a break here and there in its impossibly
convoluted curtain. A slit through which to slip
new, feral, punctured—everything now necessary
in the fetid gaze mergers, the blood rupturing,
the earth not unfriendly in spite of our terrors.

But I know what you would say: out there are people
trying to kill me. As if our lives were but scenes
from The Red Circle or The Samurai, something
with Alain Delon. All of which is true, but death
remains the thing we do not dying. And besides
there are people inside trying to kill you too.
As if your life were a scene from Opening Night,
which it is, as Gena Rowlands inhabits each
of us, or we inhabit her, the flesh of our
reversibility aching through the fake wall
of language. And yet the iterable returns
like sunlight, a weightless expression already

in the act of being said again. So let us
slip together into the contradictions which
pool at our feet, knowing how little knowing can
help, its addled hand groping at the darknesses
that abound here. No here, then nowhere. The reasons
to go on lodged whimsically in the trees’ Y
shaped arms, in their fetid gaze, in the merger we
make simply waking unto sense, waking anew
to ourselves molecular, joisting the air even
in a farce of stillness. My love, your face goes on
parade then, its wiry bouquet of forms morphing
at each symphonic turn. I hand you an answer


my love, always yes. Our eyes sunk into the flit
our hands make roping in the sun’s twittering twine.
We retune like molecules, waking anew now
in the fetid batting of each leaf’s unfurling
eyelash. Like archers who have forsaken targets
we let the world hit us. We who no longer see
allow sight to pour forth like a lewd font upon
the trees’ untaintable flesh. So if I see red
it is only because I love the uncertain
neck her hair curtains or the jellyfishing pulses
that bring her mouth into flush. We suffer only
from abundance. Lack is the lie that has served

to sever the few from the human. I’m going
out for milk, laundry, the bakery’s bludgeoning
air, the crossing-guard’s bored loiter, the cars’ violent
arrival and retreat. Breathing in-out, a bell
for conquering absence, a machine for killing
its own cells. Breathing out-in or conspiring
with trees and dogs and horseflies simply by virtue
of surviving. Killing, conspiring, simply
conquering, bludgeoning, and suffused with the mind
of lost tribes. Well, fuck the mind, and bring all those lost
tribes back for rememberment. Aborigines
deemed agriculture a menace to the glory

of the earth and clothes merely a means to strangle
the music of the body.

THE BEGINNING OF THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF LITTLE MISS FUNNY BUTTONS

Little Miss Funny Buttons or MFB
That’s what her dad and I call her
The littlest fourth in our family
In addition to me, dad, and Walter

She earned her nickname just last year
Though it seems like she’s had it forever
And the story about it is very dear
Our strange adventure together

One more thing you’ll come to know
Is a singular creature named Squibbons
Who loved to steal both thread and bows
Or any small fragment of ribbon

It started last summer behind the house
Where our daughter Olivia played
We lived in the middle of bird and mouse
On a ranch my grandfather made

Now Olivia wasn’t the kind of girl
Who stayed out of trouble for long
If I dressed her all in white like a pearl
By night she was green from the lawn

So it wasn’t strange to see her tracks
Color the floors brown and muddy
But soon a combination of facts
Became quite a curious study

One afternoon as the shadows grew
Olivia entered the kitchen
Wearing a dress I bought her new
But missing a delicate smidgeon.

“Olivia!” I said with surprise
“Where is your fourth fancy button?”
And under a set of confused little eyes
She said, “Mom, I haven’t done nothing

I went to the trees in the back of the yard
Where the branches make everything shady
And found a spot where the dirt wasn’t hard…”
“You napped in the dirt young lady!”

“Well, first I covered the ground with leaves
So my new dress wouldn’t get dirty…”
“And then let me guess, some forest thieves
Stole the button, like field mice or birdies.”

That’s how it was, day after day
Olivia’s buttons would vanish
Whenever she went to the backyard to play
And her stories were growing outlandish

The last straw was a red velvet dress
That matched Olivia’s hair
One night at dinner she sadly confessed
It was had disappeared into thin air

Until, finally, I needed to know
Who the button-thief actually was
I dressed in green from head to toe
And crept like a quiet thing does

What I saw that day was Olivia signaling
Around the dark mouth of a cave
All of the sudden, a creature was wriggling
To the edge of the shadows she made.

Even within Olivia’s cover
The creature appeared to glow
It squeaked out a word that sounded like mother
And Olivia replied, “I know.”

“The truth is I think you should meet
Mom, stop trying to hide!”
The cheeks on my face turned red as rare meat
Embarrassed that I’d been out-spied

“She looks just like my Christmas tree
Your strangely monochrome mom,”
Said Squibbons with obvious glee
As he climbed into MFB’s palm

“Do you think it’s time we showed her in?”
She asked with a little girl shrug
He answered with a curious grin
And gave her ring finger a hug

So I slowly stepped out from the bush
Behind which I had been hiding
And Olivia gave me a gentle push
Into the cave without lighting

Lights there weren’t, but we could see
As plainly as if it were day
For Squibbons just so happened to be
A glowworm lighting the way

I had to stoop low for the cave was small
Though it seemed to go on forever
At last we came to a booming hall
With a little bed made out of feathers

I could see Olivia had been here before
By the drawings all colored with chalk
One was of Squibbons with buttons galore
And on this she gave a strange knock

When I heard it echo I knew at once
Something inside it must hide
The secret I’d been tracking for months
Was revealed as the wall opened wide

What was behind it you’d never guess
A scraggly tree covered in charms!
With a very familiar red velvet dress
That was cut and draped in its arms

Every button that had disappeared
Could be found on this wonderful tree
And even if it seems a little weird
I couldn’t help filling with glee

It sparkled and shined in the wormy glow
And we all laughed at the riddle
That only our family has come to know
Though you now stand in the middle

We hope you will keep our secret alive
And remember to button your tree
We’ll see you again next time you arrive
At the adventures of MFB