Plain American Language

I cut a sliver/of WC William's finger
and placed it inside/my philosophy...

Friday, January 28, 2011

I Am Your Golem

Apple me: make me red with grief
and longing, make me green and orange
and golden. I want to bloom
from a flower, stem from your roots
I want you to sway and drop me
until I split open with want.
Bake me, porous and earthenware, put
your everything in me, make me
what you will, bury me
and with one word let me know what heaven
is the ground I walk on before
you un-earth me like a strewn piece of clay.

A Recipe Box

This papyrus is thickened by the roots
of cedars and Lebanese cyprus trees,

granted they travel underground and
papyrus walks in the hands of messengers

but when treating both in this concotion
we must note the irrevoable sameness

of the two: columns and lines like azaleas that
could have blossomed at night,

arctic whispers of solidity, how
smooth they both are upward into the sun--

to make the concoction harden, then,
pull these two elements together with a soluble chemical

and whisper three times like southerly winds.

Curtal Sonnet (revised)

My eyes closed and my shoulder hunched
like bejewled solitude,
a pen run out of ink and the cold slip of a missed-placed s,
hard as lust, a violin tremolo,
a clicking wound round my ear the massive growl
tight against my jaw--how the undead
measure God, stackable as glass,
know what it is to crave
a clicking, roaming thirst--
how in a room both whisper and hiss
search.

At Night, Owl's Eyes Reflect Most Everything, While Moons Pass Over (before this was "Concentration Camp")

Lately, I feel uninhabited--waking from dreams
in which I have been blinded by chemicals
pitted against stranger-adversaries
while a faceless, bloodied, ravenous onslaught powers toward me, a sudden wave
rushing, then, through my body
pushing it all back--waking dizzy--
waking later than I wanted to--slugging my hands through
the day--tea and lemon miracle,
ginger and quiet noises of fires,
the shifting of autumn, to walk and see reddened
oaks, then to fall away from the world
at night. When am I ever awake?