Natural Sight Near Mt. Stuart
a lonely child beds in damp straw lives in fence rows and ditches its flesh blossoms and molds gods are startled birds vanishing into the hill fishing on the Teanaway thigh deep in long lines of women brushing my legs splintering groin the current is green slime feeds the black lights down in the yawn, down in the edible portion the guts out with the hook spread upon moss to look at with tendrils of moon a woman from Fla. says mtns. are the spines of crocodiles a woman from S.Dak. says mtns. are the teeth of coyote a woman from Ariz. says mtns. are the stings of scorpions they believe in signs the bear paw in the mud buttocks ripped, they wait for balsam, for soft ferns serpentine precious here for gaunt polish as temple for ashes what is left to sacrifice is a stare bones of powder Ingall’s Lake thaws in summer opens its lips
Looking At My Class Photograph: A Dream
In my red-brown shirt, I had a gold one too gabardine that draped heavily over my belt, my face round and quiet except as I look more carefully the photograph is streaked and in it my eyes run down in watercolor wash I sink behind lines of other children through rotting wood steps, melting under the eyelids that watch.
“Oh Rock And Roll I Gave You All The Best Years Of My Life”
Trying to break through, trying to say oh god, this is me. Cheap, yeah, but it’s not the cheapness that matters, it’s the ripple the voice makes on the unknown order of things, saying, I’m lost, or, why have I come this way. No, there’s no sense in it, no justice or beauty, just sadness because the words spread over so many, and because they’ve said so themselves so many times.
Response To A Poem By F’ang Chu-Shih
“Old Pang requires nothing in the world; all is empty with him, even a seat he has not, for absolute emptiness reigns in his household.” I A rock is full, a fist of noise; its shadow is weightless and still. The sun has perfected explosion and silence to live in the same body. II My house is expressionless it cares nothing for heat or for light. The air that leaves it cannot remember it; people that enter remain perfect strangers perfect friends.
