teach me he says

but he doesn’t say what

you are great he says

but he doesn’t say why
stop killing he says

but he doesn’t say that
read my story he says

I’m sorry for hate
make me the hero
make me see new
tricks that I jump through
teach me he says

when what he means
is love me this instant

you are brilliant he says
what he means is “light me”
he is burrowing now

when he should be spiraling

I watch from the sidelines
his eager following
I paw the earth

like a stallion unknowing

what will become of
this jockeying friendship

him or me discovers foreboding
marauding in kinship
boots on the ground
or weak backyard sunsets

if you kill or be killed

you will never rest

if you cleave to the common

you’ll have missed the arabesque

dismissed the bowman

danced in a hall all alone

loved if you will

by nothing but song

INTERMISSION

begin again and
face the soft end
that blue dark of night
that unfinished tune
a deep pond of life
a rank scent of knife
from nature’s death
reclaim the mood
leave the rest
in a childy brooding
stop breathing
stop leaving
stop wanting
stop haunting
go listless for once
while the angels
regroup
that child will live
if you leave it alone
that story will fester
until it explodes
step back from the
inevitable
reject the regrettable
wait at the table
for a story, a fable
patience is armor
and I am begettable
in the blue dark of dawn
I give birth to the moon
in the churlish new morn
I know who I am

 HAIKU

XX

roam antic evening
blood vessels snake through the sky
only you and I

Kerouac

I am on that road again

the one that was sure
he was wrong

that he was fake crazy and

masculin magic

and everything that is

anathema to a woman
like me

So, I buy the book at Strand
in a worldy questioning way

it was on the pile
under the sign
classics it said
and I was ready to
throw down the gauntlet
narrow the writer
into the stuff that
is easily dismissed
until it is not
when the crucial insanity
is not male or female
when it gets all bogged
into a bisexual damn
that the beavers of life
keep building and destroying
when the childy sorrow
of a hundred past thieves
steal the memory
of yourself
and refuse to deceive
what and who you are
why you see that far
and never regret
what you have to forget
to write what you know
in patience and anger
in still and sparkling
in lightness that darkens
he roared through me
and splintered the rickety

he wrote what I hated
he wrote what I loved

the argument endures
the hand fits the glove