Poems

Not the Music

Not the music.

It is this other thing

I keep from all of them

that matters, inviolable.

I scratch in my journals,

a mouse rummaging through cupboards,

Love Armed

Love in Fantastic Triumph sat,

Whilst Bleeding Hearts around him flowed,

For whom Fresh pains he did Create,

On Antiphon Island

— “mu” twenty-eighth part —

    On Antiphon Island they lowered

the bar and we bent back. It

 wasn't limbo we were in albeit

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

I’ve Dreamt of You So Often

I've dreamt of you so often that you become unreal.

Is there still time to reach this living body and to kiss on its mouth the birth of

the voice so dear to me?

Dick Pics

Two dicks, sitting in

my daughter’s inbox,

like men without hats,

waiting for any door

to open. 

*

Sighting a stranger’s penis

The Song of the Smoke

I am the Smoke King 

I am black!

I am swinging in the sky, 

I am wringing worlds awry; 

I am the thought of the throbbing mills, 

I am the soul of the soul-toil kills, 

Heirloom

My father bequeathed me no wide estates;

No keys and ledgers were my heritage;

Only some holy books with yahrzeit dates…

On Monsieur’s Departure

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

The Rights of Woman

Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!

Woman! too long degraded, scorned, oppressed;

O born to rule in partial Law’s despite,                        

Beat! Beat! Drums!

Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!

Through the windows — through doors — burst like a ruthless force,

Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,

The Bull Moose

Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,

lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,

stumbling through tamarack swamps…

When I was Fair and Young

When I was fair and young, then favor graced me.

Of many was I sought their mistress for to be.

But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore:

Money

Coin Exhibit, British Museum.

Their misshapenness strikes the table in tiny splashes,

like still-cooling splatters of silver. Stater and shekel,

Under the Answering Sky

I can manage being alone,

can pace out convivial hope

across my managing ground.

Someone might call, later.

What do the dead make of us

that we’d flay ourselves trying

O Captain! My Captain!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

Full Metal Oji-Cree

this is the transsensorium

there are indo-robo-women fighting cowboys on the frontier

& winning finally

the premodern is a foundation for the postmodern

wintermute, tessier-ashpool, armitage

Color Piece

Visual world not exactly shaped –

Sense of smell, anticipation, senses that

are not exactly shaped —

Dark shadows casted —

Rat colors with faint hairly smells and pale

Moon of the Returning Sun

A view from two sides of Polaris, it is said:

Current

The sludge-slow flow of the visible current

opens a path we can’t continue, tugs

at what no hand can pull along.

It’s how even water loses memory,

travels a direction it cannot find,

Mean Drunk Poem

Backward & down into inbetween as Vicki says. Or as Robin teaches

the gap, from which all things emerge. A left

handed…

Susie Asado

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

    Susie Asado.

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

An Innocent Little Girl

The little girl is innocent

they’ve put henna on her hands

they’ve plaited her hair beautifully

they’ve put kohl round her eyes

they’ve dyed her eyebrows

Mother Church #3

KIN KLETSO/YELLOW HOUSE

CHACO CANYON, SAN JUAN COUNTY, NEW MEXICO

ANASAZI RUINS, AD 1125-1130

For Henri, at 2

I have so many now.

I have so many now.

There’s one where we were giants, playing with our size by falling over

houses and trees, laughing.

There’s another where I was racing the old ones in a game, and we stopped

Wishing Well

My fist holds as many coins

as I can carry. All are stamped with the Queen's effigy;

Elizabeth, D.G. Regina, the resident of pockets,

a woman I've never met though I always know

Poetry

I too, dislike it: there are things that are important

                    …

Sometimes a Voice (1)

Sometimes a voice — have you heard this? —

wants not to be voice any longer, wants something

whispering between the words, some

Let’s Not Get It Together

The world has become corrupted

from our hearts

to the way our gods love us

as if they know they’re already dying

and they’re determined to drag us down with them

From The First Water is the Body

2345*.

The river is my sister—I am its daughter.

It is my hands when I drink from it,

my own eye when I am weeping,

and my desire when I ache like a yucca bell

Brother

Your wedding day was a hurricane; your bride in red was like a kiss on

on the dry prairie dirt. You actually never told me the story of how it went.

The wedding, I mean. In fact, you never told me about how you chose

mixed tape

side a:

1. 18 and Life

her friend takes her to

Passing into Storm

Know him for a white man.

He walks sideways into wind

allowing the left of him

to forget what the right

knows as cold. His ears

turn into death what

another set of instructions

we are asking you to trust your hands. put them on your heart. trust

your heart. hear what we are saying. trust what you hear. we are

asking you to build a circle. always a circle. not almost a circle. face

Application Form

Please read all the instructions carefully before proceeding.

Use only permanent blue or black ink.

If you have special needs that require accommodation,

please explain.

K was supposed to come with the key, I was

K was supposed to come with the key, I was

to wait outside the gate. I arrived on time,

the time we had agreed on and waited, as agreed,

pimîhkân

Here's how you make pemmican

1. wiyâs 

2. pânisâwân

3. kâhkêwak

4. yîwahikanak

5. pimîhkân

Here's how you make pemmican

Adam Posed

Could our first father, at his toilsome plow,

Thorns in his path, and labor on his brow,

Clothed only in a rude, unpolished skin,

Image-Nation 21 (territory

wandering to the other, wandering

the spiritual realities, skilled in all

ways of contending, he did not search