Love Notes (cf. Books for The Spring)

1.

I am so exceedingly

fond

of you that

it makes

no sense.

You make

the same dad

joke

anyone could

and you’re

George Carlin

but much

cuter.

I guess

it’s that you’re my

partner.

Also the great

head.

Ok.

That makes sense.

2.

I’m writing you love

notes

not love poems

because

the poems are

always

more

about the

poems

and you have a full sweet smile

(with very sensitive teeth)

that I like

more.

3.

From now

on

I’m eating

all of your ice

cream

to protect

your sensitive

teeth.

You’re welcome.

4.

You are so of

the

world I love it.

You drag me

from the

meditation hall and into

cat videos

and

say you’ll be pissed

if

I get enlightened.

5.

Now that I’ve said it

twice

it’s a thing.

Gosh you have sensitive teeth!

6.

I wonder if

your friends could guess

that the truly clever and thoughtful

and kind

gifts

you craft for

them

were rushed to

the night

before

in a procrastinatory fit

or if that

very pacific and tranquil

and serene

mood

is

reserved

for my ears.

7.

You told me you know

I’m crazy 20 times

because

I had to

make sure you knew

you could marry

a

rich man

who’s probably

nice too

but you said you knew

that

but

I was special

and so

I

would do.

And the twentieth time

you said

so

I believed you and

if you

asked

what that was like

that was

like

writing a nice

hallmark letter to

a hurricane

and it

stopping.

Now I see you

must be

crazy

too

since the basic

love plan doesn’t

cover

this bill

and then I

think

when two

crazy people

get

together

I don’t know what

they

make

together

but

I don’t think

it’s

one sane

baby.

8.

Now that

you are gone for the

weekend

I see you everywhere.

You are

there

at bed-time

clearly

in the empty

left side.

I see you distinctly

at dinner

& breakfast

at the silent

kitchen

table

where you are not.

And on a walk

with Opie

I

tell him you love him.

Oh my gosh it’s

like you’ve died

for

the weekend

how silly

but also,

how not any different

from forever.

Tonight in bed

I smile inside

and say good night to

you

my mom, brother and family

my deceased friend Franky

and the poet

Homer

for good

measure.

I’m lucky

you all live

so close.

I hope you

will laugh

at

this poem

when

you get back.

Goodnight Marie.

Your Heart With Laughter (cf. Poems For Women)

—In memory of Frank Troyer—

Men do not 

feel safe

in their hearts.

This is why 

men don’t

write poetry.  

Poetry is

the practice 

of coming closer

to sorrow and joy

and men

don’t

feel safe with

sorrow or 

joy 

too

big in 

their hearts.

You were a man’s man 

Frank

and I’ll miss the way 

you evaded your heart

with laughter

because even that is beautiful.  

I can remember how the platinum or 

chrome blonde

girls 

you’d bring by

would astonishedly 

find you

hanging around me,

you being quite 

popular and I 

somewhat outcast, and 

you could just

see them

re-estimating 

since you saw a 

power in me

that none

of the 

boys had

and you always 

called me

good looking 

when I couldn’t believe

it

and that when 

the girl who wanted 

me 

came along

there would 

be nothing 

I could do to stop her

since nothing is more

inescapable 

than a decided woman.  

And my god frankie I wish 

I could show you 

the gal

I got now because 

you’d be so 

damn proud 

of this hot number

with her beautiful, coy 

and solid manners- 

but you’ll never

get to meet her

so now I’m pouring out 

a bottle for you

hoping for a golden stream,

a special-effect of Jack 

but it limply 

splatters 

on the concrete in

a lackluster spray.

Some gets on

my white shoes,

but the parking lot

is at least dingy 

and I can 

imagine 

us just bumming out there

for the whole night like

those years I would sleep 

every night

on your floor until 

your Ma suspected 

we were gay 

because she didn’t 

understand what it looks like

for two lost men to love

and need each other

but not have 

the poetry 

to say it.

Now no poetry can 

save you

and I’m sorry 

we had to drink so much

together

instead of crying and whimpering 

like innocent animals.

Though we did try- I can

remember the late 

nights on the worn 

couch-chairs 

two boy-men speculating

about the future.  I would be 

a great physicist, philosopher

and poet and you 

believed me 

though you 

wouldn’t

always say it and

that, 

I guess 

was the power you saw.  You never 

quite knew

your destiny; too sensitive 

and inquisitive for your

family’s culture-

booze and hunting 

but too in love with 

your family 

to leave it.  You died drugged partying 

some might say 

doing 

what you loved 

but I know better

since we were cowboys 

that you 

were just afraid.

I feel like 

a star has gone out 

not that I had plans

to talk 

to you anytime 

soon but you were there

and now have gone out and 

are not 

something has unwoven

or fallen 

and now you can never be a father

although everyone who met you 

loved your 

friendship

since it was free 

but not false gold.  

I can remember

when I

shattered my nerves-

regular panic

attacks

and though the rest of 

the boys had 

drinking to do 

you said to call you 

any any time 

of night 

or

the middle of

work- you 

would be there, and

you meant it

and that was perfect 

poetry 

but it wasn’t 

enough.  And I don’t know

why.  Why does 

grace 

lock the gates 

one time, but not another?  

On you

but not me?

Am I 

to say 

don’t do drugs?

No I would rather

say 

poetry.  

Get closer

to sorrow

and perfect it.    

Franky you were good enough

to be a good dad 

and now you can’t,

and all the words on earth 

don’t matter.  

I realize now how

much I wanted you 

to be 

proud of me. 

Love Bird (cf. Poems For Women)

I get so close to you I forget who you are.

A code activates that is not even love

And easily friends, family, and all relations shuck

off

Like loose garments in a mist-kiss in the spanish

moss in New Orleans.

There were two love birds on a bough and now

there is one

Love bough, with two birds. Or one bird

With two hearts—a fate clicks

Into place that is not even codependency

But a single wooden rowboat, with two forgotten

oars

Saying “two passengers sat here, but now belong

to the sea”

And the boat rocks on; and it must find its home

That has never before on old cornerstones been

found—

It must, because we have decided, like ludicrous

nuns

At a casino, to bet faith on an unfounded,

unknown rock.

Aimless, like the red corvette on the crumbling

American highway

Where are we moving? Not California? Wisconsin

then? Washington?

It will be heavenly in Washington. It has an aura,

a smell to it

That draws you. California would be wine &

blessed. New Orleans crackles with magic

In the planning mind. Meanwhile the globe

darkens in the hot shadow of a Bic lighter.

That is our love tale too. The water-devoured

coasts, the razed

Endless fires & tremendous foreboding quakes in

Cali. Culture

An old dream of jazz and voodoo of another time.

And it is our sweet story of the red corvette

cruising

Somewhere new, somewhere probably holy

At the cost of the very sky, and ground,

With two lovers with two loose lost garments on

two leather seats

Vanished, and become the corvette, the rowboat,

the rocket

Launching colonies to Mars on the basis of

American Love

And these oddities are the things I ask myself

when, day by day

Beside you, I forget who you are, or how we have

not always

Been together, like the fingers to the palm.

But then you come with your bunned up, red-rye

hair

To pen a letter to an old & valued friend, and you

sit like a great weaver

So patiently, painstakingly remembering

Who it was who cherished you a lifetime ago—

And the world becomes clear, like a love

That is peace, like sand that is made into a sheet

of glass.

And I am happy to be a bird with you

To fly away, to stop, to rest on the long edge of an

endless highway

And build a nest.

Dear Lucy, (cf. The Case Is Closed)

Next year

when you write a letter from the rosy cold

near christmas

and it comes, devotedly,

across the chopped, dark-long waters

out,

out as far as Cho-fu-Sa…

for me

I will open it

and caress my thumb on the paper’s cream face.

I will smile at your cursive

and think of the rustling hours

with your head willowed along my shoulder

or my head tousled in your lap

loose-haired, as if having completed or forgotten all

and come home…

martha and morgan and grace

beside and between, entangled, honey-bathed, richer than anyone;

I will remember how my heart then

was a golden dispersal, like a man with no journey-lust.

I will look out the window

and not want to write back

for a long while.

The Year Is (cf. The Case Is Closed)

I

The year is 1912

-ish. Artists blasting

The old regime

Caked in artifice, steeped sheets of shit;

Setting sheet-flames to

thou and thee in bowers sublime,

To every despicable gimmick

Of obstruction,

Of outsourced human contact,

Until on blackened ash-white fallow

Sincerity remains—

rough amoeba speech, not,

Not certainly

A tradition, but a straight vision

And encultured cooperation effacing

The squabble of loners; so

spiking forth—renaissance sapling.

There was a war.

The artists destroyed to dark corners—

lightning bug’s Flick….. Flick…..

Monumental works, monumentally enjoyable

to Pound scholars

or Williams scholars

or dilettante postures.

The year is 1912 [precipice.] War winks from its cowl.

Background of low thunder.

You don’t have to ask: they all say it:

we’re fucked we’re fucked

the air is faithless

And art refried in shit for artist’s tongues.

The year is 1912 only this round no tradition;

Just a fifty year-old program to delete:

sincerity remains.

And the opportunity replays—

II

The New Sincerity

The aquiline mask melts

In the fallow

And I am sprouting.

My petals are rosier than

I intended.

But I forget my intentions

In the rich soil

And laugh.

Who was I supposed to be?

I am delightfully rosy.

New and tender

My petals wave.

They want to become the air

Whatever it is.

What is the year?

III

And the air is smartphones and social media,

Memes and clickbait and we’re hooked

And I wasn’t taught no latin:

Classical education was 20th century American lit.

We listen to Pusha T not Sappho, Thriftworks not Mozart.

And poetry? No one gives a fuck

about poetry.

Dead? Not dead? O.

Speech expires

While the song beats in headphones,

The image fades to Instagram

And condensation a blind cripple

Telling you to listen like some prophet

when you want to die fucking.

IV

So Friends,

How can we beat this round out?

Oh I don’t know, I don’t.

There’s a bright wooden room I’d like to meet in

With a damn-odd crowd, untrimmed laughter and they meet your eyes

like they see their own sins.

There’s smiles there like you haven’t known, with nothing cheap about them

And plain mugs on the tables hot with coffee

Certainly coffee! We are not saints but Americans

dogging perfection,

Which means: everyone is our friend who embarks.

But I don’t know.

I try to outswim my own cheapening,

To chisel a stone that holds.

I take infinite pleasure in destroying my anxieties

And in every organic blossoming.

I try to wash the dishes well.

Is that enough? Who knows!

Who?

I like convening, reweaving a home

No soul lost to itself.

I feel free when I endure a middle seat

An unexceptional creator of

Solar systems, revolving

My star with others:

Webbing space with riverlights.

So, if you like

I'll be here—

And will try

to meet your eyes.

Unexpected Rejoinder (cf. In The Way of Motion)

This is the only poem to write now.

I used to hover around your wordless, word repelling

shape, chasing you past 2, 4am

In the undistracted darkness and the world’s muteness,

with something like the obsession of love.

I left because I wrung you mechanically

To shunt the world, and its acutely ordinary anxieties—

To be Master, to be Control

at a sad desk with the night-shade

tangling susurrations and thoughts

in violet rush.

Now

We remeat in ecstasy

Now, now as I write; I stutter; I am astounded to share

This moment—

My hand enacts without motion

Oh slowness is beauty,

slowness is beauty.

And Vallario says the canvas is an infinite plane

for an idiot to approach preconceived.

And I longed for our reunion

like no other; to question you through the night

And bind in an answer.

Yet now we meet unbridled, in the day, and I know

You cannot betray me;

Who is like you among the other dancers?

And you see

My soul rebounds now—

Voices who have also met you

and they intrude as welcome guests because

We have sung them here with a key.

But I derail—my mind whites

In nuclear irradiance.

I can’t bear your unbridled element and my

Poem fails before you,

And I leave it broken as testament:

Infinitae Lucis

But already I return…

Already I forget,

in a lonely wisp of night.

Tomorrow then.

Come meet me on the sunny plane and I will

Shatter the light to reach you.

Great Remembrance, Black Mountain, NC (cf. In The Way of Motion)

I

Here the West mountain reclines

Against the hidden Sun, whose light

Slips around,

slips around its hilled rim

And the air, air, thrumming,

The air delights to be filled,

Golden

Shimmering

And the treetops flow,

Verdant bushfulls pulsing,

pulsing as if caught in growth.

Gods, gods and spirits flood

The valley, uncontainable;

and the air delights,

Delights to be filled with them,

And the treetops flow with them:

Gods, gods and spirits flood

My eyes

Uncontainable

Pulsing

I cannot bear their hysterical smiles.

II

This is how it once was

Everywhere!

And given.

Mountains, verdure, sun—

given

And sloughed off

For metropolis!

Inert rectangular prisms,

Perpendicular planes.

Beneath their slabbed shadows

We may forget we live in a universe.

And some live for this.

Man N—

Here the West mountain reclines

Embossed with scattered hill-homes.

And here the ranges drape about the village,

Seven Sisters and Four Brothers.

Man Theos Natura

In the Parthenon Athena’s foot falls

Yet. There is no stone against the Taj Mahal.

Whole cities may be beautiful—

Formed by those who will not preen

When all the beauty on earth is spent

“At least I won my coins.”

Those who forsake the dwelling of gods

Are those who will rear dead blocks

In their stead.

For the root and rot is one:

They do not look, they do not look,

until they cannot.

Point Of Origin (cf. In The Way of Motion)

I

I watch you scatter

—with velocity or not—

through campus like a wheel of dunes.

You thought you were aroused

for something

not just

sand flurried by wind.

II

And suppose watchmakers

sold predominantly broken watches

but kept vogue.

You’d understand they clasped

the wrist; glass faced; numeraled.

And they’d register so, that you

might puzzle at a ticking one

and maintain “that’s a special sort!”

But the word broken would fade

to history functionless.

And suppose Meng-Tze lived—

“I have heard of the vandal Trump,

not of any President.”

But your language was neutered

long ago.

III

Brand New Dictionary:

A brother is one born

to the same parents. His duties are…

A governor is one appointed

to the seat of governor. If he does not govern...

Education is the

attending of school. Moral education is...

A mature human

is 18. A well matured human is…

IV

Your dreams are not your

parent’s sleep, but ennui riddles.

Work, tranquilize

isn’t your suit. Even you dullest fidget.

You’ve been poisoned

And this gazing freedom is the basilisk.

Accept your responsibility:

Do what you want.

V

Many of you, many relapse home

exotic failures, to the dull success

you still won’t don

but might affect.

Parents in tears and scowls:

wasn’t your responsibility clear?

You seek “fulfillment,” half

naked, unteachable;

you riot Wall Street and the White House

like you’re unheard.

But you’re wordless

clods caught in an earthquake.

You don’t even know the meaning of life;

let us spit on the president,

Awaiting

the new lay of the sand.

VI

Oh father, mother,

let me come home.

I am alone

out here and lost.