You? I?

Who the bucket: rusted
unzinced, overscoured, holed
by the wet mess
spilt and hauled?

Who the swine
whose name rhymes mine
fat up on slops?
Whose pen?

Whose the muck track
pen-gate to shack
by the tree with the chains
hanging, and hook?

Cold blowing rain shakes

drenched hedges and birds shiver.

The woodpile is soaked.

A little of their grace

I crawled in bed with Papa and lay down on his chest

In there with Mom and Papa and my head upon his chest

I heard the steady beating of the heart within his breast

And I felt the greying stubble on his cheek and chin

I saw in the light this morning the gray hair on his chin

I pressed my ear above his heart to hear the life within

His heart was low and slower, mine was quick and small

Greybearded, so much older, and I so safe and small

And he'll just keep getting older while I am growing tall

My mother reached her hand across and gently touched his face

I watched my mother wake and lean and softly kiss his face

I think that I this morning saw a little of their grace

I crawled in bed with Papa and lay down on his chest

In there with Mom and Papa and my head upon his chest

I heard the steady beating of the heart within his breast

After Tom's Heart Stopped - a true one

Man , its all good. I been tellin' myself that. 

You know I died three times on the table when I was shot?

Got this fuckin' scar. 

         And lifting his shirt shows silvered black elastic waistband to breastbone

At 'time I was mixed up in some shit, and I tryin' to be slick an' all, but they not havin' it

and straight shot me.

Doc said my heart stopped three times.

In hospital 'most a year.

So now I'm like its all good. 'Cause I been dead.

Like the other day, they shootin' on my street and Keesha my daughter,

 tryin' to come in. She cryin' 

and I'm just holding the door closed

and I'm laughin'!

Circus Smirkus

Early morning the grass was matted and gauzy

with spiders' silk barely seen in the low-

angled sunlight: ten minutes only

did all that fantastic industry show

in the field where we still pitch circus

tents in July. Delight camps out,

sells us snacks, souvenirs and three tries

for four dollars on our way to the tent

and popcorn and noise and this is the show we came for.

Look at  them pretend to fall! So

many clowns in such a little car!

Tonight for an hour and a half we watch and ahh.

The vastly ordered outside world is ignored.

More stars than we know for farther

than we can ever fit into our head

above us while we follow the ringmaster's patter.

After, we jabber back to the cars we parked

over the ruined acre of spiderweb. Still

under stars we cannot see for the head-

lights' glare. The world's own marvels

ignore us, too. Now in the dark

stars and spiders spin. We drive

home in our machines amid their work,

chatting on phones. We attend to ourselves,

and why not? Who cares if we laugh

at our own jokes? Applaud some kid

in tights and bells who just juggled five

balls in each hand (or nearly did)?

We are the only ones laughing anyway,

or trying to be funny, and sometimes we're pretty good.

We want a smaller, warmer joy.

The night sky is huge and very cold.

Tonight, a joy like us: little

monkeys laughing, foolish, the world's fools,

the ones in big shoes and baggy pants,

the stars of the show, grinning, with pie on our face.

Manual Dexterity

They wheel him in asleep and she begins
to cut his throat a little. Finds the vein
to open, to thread in the line. She spills her
balms into his heart's first chamber.

I've dropped my drink and kneel down in the kitchen
to mop a puddle of glass shards and bourbon.
That quick my hand is opened and my fingers
run with blood and burn with wasted liquor.

Or she is painlessly flaying his face,
carefully freeing the seventh nerve's lace-
work of feeling. She bends over the man on the bed
and mends him. Her brilliant hands are wet and red.

Or your hands run down my back and hips
while fine things are being done with kisses.
Afterward we lie damp and flushed,
spilled like opened gifts across our bed.

Bacchanalia

After some hesitation I lay myself down

drunk upon the rainsoaked grass.

I'll be damned

if the liquor doesn't ease the pain.

Naked, I am told, before God.

Naked. Rhyming.

Another evening it was a thunderstorm,

strobelight thunderstrokes bang bang bang without commas

tremendous cold rain gusted and me

out of bed in the houselee: watching, in love,

sublimnity,inhuman greatness, sweet relief

from my own poor estimations.

Grinning, worshipful naked ape in underwear

wetfaced.

All the bullshit will, in the end, win

over me but I'll not be won over

Please Please

I'll crossdress before the dry

with the thunderborn, bullhorn shouting

about everything, drunk

upon the wet grass, tears maybe

Pine

Grey bark

wanting and would

make lightening

split open

a gorgeous kindling

the heartwood made

a shower of gold

sparks that get

the Western wood

with flame, with flame

that only can open

the seeds of the others

Shop Class

Do you know what this motor is?

Slick pistons bored for in the casting

wet with essence distilled

of ancient tars.

Fine set valve works, intimate

timing. The whole thing assembled,

refined, corrected. How many minds

cleverness, in steel, reciprocating?

As on silken nooses, winking

Turn on the radio and sing along

As they croon and sell you their heartbreak.

True love's true story: stake

All, all lost. Heartbreak love's meaning,

Joy its flavor. This is the hot swing

And our lives hang on these sweet mistakes

As on silken nooses, winking. It's our trick

That all hurts and failings turn to song.

We are for beginnings anyway, the best

Of us, and the heart's beatings need no rest.

Co-worker sonnet #16

Dave, the former soldier: a tacky queen

wearing his muscles, musk and torn jeans.

Larry was mellow, vain, friendly, simple.

He'd shot a man. Two years in jail.

Katrina: fine and small and smart and absent,

she nibbled clay the month she was pregnant.

Mean Tom with his midnight skin and swagger,

“Don't Ask Me For Shit” t-shirt, scar.

We found Pete on the floor tight and twitching.

Off his meds. He eventually went missing.

At twenty-five they made me the boss.

In two weeks I showed them I was clueless

and incompetent. Empty shelves and the shop a mess.

It was not the first job I had lost.

Aphasia on Injustice

Justice is blond, a coquette, a tease.
I was led on by the nose,
up a creek with only prattle
to clothe and make a man out of me.

And my father (none the wiser),
"Told you so!" he told me.
Are my accounts in her ears?

A burdened hand being worse, moreover,
than twins in a birchbark canoe...
I game a flaw: a flinch she
made in rhyme to save mine.

But that sidelong glance is the Devil's
hotspot. And like I'm hatched out
of a bell for her ready hearing, ever.