The Balance Wheel
Where I waved at the sky And waited your love through a February sleep, I saw birds swinging in, watched them multiply Into a tree, weaving on a branch, cradling a keep In the
The Fury Of Hating Eyes
I would like to bury All the hating eyes Under the sand somewhere off The North Atlantic and suffocate Them with the awful sand And put all their colors to sleep In that soft
The Dead Heart
After I wrote this, a friend scrawled on this page, “Yes.” And I said, merely to myself, “I wish it could be for a Different seizure as with Molly Bloom and her ‘and Yes
The Witch's Life
When I was a child There was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story Window From behind the wrinkled curtains And sometimes
Baby Picture
It’s in the heart of the grape Where that smile lies. It’s in the good-bye-bow in the hair Where that smile lies. It’s in the clerical collar of the dress Where that smile lies.
45 Mercy Street
In my dream, Drilling into the marrow Of my entire bone, My real dream, I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill Searching for a street sign Namely MERCY STREET. Not there. I try the
Doors, Doors, Doors
1. Old Man Old man, it’s four flights up and for what? Your room is hardly bigger than your bed. Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut Stooped over the thin tail
It Is A Spring Afternoon
Everything here is yellow and green. Listen to its throat, its earthskin, The bone dry voices of the peepers As they throb like advertisements. The small animals of the woods Are carrying their deathmasks
And One For My Dame
A born salesman, My father made all his dough By selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo. A born talker, He could sell one hundred wet-down bales Of that white stuff. He could clock
The Fury Of Sunrises
Darkness As black as your eyelid, Poketricks of stars, The yellow mouth, The smell of a stranger, Dawn coming up, Dark blue, No stars, The smell of a love, Warmer now As authenic as
For The Year Of The Insane
a prayer O Mary, fragile mother, Hear me, hear me now Although I do not know your words. The black rosary with its silver Christ Lies unblessed in my hand For I am the
The Firebombers
We are America. We are the coffin fillers. We are the grocers of death. We pack them in crates like cauliflowers. The bomb opens like a shoebox. And the child? The child is certainly
Earthworm
Slim inquirer, while the old fathers sleep You are reworking their soil, you have A grocery store there down under the earth And it is well stocked with broken wine bottles, Old cigars, old
The Evil Eye
It comes oozing Out of flowers at night, It comes out of the rain If a snake looks skyward, It comes out of chairs and tables If you don’t point at them and say
Despair
Who is he? A railroad track toward hell? Breaking like a stick of furniture? The hope that suddenly overflows the cesspool? The love that goes down the drain like spit? The love that said