Under the city is a field 

     of coals and time 

where hours bray 

     “Oh who 

leads the bad flock” 

through alphabets of sour 

feathers and phyto- 

everything, breast 

of water which 

lives last— 

now helm with it 

     Our weightless 

     myth inside 

I called the name of wells 

where organs glowing 

tear parties to life 

     and the flatulent age 

rose, skipping 

the city, into 

warm fame

Sick in the transit to morning 

I sprout bedholes 

A mirror draped 

over the contours of a face 

Our château sighs polish 

and burns heavy for a flock of ONE

Because who to follow? 

Morning counts teeth 

and teeth know the morose afternoon 

how it won’t be woken, hides an artery

with a mountain ache 

Man Rises and Flutters Through 

Man Rises Because the Light 

won’t let him flick it away

You get the day like a paper 

           there is not time 

      enough to stop 

                 and say, “It is serious

now, it is 

a cruel boat 

sick is the least of it

we live sincerely 

where the weapon is a frame” 

One day there will be no place to put this 

but some renegade memory 

in a hole in a future cave 

Now I am trying, I am really trying to say 

that the fever has broken: through the sweat

stretches a cold hand  

though we just know, we have 

this feeling, that we could warm it

Moon-like I suffer 

the consequences of being in the right place

at a time in transparent robes

the king of do-nothing-but-say

“Love, we are saying what we cannot 

but look at us     tidal at a shore 

we’ve made”     No—look

leisure and bleating, I know no longer spat

in the folds of history:
                                   

give me the words

for moon-red like how we fight

for there to be a fight

and the requiems for where

in the ocean, no lamp is

because there is no life