Otto

Would a little more of moon and sky make him say,
   'god is high, and is often worse
    always told like a dirty curse'

and sung into dawn, and one more sickening day:
   'remembered and dismembered,
    dismembered and remembered'?

Would that e'er be pleasing to the sole chubby bee,
   bloody snail torn like fresh meat,
   or gypsy moth with two dusty feet--

the tortured and then boiled body of a big fat bee?
  I dreamt and before long a king
  sent three soft curly saints to bring

a little more of moon and more of sky in Otto's way,
  whose bloody feet and gypsy soul
  make it easy to die in one more hole
 


  

Maples

Sit down, and be a breezing almond-eyed love
   who won't, won't age (like me!)

And stay a soft-curled chestnut girl of mine
  whose hair's tufted just for me

who can't age, and won't age 'cause she's divine
  Pout, and sigh and offer umber

necks, smoothed to surround white silk arms
  Say (and I'd like to say)

that trees for tall doors, snow for pearly eyes
  would have made any prince mad,

any and much more me who'd gladly not die,
  not til I'd tower over you, too

Dance, and dress and speak and kiss, too, shad-
  ing into elegant perfume night

and, jesuitical -oh! mad heart-I may open a door
  for you & you be more for me,

seeing she was by a tall pouty, soft-lipped prince
  once kissed (and then made sad).

in illo tempore

have you seen how the deceased in warm repose, and as you have
  him framed is also lovingly soft to the eye,

and even thought about the softness of stars and a heaven in the face
  of him (who's named Ned and loved twice,

once by his children and once by me who saw him framed in my grief,
  still able to be dear)? Well, I have and attest to

that time caught as I was between me and Ned seen in a casket place,
  stood on a false mantel. It'd had done what I felt

was the most blessed, peaceful thing ever to do 'tween a face and life,
  which was to comfort me. Not a subtle peace nor

that heavy taxing droning god-thing of one that always leads to a tomb
  but a sweet as a funeral frame one (sweet, near!),

  that'd gone ahead of me, thanks to Ned








 
 

peu probable that Sam

he's flagged and tagged with all his curls, or that he knows
   & tells he'd peed in some cop's grinds!--

and acts as a  poor shemp to a diminishing crowd, ol' Sam
  who's mad and dead and short,

who's gone gone before his voice's ready to crackle in court
  because he's mad, & sent to hell

with a wife who looks good in hose

Theologia crucis

(for Fleming Rutledge)

Cross, roughly pointed in shape with just the right am't of
  the new thing,
             often enshrined in woods & traps--

             just bits of a universe's first blow

stated as this thing and tramped til its beam bows in the sun
            to keep it new

A name (such as that of President-Elect)

As the eyes open, and even as the full nation
   wakens at last to

 the President-Elect!

still a barking teacher or frail spider in air
  can refer to him--

for a name's something, possibly him, isn't it?
  The name

is like the whipping-tail of real strong tides
  on which to rise

(or not) that says he dies but will not today.
  To associate

a garish, thrusting chin with a famous face
  largely drawn

by families, and their enemies and kin
  & then some thrones,

is all that there is. A name can be any tree, too,
  or its fruit, or the

spongy white-belly of bark & underside--
  it's not just optics

So it's him and he won't (as some think) pollute
  anything with just a

resemblance to him or to any lion's ginger mane
  or the soft-pawed bear,

     will he?

Ghost wife

  How does it feel to lose her?

To be lost in the heart  of a dead cat that lies sadly by the road
  is not quite how it felt

but is still near enough to take the sole form of a fetal bloodless
  ghost of any cat carcass

that'd once petted me, paw outstretched to me for years without
   a thought, a cool ingratitude

It's how it looks to the aggrieved eye (and not just heart!). And
  ghostly pairs in me, insidiously

accumulated these past several years and horribly transmitted
   like one more sodden death

are always to be found where our accustomed jays and yards
  of a joy have been ground and

have vanished like a matted spirit by the road (minus the death
  pitch and sun's knife edge, of course)

My lost wife cannot then just be the usual red clay either, similarly
  felt absence of her garden

-swarming and eruption of flies drawn to succulent warm of it!-
   but always always dearer