3.

Ways to say, "weave": breeze,
ease, thieve

...that daddy thang
hot like potato pie

--jammed like my thumb or
the telephone lines at rush hour
so long so sour so glancing down
prancing about on a mushroom
cloud, revering dace, the frail
lunar koi of the California hotel
pool, gently murmuring: "you
do not belong here," and, "welcome,"
and you slept for hours and hours on end,
after the drugs were gone.

2.

"I'm late," said April.

Late April

1.
I should not feel so all alone,
everybody must get stones
on that rocky beach called a metaphor

--why, I adore this simile
like a door into memory, she
said, giggling and drunk.

But that is not the raisin.
That is the whole fruit, laid out,
then spoiled. We are fragile.

Gotta Get Some Lights

if you can't get on my level
just buy some beveled Dunhills
or do you call 'em Denvers
shit girl, i been up those hills


that's how we playas chill
look up that fucking word
it's a dry lake bed and an Ibis
is a bird. Dropping science will



enamor high school Hoosiers
(but I take The Third)
dropping acid laced with strychnine,
chilling just fine, wine & so-forth; ...un-
til the next day, headaches and

pills come out, vomit times, bad
news & such; we get ourselves stuck
like a brooch or a bad hunch over
eggs & brunch.

yes i smoked; now I don't. cigarettes are
like parrots: a good idea until you get one
and it burns you up, repeating the same thing
over and over: gotta light?

Palin

Palin advocates killing wolves, doesn't believe in evolution, has publicly lashed out at her daughter's ex-fiancee, was found guilty of abusing her gubernatorial powers against her brother-in-law (successfully pressing to get him fired from his former job as a state police officer), and wears overpriced clothing marketed to 20-somethings.

Cop Train

You're like a cop train
urgently sirening away, but stuck on an, uh,
whaddaya call it? a fixed path, sire. i mean,
sir. a fixed path. you cannot footpath. you aren't
i mean a nomad.

Come quick, Dr. Dearborne! comes another one,
just another whisper, just another cop train.
a fixed ballad upon saucy Midwestern earth.
center of the universe and all that, fellas. we got
our work cut out for us, yessir. this one will prove
a difficult case.

I'm a third-year, goes another, soft voice,
firm breasts, playing with her hair. her name's
probably Laura, but it won't matter. you do not
love her; and yet, they aren't all the same. may be
that the search continues, we murmur gently.

it goes, so. whaddaya gonna do about it? that's what
i'd like to know. another lazy wind; another drift of
Spanish over the radio. warm feelings tendril the
earth: spring's vines maybe. we spring vines, say,
opening a new chapter of laughter...
and stir-fry. this is my only voice, i say,
my only choice.

Not only a slugger

i show promise like a young almond grove
got more nuts than squirrels have ever lost
now become trees, which became
the house you grew up in.

hello child, i surround you, more house than you,
your mother's blouse is blue & green & her
breasts are large now, with milk, become
ivy, become something spilled but not upset.

have you ever found time, she asked, and i
said, for what? but she demurred, repeating,
have you ever found time?
the question lay there like a virgin on her back
after thinking it over i had to reply: yes,

once. it was in a pigpen when i was ten and
i was sitting in the living room. Charlotte's Web
on the television. and this, quick critic, explains
my mastery of the duplicitous: one time,

long ago, we believed in that magic. E. B. White.
T. V. Piano. somebody else's eyeballs. Babe was
not only a slugger.

The Pride and Joys of His Youth

Were I lather in the bathtub (the soap details)?

The answer (is)
the same as the
response to the question,
posed to a bonafide sculptor, on how he chisels: Well...
why do you ask?