Basket Poem

1. A force is felt

I made a basket for you.
I make it well; I weave the reeds soundly
without a sound, in the kitchen,
I cake for you a bake
a baked plot of hard clay (land, land)
this land, our non-intuitive landing pad
a green glassland of neighbor's and shores
nearly too sweet to fuck
to pluck out of, to be afraid
of. In this bone, and out of it,
license is greatness. Truth
is its own revenge. Salida,
a town in Colorado (adventure
incorporated, come the youth
proud) or Spanish for EXIT. Recalling
THIS IS NOT one, you know, not a place
for leaving. In other words, perversely,
or its opposite--naturally--a path
without a purpose. Fucked willingly
and without passion, white knuckles,
fear still tingeing the air with breath
and yet in the moment, a little death,
a little birth, an awakening, a dying,
a heartbeat jumping out of one's chest,
one's breadbasket, a sampling of only
the finest loaf. "Here, darling," we'd
like to say. "I've prepared a stove
for you." Somewhere to relax, something
to look toward--a process happening. Progress
with a capital P for pecuniary--something
that can be consumed. If you don't know now you never
will, but then again, life is asunder.
Torn thus, belittled, become April, become May,
become December, that's how a year ends. In
sloughs and buckets and jumps and contusions
maybe made accidentally with out speeches.
I slapped a girl early Saturday on the cheek,
softly. She was still surprised. A southerner,
exotic-like, a girl from the mud of the deep
south. Louisiana. Where my heart wanders when
it isn't always somewhere else. Never been there,
never will be, perhaps. I don't want to count idioms
before they hatch. Count on them recurring. Count on
me demurring--and in so doing, even with rebellion,
maybe I'm no better. A force is still a force if its
resisted and the action is maybe the same internally.
Felt. A force is felt regardless.

2. Out of all this comes

Out of all this comes the preparation
in so doing it, putting down words,
one word less always better--camps in the mind
perhaps throttling themselves & saying: well then, here's
another land mine to toss on your camera, here's
another wave about to crash at sea; here's a third
opinion on that matter we had discussed. You know,
Sally, I've been dreaming about you for some time now
and I'd like to know how you afford your retainer,
you know, the retainer ad hominem cum harbinger of
doom, this dirty little expression meaning / [a slash
mark, English's most violent banal punctuation.] Are
you listening? I'm the mark of a spark at midnight in the dark
of West Hollywood glistening like "Ohhhhhhhhhh..." cannabis
just coming a-blaze, a computer humming on, no nautical
parks this year, just another President to preside over
our ground master plan thus deranged thus ordinary thus
hope swollen thus swelled thus become derogatory and deregulated
like all good things, all greedy things: markets, bedrooms,
sex parties, and the like. They're all the same in the end,
green spun out lasses with axes to grind swinging at one
another, potions a-blur in the nightlight booming faults
like faulty magic imaginary geraniums and night-glow
corning cloning about borrowed holes from burrowing animals
and Hannibal just pooped again in the bathroom, I got my
goop to prove it, got this groove to arrange it and smooth it
and five forked words later I'll tell you how to spell the word
F-U-C-K and you won't like it.
As it has been arranged.