Hats of Smoke

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Oxen of the Sun 418

blind digging at the road to the heart
where else would I find a password?
a hair's difference between love and debt
here, at most, we deliver eyes.
shaking wires we spit anchors
most stunned in pairs exquisite we
boil our wants down to shining twigs
and use them to set fire to our stain
if we only had wings
war would be only a name
these little children
would be shamed into waiting.

At the Coast of Snow

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Oxen of the Sun 402

The kind empire, unhappy, forgets
Its virtue and freely couples with angels
What noble habit acquires its enemies so persistently?
Oblivious to feelings we admit our alien daughters
To the art of respect
This low and notorious society gone
These habits, fallow
We come to find our nearer enemy forgotten
We come to join in the title of laughter
Did we not rise up in this distant moment?
Did we not gaze without scruple at the notorious gospel of nature?
Unhappy, indignant, we seize the feathers of the deluder.

Legato Fugazi

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Cyclops 319


Shining tongue the flower is now deathless
A solemn word, golden, stolen from desperate gods
Who are left drunk and blind, trying to trace their steps
Across a bloody nation.

Blinking language the high whores
March toward the night of Europe
Praying in divided languages that remind us of music
The citizen excepts himself from the parade but
Ends up civilized anyway.
He has a telescope that can help him see
The curse of destiny,
He is a born hero who sits silent
Amid the literature of the fallen
The art of anywhere
The music of ghosts.

Look Right Through Me

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Cyclops 318



A wife of dishonor
Tricks the smutty office of repetition
Nothing kind in these strangers, says she.
A queer holy word sets our misfortunes and
Fills our country with hungry dogs whose
Enlarged secrets are brought in by
Pirates and robbers,
Forsaking god, they wish to settle this little matter
Once and for all.

Nothing being sacred, there is
Wisdom in adultery and comfort in lucky want
The devil gives us old feet
With which to tread the waiting country.

Working In the Temple

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Cyclops 317


The daughter of justice eats hair for breakfast
The law becomes a deceased infant and we sing
A scandalous lament for the tribe of unsound rightness
The mind will dismiss such thoughts that swore to keep
A solemn hour

And we of the bar with the name of the rose
shackle the foot yet ponder the king of the street
He is truly well and delivers us to the goddess of the skies
We conjure the air and dare to kiss her, the wife of god
As she is both judge and jury she condemns us to our fate

Still, our deliverance is at hand.

He Fades Away

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Cyclops 315


Up, up cruel citizen
make thousands weep in
other rain
your account of flesh is neither
open nor laughing
its flesh is the statement you make
about the truth of the lunatic
and the troubles of the poor.

The bearded fools of summer
Publish this wrong story of pity
It is the lie of libel it has
No defense it is
The meaning of morning
It is the raining eye of trouble
It is the stuttering madness of old age

It is hat that goes forth unknowing

Maximum Joy

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Cyclops 314


who was there in the face of bountiful water?
And in whose name was the truth sold
Pawned gold bowed and organized in a somewhat garden?
Were there eyes drinking the order of the day?
Where is that island of godless song and law
And when does the bridge to summer suddenly appear?

Hope around singing in this most excellent absence
This fair animal daughter, she what leaves off at profound release,
She becomes a lion at the first drink of beauty
And she knows where to find the rocks
The ones that will take us across the shiny sea.

Turn Your Faces Toward the Sea

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Cyclops 307

a curse is the policy of beast of fact
as it comes to agree in what it believes:

the courage of water
the spoken verse of the hole in time
wars of spirit that laughing come to
disclose our leaving

perhaps we show some intricate indication
of our honor when we pay with our own ill
notice?

Confused, we act to serve suggestion
A green dog of system
Infinitely increased in complication
Of the days gone by and roaring

How is it we come by these feelings?
Is it asking for light for a day arising?

Cyclops 308

this league of answers is shooting slaughter
evidence of animals going off in laughter
now feeling human hesitate so gently
the notice of the useful not much in question
anything added is only common
the thought of coming
the house of friendship
the bloom of going
the opposite of order
the medical condition
the cheer warning.

Similar honor is sadly forbidding
Tonight possession on the floor
The bad black ironical
Made lost for sure forthcoming wanted
Produced on a dare,
It could not inspire us to anything more.

Cyclops 310

Lurching tragic hands catholic, drinking seem
To appreciate what overstepped ticket
Calls itself our acquaintance
A shaking vagabond a robbery at a funeral
The confidence of a safe wife
Conducts you in your feelings
But deprives you while rogues
Convey the night with better words

Your true speech,
O Israel, you bitter hope
Walk out with your excuse for a teacup
Come addled, young in prayershawl at closing time
Tell us of your trust
Dictate your reflections to the limits of the wind

Astonishing Moon

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Cyclops 304

Overcome hearts in rooms of blissful forgetting
Have you seen the monsters of happiness
Who, for the sake of memory take the name of the hero?
This is the part where the excellent eye of the cat
Seizes the song of the present and flings it into the stream of memory.

These heartrending vessels sink in oceans of song
Taking with them the citizens of grief. They are
Permitted in death to join the meanings of bliss until reaching the
Cherished core of our dreadful desire,
This is their vast token of esteem for us, the living.

We are rocked in our wish to become giants.

King of No Consequence

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Cyclops 297

Greatly bloody fitter finest
Pass it playing in a field sliding
In the ocean of desire in
Peace and doing; bought yet broken.
Good Christ! You can’t dream of being here, now,
Once seen in these regions of satisfaction, can you?

Pass it by in homes of weeping
Deep streets truest duty of the wind
Again and again stopping the morning
What mind is given to this minute of matter
This quiet soul of other purest character?

Talking shouting knocking off hats in the whirlwind
You come here to beg a promise from the daughter of Wednesday
And leave empty-handed, no true landing will be allowed
No favor will be given.

Future Ghost

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Cyclops 292

That half-pint, Napoleon, seen
Through the dead eye of a dead fish
Confirmed before sinking into growling
Decrepitude. Studied at the foot of the animal master,
The street was given him before was the ground.

His poor arrival was announced by the blasted soul of the true savage
At his feet reposed the accumulated spears
Of Velasquez
Of Muhammed
Of the Rose of Killarney and Rosa Parks.

The tranquilizing blows of time
And of prudent sight nearly meet us, dearly
And so the sons of princes, the sons of bitches and the sons of the citizen
All like: eventually their poor eyes
Will turn to stone.

An Exquisite Act of Aging

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Cyclops 291
A mountain likewise feels the shape of the hero
This lark that might have easily become stitched
To antiquitiy
Hidden inside itself a smile for the
Warm ground-an earth barely formed
When goodness became obscurity.

Voice ascending
Lost in its call , tangled in the windpipes of
Irregular beasts with tearing breath
As they surround the tower

The heart aloft alone knows
What rude movement brought us to
This salty sea
To stand on the shore
amid these discarded kneeless garments
To find ourselves lost in the hero’s eye.

The Citizen Drinks

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Cyclops 289

The sun of kings is the same as the
Sun of sheep and the same sweet rains fall

On heroes and maidens. In
Brown supplied the bitter trees are singing
Drilling the earth roaring without number
Descending purpose, you now notorious
Who traverse some crystal sea
A mariner of rape and savage foliage brings

Various robbers- come like millions of silvery fishes
To pillage the graves of princes,
These descended sons
These queens of Armagh
These chunky goons made of flowers and meat
Left bleating on the shore
Daring to attempt the day.

Last Sirens

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Sirens 284-285

Barry Barry Bloom comes a tap tap tapping
Voice melodious oozing pouring sing out you
Righteous fate. Wallop me with a blind curse remininding
Us that you were here. The sardine sandwich the razor the cheap attorney
The choice of summer .
You , in your skin and I in mine, hard believing that we let pass fate
Without a chanceless window or a whispered word in parting.
As if rehearsing a stroke of fortune causes memory to retreat.
As if you forgot the blind and blowing shriek of mermaids off the sea.
As if you marched alone toward home and bed and wife.
Then you remember there is no music with which to awaken the dead.
Put off death in its black straw hat and beat the drum against the wind.

Sirens 286

A nation blind
In the hero’s window
A country of the sea
never-viewed,
True but un-lifted.
Surely, behind the earth you’ll find them,
These last men
The last epitaph
Lonely, young, written.
Done.

Fly Me To the Moon, Fly Me To the Stars,...

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Sirens 272-273

In jail we talked tanks of chewed lightning. Brothers-in-arms we,
Clinking flush and struggling too much the happy bores.
Admiring the slow days as the tenses change a song of
Sweet monuments and the sight of slender smoke speaks-
We are pale and borne along by opera horses, singing of
The last light of day. We have been paid to tell you
The happy, eyeless history, where the name you have
Is better than the one you know.
Then, in comes death- he who smoked with savage lips,
We feel the scorn in his lidless eyes when he says,
“Gentlemen, love lives not.”

274-275

History punishes all who wear her, all who sing upon the rocks
Hatter of history, moon of scornful sorrow
You who improvise and you who harbor rats only to
Listen to the chordless tunes their hunger makes. You
Invent useless pain and complain about your husband- he is not with you now,
But you may find him at the harbor, longing for some
Ethereal ocean. Don’t go after him, instead, build a ship from
Straw and pianos and set sail. Deafen yourself before setting out and
Prepare to learn the mathematics of mourning.
You come upon a night traveler
You come upon he who bore poor sailors through eden wearing bright hats.
You come upon obstacles as answers
You come upon the things that you lost from your pockets
Find yourself on a sad lane
Still reverberating from the scales of an earthquake

Supine Voluptuaries

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SIRENS 258-259

The smoke of the past- raised, grazed impatience-

the smiles fall in waves. The lately moons

lay in the arms of Daedalus, unrecognized and unanswered,

arriving with a certain thickness now near, now forgotten.

Who looks for me? My muse’s song is on my lips the

tune so long in the day as to be taken

for a jingle- a fable not noticed but on the bill, none-the-less.

The rote bell and hell’s piano take it up and the streaming

concert now has meaning. A minstrel sings of the labor of

a famous sea, its duty to receive the fallen forms of the vain and risky.

Here, now, god’s brilliant bastard, on the back of a mermaid rising,

hands out the wires and keys. Can mercy and grace be so near?

Sein und Nichts

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SIRENS 256-257

Eating laughter while watching sun music we tapped the tune sweating stroll spluttered and drooping. Pearl after pearl sighing from thrown back head and lips-eyes upturned in the golden light, the doctor of light arriving, the doctor is in, the doctor will see you now. In this weather, the sea sweeps all sin away with blended voices again crying forth to ears of men. Whatever you say, you say to yourself, in this weather. Wanting to go forward you retrace your splendid steps but find yourself at a bridge once more, a bridge draped with sacrifice, joy and no small amount of indignation. With the greatest care, we all cross, avoiding the shaking pinnacles breathless, exhausted, laid, breastless.
Imagining marriage shreds the fingers as life must go by. Forward, toward the doors of grace the temptation company must progress with the greatest alacrity. When we arrive we imagine (yet again) the sweetness of eating violets and the welcome of nothingness.