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My brother is dying and I am not. I drag him behind me like a spiritless balloon, like the first robot, like the last clown-car clown, his ridiculous Fiat, his lot to be crushed, left for dead, covered in snot, his puffy hands, his outsized shoes, his flower pot, like Virgil Earp, Clanton-ganged, at the Not OK Corral, un-brothered, gutshot, like the night without sleep in Turandot. From the get-go I have always sought to know (what,what?) if this is all I’ve got, to show up in a vestibule, all bothered and hot, like silver-fingered Iscariot, like the smiling highwayman,tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, while all about me are consigned to slather and rot. I drink to my faith, to what I am not, to all who’ve come before me, every rutty Lancelot, every Huguenot, every hotsy-totsy hot to trot, every Dylan, besot, who doesn’t have the strength to get up and take another shot. I know my Morse, code blue,dot-dot-dot, dit-dit-dit, dot-dot-dot. I know what God hath wrought.

Forget not yet the tried intent Of such a truth as I have meant; My great travail so gladly spent, Forget not yet. Forget not yet when first began The weary life ye know, since whan The suit, the service, none tell can; Forget not yet. Forget not yet the great assays, The cruel wrong, the scornful ways; The painful patience in denays, Forget not yet. Forget not yet, forget not this, How long ago hath been and is The mind that never meant amiss; Forget not yet. Forget not then thine own approved, The which so long hath thee so loved, Whose steadfast faith yet never moved; Forget not this.

Focus on the taxidermied light, the quarked vehemence of splayed negation, to rags, your britches, seeping glib intent, sight catastrophic, given to seizures. The curlicue scent has not the mother in it. The fall of romance, the hold of the tender new, programs aloft, every nerve to shudder: ghosting monitions of the incomplete. Either will the aching swells, apart from bliss. Coordinates of favor, hip neath fiber strip follicle sheath of slip chord parent display. Sensitized gift wagon fern entrenched, the halo of the nation is the caul-throated blood of hench, rosella’d to the peak of taxonomied childless. Where your mottled hologram, the feathered monster of the throttled. Quizzical with the world, am to console, the hope for saplings edifice disjunction. The dissociated fanfare of motivated loss entrees the ingredient of dining undertaken. Your teeth the grinder, your lips the sensitive house. The beds’ laments’ the reindeers’ horses’ dreams’ in halves’ cameo’d sighs.

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Darkness is not a death, does not obliterate, will not bury you or take your breath away. Darkness will not erase you the way it erases day with night because darkness is not the clock but merely the time falling away from the clock's circular face. Darkness is not the loss but the thing misplaced, not the hammer but the nail in its curved emergence from wood's grasp, not the storm's insurgence but the limbs broken off from their miraculous suspension in a storm out far, beyond us. Darkness is not about hearts, imperfect as they are, but what leaks through their incorrigible doors, not the stars but the glissade or glide of their dust. Darkness no longer shields the hunters' musk in search of you, or turns you to animal prey, it is only a measure of weight or days. Not something without a beginning or an end, it is not even—especially not—an end. Nor is it vertigo, nor the whole, but merely a piece. No, darkness is but a ghost of an idea, the least remembered, most estranged prayer, and your fear but a lingering, limbic fear torn from shreds of forgotten years. Only that much is clear.

Equisetum, horsetail, railway weed Laid down in the unconscious of the hills; Three hundred million years still buried In this hair-soft surviving growth that kills Everything in the glorious garden except itself, That thrives on starvation, and distils Black diamonds, the carboniferous shelf — That was life before our animals, With trilobite and coelacanth, A stratum of compressed time that tells Truth without language and is the body store Of fire, heat, night without intervals — That becomes people's living only when strange air Fills out the folded lungs, the inert corpuscles. Into the mute dark, light crawls once more. * So the hills must be pillaged and cored. Such history as they hide must be hacked out Urgent as money, the buried black seams uncovered. Rows of stunted houses under the smoke, Soot black houses pressed back hard against pit By fog, by smoke, by a cobra hood of smouldering coke Swayed from the nest of ovens huddled opposite. Families, seven or ten to a household, Growing up, breathing it, becoming it. On winter mornings, grey capped men in the cold, Clatter of boots on tarmac, sharp and empty, First shift out in thick frost simple as gold On the sulphurous roofs, on the stilted gantry, Crossing to engine house and winding gear — Helmet, pick, lamp, tin bottle of tea. A Nan or Nora slave to each black grate. Washing on Monday, the water grimed in its well. Iron and clean on Tuesday, roll out and bake Each Wednesday (that sweet bituminous smell No child who grew up here forgets). Thursdays, the Union and the Methodist Circle; Fishday on Friday (fryday), a queue of kids, Thin, squabbling by the chippy. Resurfaced quarrels After pay day — hard drinking and broken heads. Wheels within wheels, an England of working Ezekiels. Between slag-heaps, coke-tarns and black sludgy leavings, Forges roaring and reddening, hot irons glowing like jewels. No more, no more. They've swept up the workings As if they were never meant to be part of memory. A once way of being. A dead place. Hard livings That won't return, grim tales forgot as soon as told, Streaming from the roofs in smoke from a lost century — A veil of breath in which to survive the cold. * When the mine's shut down, habits prolong the story, Habits and voices, till grandmothers' old ways pass, And the terraces fold into themselves, so black, ugly And unloved that all but the saved (success Has spared them, the angel of death-by-money) move away. The town's inhabited by alien, washed up innocents. Children and animals, people too poor to stay Anywhere else, stray, dazed, into this slum of Eden. the church is without saints or statuary. The memorial is a pick, a hammer, a shovel, given By the men of Harvey Seam and Victoria Seam. May Their good bones wake in the living seams of Heaven. He breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn. They are forgotten of the foot that passeth by.

This strange thing must have crept Right out of hell. It resembles a bird’s foot Worn around the cannibal’s neck. As you hold it in your hand, As you stab with it into a piece of meat, It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird: Its head which like your fist Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.

I. i saved my energy as i read, like managing held-breath underwater so i could extend my survey and not miss anything great

The Chinese concubine feeling has left and the sky hovers like the preparation of a revolutionary speech. You, my long walk with all that expectation the sexy lunches, thousands of them, and then all that religion of eroticism. Beneath the squeeze on my heart is a stranglehold. You, like a little Italian porcelain village that’s all over the shop window saying admire this image of foreverness. The red scarf is factory-made but silky and it’s what I’d flutter over your face if you were here and it would be cheap greasy hypnotism, my own malarkey and we’d be on the southside, at the boat docks, and I’d kiss you beside the stretch of a Russian grain ship, its hammer and sickle like the sending out of rescue choppers.

for Charles You have lived six decades     and you have lived none You have loved many     and you have loved no one You wedded three wives       but you lie in your cold bed alone You sired four children     but they cannot forgive you Knock at emptiness    a house without your love Strike the pine box     no answer    all hollow You planted plums near the gate     but they bear no fruit You raised herbs in the veranda     fresh and savory I cry for you     but no sound wells up in my throat I sing for you     but my tears have dried in my gullet Walk the old dog     give the budgies a cool bath Cut a tender melon     let it bleed into memory The robe you washed     hangs like a carcass flayed The mug you loved       is stained with old coffee Your toothbrush is silent        grease mums your comb Something's lost        something's made strong Around the corner    a new prince yearns to be loved A fresh turn of phrase       a bad strophe erased A random image       crafts itself into a poem A sleepless Taipei night       a mosquito's symphony Who will cry for you    me and your sister Colette Who will cry for you    me and your Algerian sister You were a rich man    but you held on to your poverty You were a poor man    who loved gold over dignity I sit near your body bag       and sing you a last song I sit near your body bag      and chant your final sutra What's our place on earth?     nada       nada       nada What's our destiny?       war     grief     maggots     nada Arms      cheeks    cock     femur    eyelids    nada Cowl     ox      lamb     vellum    marrow    nada Vulva      nada     semen    nada    ovum    nada Eternity     nada       heaven    nada    void    nada Birth and death the same blackened womb Birth and death the same white body bag Detach     detach we enter the world alone Detach     detach we leave the world bone lonely If we can't believe in god       we must believe in love We must believe in love       we must believe in love And they zip you up        in your white body bag White body bag        white    white     body       bag