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I. Of Choice Despair is big with friends I love, Hydrogen and burning jews. I give them all the grief I have But I tell them, friends, I choose, I choose, Don’t make me say against my glands Or how the world has treated me. Though gay and modest give offense And people grieve pretentiously, More than I hoped to do, I do And more than I deserve I get; What little I attend, I know And it argues order more than not. My desperate friends, I want to tell Them, you take too delicate offense At the stench of time and man’s own smell, It is only the smell of consequence. II. Of Love People love each other and the light Of love gilds but doesn’t alter, People don’t change one another, can scarcely By taking will and thought add a little Now and then to their own statures Which, praise them, they do, So that here we are in all our sizes Flooded in the impartial daylight sometimes, Spotted sometimes in a light we make ourselves, Human, the beams of attention Of social animals at their work Which is loving; and sometimes all dark. The only correction is By you of you, by me of me. People are worth looking at in this light And if you listen what they are saying is, Love me sun out there whoever you are, Chasing me from bed in the morning, Spooking me all day with shadow, Surprising me whenever you fall; Make me conspicuous as I go here, Spotted by however many beams, Now light, finally dark. I fear There is meant to be a lot of darkness,

When Albert Murray said the second law adds up to the blues that in other words ain’t nothing nothing he meant it not quite the way my pops says nomads don’t show emotions but more how my grandmother warned that men like women with soft hands blood red nails like how Mingus meant truth if  you had time for it facts if  you got no time that years pass. Zero one two three and the man you used to flirt with you can no longer flirt with thank goodness. He’s now a man you can’t wear your  jaw out on about weather news or work a perfect strawberry buried beneath a peck.

Does Chang feel his teeth falling out? One... two... three... His mouth shuts. How will he speak? Like the moon released at last and speechless, he has lost his descendants. Life splits— a rift, a cleft, the half- light between waking and sleeping. A quartz-colored dawn rescues him. The day clears. Dizzy waves rush to shore. The factory calls him to work, but even there, the gap-toothed partitions in the wall where the rice bowls are kept stay empty. It’s another sad round of layoffs. How many more will be lost? How many?

It could have been a car door leaving that bruise, as any mom knows, almost anything could take an eye out, and almost anybody could get their tongue frozen to a pole, which is kind of funny to the point of tears plus a knee slap or two that an eye can be made blue, pink by a baby’s fist, it fits perfectly in the socket. It’s happened to me. Get it? Any scenario is better, beats sitting in a car and hearing someone you love sob, which I have done with a black eye. For me, a woman’s tears are IKEA instructions on the European side. I’m sure for Laius, Oedipus’s father, it was the same. Think of him sleeping after having held a crying Jocasta because they had fought for hours because she was stronger. Who knew better the anger of young Jocasta? Knew that when the oracle, or the police, come, they are taking someone with them. I’m sure Laius looked at the crib and thought better you than me, kid.

after Marina Wilson Consider the hands that write this letter. Left palm pressed flat against paper, as we have done before, over my heart, in peace or reverence to the sea, some beautiful thing I saw once, felt once: snow falling like rice flung from the giants' wedding, or strangest of strange birds. & consider, then, the right hand, & how it is a fist, within which a sharpened utensil, similar to the way I've held a spade, the horse's reins, loping, the very fists I've seen from roads through Limay & Estel í . For years, I have come to sit this way: one hand open, one hand closed, like a farmer who puts down seeds & gathers up; food will come from that farming. Or, yes, it is like the way I've danced with my left hand opened around a shoulder, my right hand closed inside of another hand. & how I pray, I pray for this to be my way: sweet work alluded to in the body's position to its paper: left hand, right hand like an open eye, an eye closed: one hand flat against the trapdoor, the other hand knocking, knocking.

The snail pushes through a green night, for the grass is heavy with water and meets over the bright path he makes, where rain has darkened the earth’s dark. He moves in a wood of desire, pale antlers barely stirring as he hunts. I cannot tell what power is at work, drenched there with purpose, knowing nothing. What is a snail’s fury? All I think is that if later I parted the blades above the tunnel and saw the thin trail of broken white across litter, I would never have imagined the slow passion to that deliberate progress.

Mist clogs the sunshine. Smoky dwarf houses Hem me round everywhere; A vague dejection Weighs down my soul. Yet, while I languish, Everywhere countless Prospects unroll themselves, And countless beings Pass countless moods. Far hence, in Asia, On the smooth convent-roofs, On the gilt terraces, Of holy Lassa, Bright shines the sun. Grey time-worn marbles Hold the pure Muses; In their cool gallery, By yellow Tiber, They still look fair. Strange unloved uproar Shrills round their portal; Yet not on Helicon Kept they more cloudless Their noble calm. Through sun-proof alleys In a lone, sand-hemm'd City of Africa, A blind, led beggar, Age-bow'd, asks alms. No bolder robber Erst abode ambush'd Deep in the sandy waste; No clearer eyesight Spied prey afar. Saharan sand-winds Sear'd his keen eyeballs; Spent is the spoil he won. For him the present Holds only pain. Two young, fair lovers, Where the warm June-wind, Fresh from the summer fields Plays fondly round them, Stand, tranced in joy. With sweet, join'd voices, And with eyes brimming: "Ah," they cry, "Destiny, Prolong the present! Time, stand still here!" The prompt stern Goddess Shakes her head, frowning; Time gives his hour-glass Its due reversal; Their hour is gone. With weak indulgence Did the just Goddess Lengthen their happiness, She lengthen'd also Distress elsewhere. The hour, whose happy Unalloy'd moments I would eternalise, Ten thousand mourners Well pleased see end. The bleak, stern hour, Whose severe moments I would annihilate, Is pass'd by others In warmth, light, joy. Time, so complain'd of, Who to no one man Shows partiality, Brings round to all men Some undimm'd hours.

Darwin. They say he read novels to relax, But only certain kinds: nothing that ended unhappily. If anything like that turned up, enraged, he flung the book into the fire. True or not, I’m ready to believe it. Scanning in his mind so many times and places, he’d had enough of dying species, the triumphs of the strong over the weak, the endless struggles to survive, all doomed sooner or later. He’d earned the right to happy endings, at least in fiction with its diminutions. Hence the indispensable silver lining, the lovers reunited, the families reconciled, the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded, fortunes regained, treasures uncovered, stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways, good names restored, greed daunted, old maids married off to worthy parsons, troublemakers banished to other hemispheres, forgers of documents tossed down the stairs, seducers scurrying to the altar, orphans sheltered, widows comforted, pride humbled, wounds healed over, prodigal sons summoned home, cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean, hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation, general merriment and celebration, and the dog Fido, gone astray in the first chapter, turns up barking gladly in the last.

Though he, that ever kind and true, Kept stoutly step by step with you, Your whole long, gusty lifetime through, Be gone a while before, Be now a moment gone before, Yet, doubt not, soon the seasons shall restore Your friend to you. He has but turned the corner — still He pushes on with right good will, Through mire and marsh, by heugh and hill, That self-same arduous way — That self-same upland, hopeful way, That you and he through many a doubtful day Attempted still. He is not dead, this friend — not dead, But in the path we mortals tread Got some few, trifling steps ahead And nearer to the end; So that you too, once past the bend, Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend You fancy dead. Push gaily on, strong heart! The while You travel forward mile by mile, He loiters with a backward smile Till you can overtake, And strains his eyes to search his wake, Or whistling, as he sees you through the brake, Waits on a stile.

(to JK) Those scars rooted me. Stigmata stalagmite I sat at a drive-in and watched the stars Through a straw while the Coke in my lap went Waterier and waterier. For days on end or Nights no end I crawled on all fours or in My case no fours to worship you: Amoeba Behemoth. —Then you explained your DNA calls for Meaner genes than mine and since you are merely So to speak its external expression etcet Ergo among your lovers I’ll never be ... Ah that movie was so faraway the stars melting Made my thighs icy. I see: it’s not you Who is not requiting me, it’s something in you Over which you have no say says no to me.