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Because there are avenues Of traffic lights, a phone book Of brothers and lawyers, Why should you think your purse Will not be tugged from your arm Or the screen door Will remain latched Against the man Who hugs and kisses His pillow In the corridor of loneliness? There is a window of light A sprinkler turning As the earth turns, And you do not think of the hills And of the splintered wrists it takes To give you The heat rising toward the ceiling. You expect your daughter To be at the door any moment And your husband to arrive With the night That is suddenly all around. You expect the stove to burst A collar of fire When you want it, The siamese cats To move against your legs, purring. But remember this: Because blood revolves from one lung to the next, Why think it will After tonight?

intensity and height I want to write, but only foam comes out, I want to say so much but it’s all crap — there aren’t any numbers left that can’t be added up, nobody writes down pyramids without meaning it. I want to write, but I’ve got a puma’s brains; I want to crown myself with laurel, but it stinks of onions. There’s no word spoken that doesn’t dissolve in mist, there’s no god and no son of god, only progress. So come on, to hell with it, let’s go eat weeds, eat the flesh and fruit of our stupid tears and moans, of our pickled melancholy souls. Come on! Let’s go! So what if   I’m wounded — let’s go drink what’s already been drunk, let’s go, crow, and find another crow to fuck. hat, coat, gloves Right in front of the Comédie-Française is the Regency Cafe; and right inside it, there’s this room, hidden, with a table and an easy chair. When I go in, house dust, already on its feet, stands motionless. Between my lips made of rubber, a cigarette butt smolders, and in the smoke you can see two intensive smokes, the cafe’s thorax, and in that thorax an oxide of elemental grief. It matters that autumn grafts itself into other autumns, it matters that autumn merges into young shoots, the cloud into half-years, cheekbones into a wrinkle. It’s crucial to smell like a madman who spouts theories about how hot snow is, how fugitive the turtle, the “how” how easy, how deadly the “when.” best case Look, at the very best, I’m someone other — some guy who walks around marble statues, who enters his adult clay into indexes of blood, and feels the rage and fear of the fox chased to its hole — and if someone anoints my shoulders with indigos of mercy, I’ll declare to my absent soul that there’s no hellishly paradisal elsewhere for me to go. And if they try to choke me on the sea’s wafer, telling me it tastes like His flesh, more acid than sweet, like Kant’s notions of truth, I’ll cough it all up:No, never! I’m other as a germ, a satanic tubercle, a moral ache in a plesiosaur’s molar: in my posthumous suspicions, all bets are off! another day of life I’ll die in my apartment on a cold bright day, with nobody around, the apartment next door gone dead still while wind whistles through the balcony, though the branches somehow aren’t moving, just as the sun doesn’t move, everything’s so quiet, so frozen. Parked cars, plastic bags bleached in the bare trees, a couple of those Mylar balloons tied to a chair on the balcony next door, celebrating something, maybe? ... now sagging listless on the floor, as if every last molecule had been pierced by a needle — Tom Sleigh is dead, he stared up into the air, the sky was pale blue as usual and he couldn’t feel the cold coming through the window, and there wasn’t much to say or not say — and nobody, anyway, to say or not say it. my jailer won’t weep to be my liberator My cell’s four walls, whitening in the sun, keep counting one another — but their number never changes, despite my jailer’s innumerable keys to chains wrenching the nerves to their extremities. The two longer walls hurt me more — who knows why — their salt-stained cracks like two mothers who die after labor, but give birth to twin boys whose hands they still hold. And here I am, all alone, with just my right hand to make do for both hands, raising it high into the air to search for the third arm that between my where and my when will father this crippled coming-of-age of a man. insomnia is the only prayer left How childish is the spectacle of the stained glass’s holiness: the night doesn’t give a shit what goes on inside human beings, the night has its own web of dendrites refuting the inane prayers prayed for the dying, for the confessions going on between earthworms and earth, between the way a man argues with his own shoulder bones. All the while, barracudas in a coral canyon, a sea turtle flying, swim through fathoms and fathoms of images that keep crashing on the shore of the eye that never shuts — and smarts in its sleeplessness staring up into the dark shadowed by stingrays, gas stations, the slow flapping wing of a lottery ticket.

They’re heading home with their lights on, dust and wood glue, yellow dome lights on their metallic long beds: 250s, 2500s— as much overtime as you want, deadline, dotted line, dazed through the last few hours, dried primer on their knuckles, sawdust calf-high on their jeans, scraped boots, the rough plumbing and electric in, way ahead of the game except for the check, such a clutter of cans and iced-tea bottles, napkins, coffee cups, paper plates on the front seat floor with cords and saws, tired above the eyes, back of the beyond, thirsty. There’s a parade of them through the two-lane highways, proudest on their way home, the first turn out of the jobsite, the first song with the belt off, pure breath of being alone for now, for now the insight of a full and answerable man. No one can take away the contentment of the first few miles and they know they can’t describe it, the black and purple sky.

The best job I had was moving a stone from one side of the road to the other. This required a permit which required a bribe. The bribe took all my salary. Yet because I hadn’t finished the job I had no salary, and to pay the bribe I took a job moving the stone the other way. Because the official wanted his bribe, he gave me a permit for the second job. When I pointed out that the work would be best completed if I did nothing, he complimented my brain and wrote a letter to my employer suggesting promotion on stationery bearing the wings of a raptor spread in flight over a mountain smaller than the bird. My boss, fearing my intelligence, paid me to sleep on the sofa and take lunch with the official who required a bribe to keep anything from being done. When I told my parents, they wrote my brother to come home from university to be slapped on the back of the head. Dutifully, he arrived and bowed to receive his instruction, at which point sense entered his body and he asked what I could do by way of a job. I pointed out there were stones everywhere trying not to move, all it took was a little gumption to be the man who didn’t move them. It was harder to explain the intricacies of not obtaining a permit to not do this. Just yesterday he got up at dawn and shaved, as if the lack of hair on his face has anything to do with the appearance of food on an empty table.

We were a Colored Clan of Kinfolk Who threw soil      not salt Over our shoulders Who tendered close the bible Who grew and passed around the almanac at night So we would know What to plant at first light Black soil and sweet brown sorghum From the every morning biscuits Mama Susan fixed Dripping and mixing Up under our fingernails A secret salve Just like any other Living simple And keeping to our proud selves Quite aware of night riders Quite aware of men with Politicious smiles Cologned with kerosene and match Aware of just whose feet Walked across our tin roofs at night We were such light sleepers Such long distance believers We were a family pregnant Whose water had broke And for once there was ham money ’Bacca money So we thought to do better by ourselves To begin our next row We would go and get him Because he was medically degreed in baby bringing Because he was young and white and handsome And because of that Had been neighbor to more knowledge Than us way back behind The country’s proud but inferior lines And because he came with his papers in his pocket So convincing      so soon After his ivy graduation Asking us hadn’t we heard Telling us times had changed And the midwife wasn’t safe anymore Even though we had all been caught By tried and true Black Grannies Who lay ax blade sharp side up And water pan underneath the bed To cut the pain To cool the fever We were a Pregnant Clan of Kinfolk Caught with water running down our legs Old family say they remember Going to fetch him Telling him that it was time That he should come now But he didn’t show right away Not right away But came when he wanted The next day After his breakfast But what more Could we colored country folk ever want Even if we had to watch the road all night for him Even if we had to not let her push too hard When he finally came He had his papers on him Something with one of those pretty shiny seals Old family say they can remember Somethin’ just wasn’t right But we opened the screen for him anyway Trusting And tendering close what the Good Book Had told us all our lives to do Then we made him a path Where he put his hand up      then inside My grandmother’s womb Her precious private pleasing place Somewhere he probably didn’t want to touch Then he pulled my daddy through Somebody he probably didn’t care to reach for And from the first he pulled him wrong And wrong Shattered his collarbone And snapped his soft baby foot in half And smashed the cartilage in his infant hand Wringing Their own sun baked arms Old timey family Remember him well Say they knew somethin’ wasn’t right As he came through the door A day later His breakfast digested now Somethin’ just wasn’t right How he had two waters on him One sweet      one sour-mash One trying to throw snow quilt over the other As he un-carefully As drunkenly He with his papers on him still Stood there turning a brown baby into blue Un-magically And right before our eyes Hope and Pray Hope and Pray Then he packed his bag and      left With all of his official training And gathered up gold stars      left The Virginia land of Cumberland County He left and forgot He left and didn’t remember The afterbirth inside Carlene Godwin Finney To clabber Gangrene Close down Her place Her precious private pleasing place To fill the house to the rafters Up past the dimpled tin roof With a rotting smell That stayed for nine days That mortgaged a room In our memories And did not die with her We were a Brown and Pregnant Family And he would’ve remembered his schoolin’ And left his bottle Recollected his manners And brought his right mind Had another klan called him to their bedside He would’ve come right away He would’ve never had liquor on his breath If the color of my daddy’s broken limbs Had matched the color of his own but We were a Colored Clan of Kinfolk We should’ve met him at the door Should’ve told him lean first into the rusty screen Made him open up his mouth and blow Breathe out right there Into all of our brown and lined up faces In wait of his worthiness Then just for good measure Should’ve made him blow once again Into Papa Josh’s truth telling jar Just to be sure Should’ve let Mama Sally Then Aunt Nanny Then lastly Aunt Mary Give him the final once over And hold his sterile hands Down to the firelight to check Just like she checked our own every night Before supper Before we were allowed to sit At her very particular table We could’ve let Aunt Ira clutch him by his chin Enter and leave through her eyes Just like how she came and went through us Everyday at her leisure She would’ve took care to notice As she traveled all up and through him Any shaking      any sweating And caught his incapable belligerent incompetence In time Oh Jesus We should’ve let Grandpop Robert Have him from the first Should’ve let him pick him up By the back of his pants And swirl him around Just like he picked us up And swirled us around Anytime he caught us lying or lazy Or being less than what we were We should’ve let Grandpop Loose on him from the start And he would’ve held him up High eye to the sun And looked straight through him Just like he held us up And then we would have known first Like he always knew first And brought to us The very map of his heart Then we would have known Just what his intentions were With our Carlene Before we knew his name Or cared about his many degrees Before he dared reach up      then inside Our family’s brown globe While we stood there Some of us throwing good black soil With one hand Some of us tending close The Good Book with the other Believing and trusting We were doing better By this one Standing there Waterfalls running Screaming whitewater rapids Down our pants legs Down our pantaloons To our many selves All the while Praying hard That maybe we were wrong (please make us wrong) One hundred proof Smelled the same as Isopropyl

I However the image enters its force remains within my eyes rockstrewn caves where dragonfish evolve wild for life, relentless and acquisitive learning to survive where there is no food my eyes are always hungry and remembering however the image enters its force remains. A white woman stands bereft and empty a black boy hacked into a murderous lesson recalled in me forever like a lurch of earth on the edge of sleep etched into my visions food for dragonfish that learn to live upon whatever they must eat fused images beneath my pain. II The Pearl River floods through the streets of Jackson A Mississippi summer televised. Trapped houses kneel like sinners in the rain a white woman climbs from her roof to a passing boat her fingers tarry for a moment on the chimney now awash tearless and no longer young, she holds a tattered baby's blanket in her arms. In a flickering afterimage of the nightmare rain a microphone thrust up against her flat bewildered words “we jest come from the bank yestiddy borrowing money to pay the income tax now everything's gone. I never knew it could be so hard.” Despair weighs down her voice like Pearl River mud caked around the edges her pale eyes scanning the camera for help or explanation unanswered she shifts her search across the watered street, dry-eyed “hard, but not this hard.” Two tow-headed children hurl themselves against her hanging upon her coat like mirrors until a man with ham-like hands pulls her aside snarling “She ain't got nothing more to say!” and that lie hangs in his mouth like a shred of rotting meat. III I inherited Jackson, Mississippi. For my majority it gave me Emmett Till his 15 years puffed out like bruises on plump boy-cheeks his only Mississippi summer whistling a 21 gun salute to Dixie as a white girl passed him in the street and he was baptized my son forever in the midnight waters of the Pearl. His broken body is the afterimage of my 21st year when I walked through a northern summer my eyes averted from each corner's photographies newspapers protest posters magazines Police Story, Confidential, True the avid insistence of detail pretending insight or information the length of gash across the dead boy's loins his grieving mother's lamentation the severed lips, how many burns his gouged out eyes sewed shut upon the screaming covers louder than life all over the veiled warning, the secret relish of a black child's mutilated body fingered by street-corner eyes bruise upon livid bruise and wherever I looked that summer I learned to be at home with children's blood with savored violence with pictures of black broken flesh used, crumpled, and discarded lying amid the sidewalk refuse like a raped woman's face. A black boy from Chicago whistled on the streets of Jackson, Mississippi testing what he'd been taught was a manly thing to do his teachers ripped his eyes out his sex his tongue and flung him to the Pearl weighted with stone in the name of white womanhood they took their aroused honor back to Jackson and celebrated in a whorehouse the double ritual of white manhood confirmed. IV “If earth and air and water do not judge them who are we to refuse a crust of bread?”

I wake to leafless vines and muddy fields, patches of standing water. His pocketknife waits in my dresser drawer, still able to gut fish. I pick up his green shirt, put it on for the fourth day in a row. Outside, the rusty nail he hammered catches me, leaves its stain on everything. The temperature drops, the whole shore filling with him: his dented chew can, waders, the cattails kinked, bowing their distress. At the pier, I use his old pliers to ready the line: fatheads, darters, a blood worm jig. Today, the lake’s one truth is hardness. When the trout bite, I pull the serviceable things glistening into air.

You may think it strange, Sam, that I'm writing a letter in these circumstances. I thought it strange too—the first time. But there's a misconception I was laboring under, and you are too, viz. that the imagination in your vicinity is free and powerful. After all, you say, you've been creating yourself all along imaginatively. You imagine yourself playing golf or hiking in the Olympics or writing a poem and then it becomes true. But you still have to do it, you have to exert yourself, will, courage, whatever you've got, you're mired in the unimaginative. Here I imagine a letter and it's written. Takes about two-fifths of a second, your time. Hell, this is heaven, man. I can deluge Congress with letters telling every one of those mendacious sons of bitches exactly what he or she is, in maybe about half an hour. In spite of your Buddhist proclivities, when you imagine bliss you still must struggle to get there. By the way the Buddha has his place across town on Elysian Drive. We call him Bud. He's lost weight and got new dentures, and he looks a hell of a lot better than he used to. He always carries a jumping jack with him everywhere just for contemplation, but he doesn't make it jump. He only looks at it. Meanwhile Sidney and Dizzy, Uncle Ben and Papa Yancey, are over by Sylvester's Grot making the sweetest, cheerfulest blues you ever heard. The air, so called, is full of it. Poems are fluttering everywhere like seed from a cottonwood tree. Sam, the remarkable truth is I can do any fucking thing I want. Speaking of which there's this dazzling young Naomi who wiped out on I-80 just west of Truckee last winter, and I think this is the moment for me to go and pay her my respects. Don't go way. I'll be right back.

I’ve lived within half a mile of it for twenty years. West by the black iron weather-hen half-strangled with clematis on the garage roof I can locate it. Past a low ridge in the cliff face of a limestone dale there’s a cave in the bushes. When the old tigers were long since gone, leaving their teeth, the valley people would climb there with the dead they thought most useful; push them well in, take them out again, walk them around: ‘They’re coming! They’re coming’ We Malagasies love our second burials. We hire a band that comes in a van. Again with liquefaction almost done we hold our cherished ones in our arms. From the grave-clothes they fall in gobbets as dog-food falls from the can. We wrap them in fresh dry linen. They bless our lives with their happiness. Walk them around the valley. Drop here a finger for the god that is a rat or a raven, here a metatarsal to set under the hearth for luck. And what was luck? The afterlife back then was fairly long: nothing demented like for ever, nothing military. The afterlife would come to the party.

(for James Simmons) 1 I wake in a dark flat To the soft roar of the world. Pigeons neck on the white Roofs as I draw the curtains And look out over London Rain-fresh in the morning light. This is our element, the bright Reason on which we rely For the long-term solutions. The orators yap, and guns Go off in a back street; But the faith doesn’t die That in our time these things Will amaze the literate children In their non-sectarian schools And the dark places be Ablaze with love and poetry When the power of good prevails. What middle-class shits we are To imagine for one second That our privileged ideals Are divine wisdom, and the dim Forms that kneel at noon In the city not ourselves. 2 I am going home by sea For the first time in years. Somebody thumbs a guitar On the dark deck, while a gull Dreams at the masthead, The moon-splashed waves exult. At dawn the ship trembles, turns In a wide arc to back Shuddering up the grey lough Past lightship and buoy, Slipway and dry dock Where a naked bulb burns; And I step ashore in a fine rain To a city so changed By five years of war I scarcely recognize The places I grew up in, The faces that try to explain. But the hills are still the same Grey-blue above Belfast. Perhaps if I’d stayed behind And lived it bomb by bomb I might have grown up at last And learnt what is meant by home.