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I. AUBADE The dawn is here—and the long night through I have never seen thy face, Though my feet have worn the patient grass at the gate of thy dwelling-place. While the white moon sailed till, red in the west, it found the far world edge, No leaflet stirred of the leaves that climb to garland thy window ledge. Yet the vine had quivered from root to tip, and opened its flowers again, If only the low moon's light had glanced on a moving casement pane. Warm was the wind that entered in where the barrier stood ajar, And the curtain shook with its gentle breath, white as young lilies are; But there came no hand all the slow night through to draw the folds aside, (I longed as the moon and the vine-leaves longed!) or to set the casement wide. Three times in a low-hung nest there dreamed his five sweet notes a bird, And thrice my heart leaped up at the sound I thought thou hadst surely heard. But now that thy praise is caroled aloud by a thousand throats awake, Shall I watch from afar and silently, as under the moon, for thy sake? Nay—bold in the sun I speak thy name, I too, and I wait no more Thy hand, thy face, in the window niche, but thy kiss at the open door! II. NOCTURNE My darling, come!—The wings of the dark have wafted the sunset away, And there's room for much in a summer night, but no room for delay. A still moon looketh down from the sky, and a wavering moon looks up From every hollow in the green hills that holds a pool in its cup. The woodland borders are wreathed with bloom—elder, viburnum, rose; The young trees yearn on the breast of the wind that sighs of love as it goes. The small stars drown in the moon-washed blue but the greater ones abide, With Vega high in the midmost place, Altair not far aside. The glades are dusk, and soft the grass, where the flower of the elder gleams, Mist-white, moth-like, a spirit awake in the dark of forest dreams. Arcturus beckons into the east, Antares toward the south, That sendeth a zephyr sweet with thyme to seek for thy sweeter mouth. Shall the blossom wake, the star look down, all night and have naught to see? Shall the reeds that sing by the wind-brushed pool say nothing of thee and me? —My darling comes! My arms are content, my feet are guiding her way; There is room for much in a summer night, but no room for delay!

The place we lived was only an idea, Nothing to do with the failed cotton mill town Where a record shop, some bars, and a pizzeria Were all we ever cared to call our own. From nightmares of a happy life with kids We'd wake in boozy sweat to find the floor Still cobbled with bottle caps and take-out lids, Our twenties crumpled safely in a drawer, Unspent like all the hours ahead that night We met each other in the common room And found somehow without the help of light Our way across the river by the time Dawn spilled down from the campus to the banks We'd come to, single, sobered-up again, To see the morning glories give their thanks For things we had, and hardly noticed, then.

I’m oblivious to half the things going on, and when I hear my name it’s like, Oh, hey, let’s go. — TIM LINCECUM San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 24, 2012 ❖ A weeknight baseball game pledges its ticket holders a variety of extravagant processions and dalliances, and I am only one of its frequent enthusiasts spinning the turnstiles. Evenings here become lessons in piety, a refrain reduced to the simplest expression of worthier hungers. Troublesome, splendid concerns—how to carry myself like and through the city, how to enclose myself within some private calm—engage me at every level in the open-air stadium, and I ascend each level because I sit within the cheapest. Among the wind-whipped flags, I carry out a similar lashing upon myself with my mind’s tongue, albeit with good humor since I have yet to arrive at a serious period of my life. But of all cities, this one understands bouts of seriousness, and whether someone in the clutches of such crisis decides to change his life, there will be no objection among the ticket holders. Litter swirls and sweeps itself past them. Wildly customized hats aslant on children’s heads orbit the condiment table. A bearded boy stands haloed by the glowing hoard of cut spuds sitting beneath heat lamps. Like a cascade of song, endless beverages pour from trumpetlike spouts. I am still fair-skinned, perhaps a bit queer and dangerous, but childlike—a bizarrely perfected image of masculinity and prowess delivering my sinewy frame through this. I have always been barked at by certain types go evolve. ❖ I’ve been maligned, as you and this city know, while I wreck my physique by staring down barrel-chested men. My slim body—over-extended and sickly with the blackest slice of bread it could acquire— my incredible body used to be berserk with lust but now lives in the jubilee of my meekness. The open within this could bear passage for a terrific ship of my serious griefs, but it’s fine to stay buoyant through my naïve affection. I am X years old and still talking like this—incredible. Just incredible that the calamity that is my innocence gilds a pleroma unique to the day when the earth again of this city will fall apart. Call me freak—every man is a masterpiece but what is it to confuse this many creatures. ❖ The exaltation aware that I’m no longer dressed in just flesh and blood— I found firmament between my helmet and skull. Death was learning to speak through conjecture that our skinny long-haired pitching phenom had irreversibly lost his finesse. Called my body Brother Donkey, was burdened with all that impedes resuscitation— ❖ Humility of pacing, diligence of recall, set forth for me a taxonomy of announcements by which I may sequence these feelings toward a higher order of praise. Children have been raised by wolves, and even birds are overheard to answer questions, yet few inhabit that zone which adheres a beast's meekness to a human’s persistence of self-effacement—all against a weaker physique and panic throughout asserting itself. for Jason Morris ❖ A wilderness contains no diamond. And because a diamond has been built for us, we must be distant from regions that threaten our civility. I speak about civility with a laugh, of course, but it’s good-natured. “The universe falls apart and discloses a diamond,” according to the dictation transcribed by Jack Spicer, who was not quite Francis of Assisi, though both spent their lives in despair making toys to amuse the infant Christ. Whether the voice of dictation resembled that of our home team’s radio announcer or the San Damiano cross—“Francis, rebuild my church”—is a matter of taste, such as taste in furniture. At any rate, Hunter Pence grounds into yet another double play, and we are stuck in our deference. A city could be built out from the baselines of a diamond. Far from the hospital near where I live and where Spicer died, the city’s edge meets wilderness, and my reception crackles—how’s yours. I am trying to design my solace at a point shared by different stations, but the ballpark seagulls become a menace to my anxious antenna. Most nights they circle overhead until game’s end when it is safe to ransack the leftover food, but in an inning distended past anyone’s enjoyment—a hangover’s early arrival—they settle upon the outfield. Their skepticism must be a sad sight for the rookie at bat, a spooky parody of messianic expectation. I mean we are smack-dab within a quiet, null moment of life (on earth) winding down to a supposed eternal hurrah deemed paradise. ❖ These mornings I bike within a lyrical but discreetly resonant rule where I recite a settlement among recalcitrant systems to axe the psychopomps that took the best out from us to some distant historicity. They should fear it when I am so employed. I’m recently defined as a maker of my own oxygen, haircut, and enjoyment. Today I wanted to dissolve into the Giants victory procession up Market. It’s possession of a desire to be rid of my body but also to join this party because we’ve been fledged into city living, the captivation to a melodic apokalypsis. Don’t humiliate love by doubting these poems. I had to tell myself that—

needed          explanation because of the mystic nature        of the theory and our reliance          on collective belief I could not visualize the end the tools that paved the way broke the body the foundation the exact copy of the real our surfaces were covered our surfaces are all covered actual hands appear but then there is writing in the cave       we were deeply impressed as in addicted to results oh and dedication training     the idea of loss of life in our work we call this emotion how a poem enters into the world there is nothing wrong with the instrument as here I would raise my voice but the human being and the world cannot be equated aside from the question of whether or not we are alone and other approaches to nothingness (the term “subject”)(the term “only”) also opinion and annihilation (the body’s minutest sensation of time) (the world, it is true, has not yet been destroyed) intensification      void we are amazed uselessness is the last form love takes so liquid till the forgone conclusion here we are, the forgone conclusion so many messages transmitted they will never acquire meaning do you remember          my love my archive touch me (here) give birth to       a single idea touch where it does not lead to war show me    exact spot climb the stairs lie on the bed have faith nerves wearing only moonlight lie down lie still patrol yr cage be a phenomenon at the bottom below the word intention, lick past it rip     years find the burning matter love allows it (I think) push past the freedom (smoke) push past     intelligence (smoke) whelm      sprawl (favorite city)   (god’s tiny voices) hand over mouth let light arrive let the past strike us and go drift        undo if it please the dawn lean down say      hurt      undo in your mouth be pleased where does it say where does it say this is the mother tongue there is in my mouth a ladder climb down presence of world impassable       gap pass I am beside myself you are inside me       as history We exist         Meet me

People looking at the sea, makes them feel less terrible about themselves, the sea's behaving abominably, seems never satisfied, what it throws away it dashes down then wants back, yanks back. Comparatively, thinks one vice president, what are my frauds but nudged along misunderstandings already there? I can't believe I ever worried about my betrayals, thinks the analyst benefitting facially from the sea's raged-up mist. Obviously I'm not the only one suffering an identity crisis knows the boy who wants to be a lawyer no more. Nothing can stay long, cogitates the dog, so maybe a life of fetch is not a wasted life. And the sea heaves and cleaves and seethes, shoots snot out, goes to bed only to wake shouting in the mansion of the night, pacing, pacing, making tea then spilling it, sudden outloud laughter snort, Oh what the heck, I probably drove myself crazy, thinks the sea, kissing all those strangers, forgiving them no matter what, liars in confession, vomitters of plastics and fossil fuels but what a stricken elixir I've become even to my becalmed depths, while through its head swim a million fishes seemingly made of light eating each other.

I didn’t get much sleep last night thinking about underwear Have you ever stopped to consider underwear in the abstract When you really dig into it some shocking problems are raised Underwear is something we all have to deal with Everyone wears some kind of underwear The Pope wears underwear I hope The Governor of Louisiana wears underwear I saw him on TV He must have had tight underwear He squirmed a lot Underwear can really get you in a bind You have seen the underwear ads for men and women so alike but so different Women’s underwear holds things up Men’s underwear holds things down Underwear is one thing men and women have in common Underwear is all we have between us You have seen the three-color pictures with crotches encircled to show the areas of extra strength and three-way stretch promising full freedom of action Don’t be deceived It’s all based on the two-party system which doesn’t allow much freedom of choice the way things are set up America in its Underwear struggles thru the night Underwear controls everything in the end Take foundation garments for instance They are really fascist forms of underground government making people believe something but the truth telling you what you can or can’t do Did you ever try to get around a girdle Perhaps Non-Violent Action is the only answer Did Gandhi wear a girdle? Did Lady Macbeth wear a girdle? Was that why Macbeth murdered sleep? And that spot she was always rubbing— Was it really in her underwear? Modern anglosaxon ladies must have huge guilt complexes always washing and washing and washing Out damned spot Underwear with spots very suspicious Underwear with bulges very shocking Underwear on clothesline a great flag of freedom Someone has escaped his Underwear May be naked somewhere Help! But don’t worry Everybody’s still hung up in it There won’t be no real revolution And poetry still the underwear of the soul And underwear still covering a multitude of faults in the geological sense— strange sedimentary stones, inscrutable cracks! If I were you I’d keep aside an oversize pair of winter underwear Do not go naked into that good night And in the meantime keep calm and warm and dry No use stirring ourselves up prematurely ‘over Nothing’ Move forward with dignity hand in vest Don’t get emotional And death shall have no dominion There’s plenty of time my darling Are we not still young and easy Don’t shout

A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers, tied up with canvas straps—like classical music’s birthday gift to the criminally insane—is gently nudged without its legs out an eighth-floor window on 62nd street. It dangles in April air from the neck of the movers’ crane, Chopin-shiny black lacquer squares and dirty white crisscross patterns hanging like the second-to-last note of a concerto played on the edge of the seat, the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over—it's a piano being pushed out of a window and lowered down onto a flatbed truck!— and I’m trying to teach math in the building across the street. Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned? All the greatest common factors are delivered by long-necked cranes and flatbed trucks or come through everything, even air. Like snow. See, snow falls for the first time every year, and every year my students rush to the window as if snow were more interesting than math, which, of course, it is. So please. Let me teach like a Steinway, spinning slowly in April air, so almost-falling, so hinderingly dangling from the neck of the movers’ crane. So on the edge of losing everything. Let me teach like the first snow, falling.

When the sun and moon were in quadrature, when the garden had become a wilderness and the clock refused to strike When the old year died and the sand walked into the sea with the neap tide When you had been too long away and your old snowblue footprints clotted and hesitated in the clay When the worry of this undone song unsung so long so loud my head I went inside and under to let the flood run free

There is an ash tree behind this house. You can see it from our bedroom window. If you stare at it for long enough, you’ll see it drop a leaf. Stare at it now, you said, and notice the moment a leaf strips away from its branch, giving a twirl. Consider this. The ash tree unclothes itself Octoberly. From beside our bed, fingering the curtain, observe the dark candles at the top of that tree, naked and alert, tending to the breeze. A sheet of ice between the rooftops and this noiseless sky has turned the air inside out. Black veins of branches shake against the blue screen on which they hang. Small mammals are hibernating in pellets of warm air under ground. But, in spite of the cold, this ash tree does not shy from shrugging off its coat, sloping its nude shoulders to the night. So, you said, undo, unbutton, unclasp, slowly remove. Let down your hair, breathe out. Stand stark in this room until we remember how not to feel the chill. Stand at the window, lift your arms right up like a tree. Yes — like that. Watch leaves drop.

Falling in love with a mustache is like saying you can fall in love with the way a man polishes his shoes which, of course, is one of the things that turns on my tuned-up engine those trim buckled boots (I feel like an advertisement for men’s fashions when I think of your ankles) Yeats was hung up with a girl’s beautiful face and I find myself a bad moralist, a failing aesthetician, a sad poet, wanting to touch your arms and feel the muscles that make a man’s body have so much substance, that makes a woman lean and yearn in that direction that makes her melt/ she is a rainy day in your presence the pool of wax under a burning candle the foam from a waterfall You are more beautiful than any Harley-Davidson She is the rain, waits in it for you, finds blood spotting her legs from the long ride.