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I’m not yet comfortable with the word, its short clean woosh that sounds like life. At dinner last night my single girls said in admonition, “It’s not wife-approved” about a friend’s upcoming trip. Their eyes rolled up and over and out their pretty young heads. Wife, why does it sound like a job? “I need a wife” the famous feminist wrote, “a wife that will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced if need be.” A word that could be made easily into maid. A wife that does, fixes soothes, honors, obeys, Housewife, fishwife, bad wife, good wife, what’s the word for someone who stares long into the morning, unable to even fix tea some days, the kettle steaming over loud like a train whistle, she who cries in the mornings, she who tears a hole in the earth and cannot stop grieving, the one who wants to love you, but often isn’t good at even that, the one who doesn’t want to be diminished by how much she wants to be yours.

Honored when the butterfly lights on my shoulder. Next stop: a rotting log.

i thought you had a summer home in barcelona       because i had seen pictures of you in front of la sagrada família        and knew your father had money. so maybe that’s why when i first met you i didn’t know what to say,    someone too worldly to have anything to learn from me. then there was your halloween party where i managed not to be in any of the photos.     perhaps it was for the best. upstairs,     on a couch i’ll never sit on again, an image of us has started to yellow:        me, blushing because    jamie lee curtis’s breasts are on screen, and you, nervous because all your other guests                            left us alone. nothing happened. at least for another year or so. sometimes it’s hard to guess how long film                 needs to be exposed. i wanted to get the colors right.

A circle. What was needed was a circuit, and a good operating system. What’s within is without being seen to be so. Optical anomaly as unexceptional. Four left’s a square. One way turning system until it becomes its other way. A passive insistence on multiples until that divorces itself, becomes single. A single pitch made up of the sounds of multiples. Conduction, instrumental absence. Fundamentals establish separate planets. Similarity wars upon their lines, planes. Said well, here opens, his, sits at its bottom. The bodies. Spoke well, agreed in kind, general. But the way of its expression requires hurt and then, treatment of skin for leather clothes or whatever, it’s old, sometimes, often. Depending on the question, it can be the answer. One shouldn’t be proud to not have it. A knee, an elbow, three arms up. Then a last one, a fourth. Last and happiest, willing, fully skin end. The whey, foam, on the head of the safest society in human civilization. Amnesia to people who will actually harm and hurt.

Chop, hack, slash; chop, hack, slash; cleaver, boning knife, ax— not even the clumsiest clod of a butcher could do this so crudely, time, as do you, dismember me, render me, leave me slop in a pail, one part of my body a hundred years old, one not even there anymore, another still riven with idiot vigor, voracious as the youth I was for whom everything always was going too slowly, too slowly. It was me then who chopped, slashed, through you, across you, relished you, gorged on you, slugged your invisible liquor down raw. Now you're polluted; pulse, clock, calendar taint you, befoul you, you suck at me, pull at me, barbed wire knots of memory tear me, my heart hangs, inert, a tag-end of tissue, firing, misfiring, trying to heave itself back to its other way with you. But was there ever really any other way with you? When I ran as though for my life, wasn't I fleeing from you, or for you? Wasn't I frightened you'd fray, leave me nothing but shreds? Aren't I still? When I snatch at one of your moments, and clutch it, a pebble, a planet, isn't it wearing away in my hand as though I, not you, were the ocean of acid, the corrosive in I which dissolve? Wait, though, wait: I should tell you too how happy I am, how I love it so much, all of it, chopping and slashing and all. Please know I love especially you, how every morning you turn over the languorous earth, for how would she know otherwise to do dawn, to do dusk, when all she hears from her speech-creatures is "Wait!"? We whose anguished wish is that our last word not be "Wait."

of course, I may die in the next ten minutes and I’m ready for that but what I’m really worried about is that my editor-publisher might retire even though he is ten years younger than I. it was just 25 years ago (I was at that ripe old age of 45) when we began our unholy alliance to test the literary waters, neither of us being much known. I think we had some luck and still have some of same yet the odds are pretty fair that he will opt for warm and pleasant afternoons in the garden long before I. writing is its own intoxication while publishing and editing, attempting to collect bills carries its own attrition which also includes dealing with the petty bitchings and demands of many so-called genius darlings who are not. I won’t blame him for getting out and hope he sends me photos of his Rose Lane, his Gardenia Avenue. will I have to seek other promulgators? that fellow in the Russian fur hat? or that beast in the East with all that hair in his ears, with those wet and greasy lips? or will my editor-publisher upon exiting for that world of Trollius and trellis hand over the machinery of his former trade to a cousin, a daughter or some Poundian from Big Sur? or will he just pass the legacy on to the Shipping Clerk who will rise like Lazarus, fingering new-found importance? one can imagine terrible things: “Mr. Chinaski, all your work must now be submitted in Rondo form and typed triple-spaced on rice paper.” power corrupts, life aborts and all you have left is a bunch of warts. “no, no, Mr. Chinaski: Rondo form!” “hey, man,” I’ll ask, “haven’t you heard of the thirties?” “the thirties? what’s that?” my present editor-publisher and I at times did discuss the thirties, the Depression and some of the little tricks it taught us— like how to endure on almost nothing and move forward anyhow. well, John, if it happens enjoy your divertissement to plant husbandry, cultivate and aerate between bushes, water only in the early morning, spread shredding to discourage weed growth and as I do in my writing: use plenty of manure. and thank you for locating me there at 5124 DeLongpre Avenue somewhere between alcoholism and madness. together we laid down the gauntlet and there are takers even at this late date still to be found as the fire sings through the trees.

might have been. Certainly these ashes might have been pleasures. Pilgrims on their way to the Holy Places remark this place. Isn’t it plain to all that these mounds were palaces? This was once a city among men, a gathering together of spirit. It was measured by the Lord and found wanting. It was measured by the Lord and found wanting, destroyd by the angels that inhabit longing. Surely this is Great Sodom where such cries as if men were birds flying up from the swamp ring in our ears, where such fears that were once desires walk, almost spectacular, stalking the desolate circles, red eyed. This place rumord to have been a City surely was, separated from us by the hand of the Lord. The devout have laid out gardens in the desert, drawn water from springs where the light was blighted. How tenderly they must attend these friendships or all is lost. All is lost. Only the faithful hold this place green. Only the faithful hold this place green where the crown of fiery thorns descends. Men that once lusted grow listless. A spirit wrappd in a cloud, ashes more than ashes, fire more than fire, ascends. Only these new friends gather joyous here, where the world like Great Sodom lies under fear. The world like Great Sodom lies under Love and knows not the hand of the Lord that moves. This the friends teach where such cries as if men were birds fly up from the crowds gatherd and howling in the heat of the sun. In the Lord Whom the friends have named at last Love the images and loves of the friends never die. This place rumord to have been Sodom is blessd in the Lord’s eyes.

I slumbered with your poems on my breast Spread open as I dropped them half-read through Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb To see, if in a dream they brought of you, I might not have the chance I missed in life Through some delay, and call you to your face First soldier, and then poet, and then both, Who died a soldier-poet of your race. I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained— And one thing more that was not then to say: The Victory for what it lost and gained. You went to meet the shell's embrace of fire On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day The war seemed over more for you than me, But now for me than you—the other way. How over, though, for even me who knew The foe thrust back unsafe beyond the Rhine, If I was not to speak of it to you And see you pleased once more with words of mine?

To Him who is feared a Crown will I bring. Thrice Holy each day acclaim Him my King; At altars, ye mighty, proclaim loud His praise, And multitudes too may whisper His lays. Ye angels, ye men, whose good deeds He records— Sing, He is One, His is good, our yoke is the Lord’s! Praise Him trembling to-day, His mercy is wide— Ye who fear for His wrath—it doth not abide! Ye seraphim, high above storm clouds may sing; Men and angels make music, th’ All-seeing is king. As ye open your lips, at His Name they shall cease— Transgression and sin—in their place shall be peace; And thrice shall the Shophar re-echo your song On mountain and altar to whom both belong.

Oft have I thrilled at deeds of high emprise, And yearned to venture into realms unknown, Thrice blessed she, I deemed, whom God had shown How to achieve great deeds in woman’s guise. Yet what discov’ry by expectant eyes Of foreign shores, could vision half the throne Full gained by her, whose power fully grown Exceeds the conquerors of th’ uncharted skies? So would I be this woman whom the world Avows its benefactor; nobler far, Than Sybil, Joan, Sappho, or Egypt’s queen. In the alembic forged her shafts and hurled At pain, diseases, waging a humane war; Greater than this achievement, none, I ween.