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If you’re love’s lover and look for love cold smoke the dog called bashfulness beware for your conversation is a hindrancy this poem isn’t interested I’ll bill you Why’d the mad one make madness in a thousand works that wild one make a thousand wild works of wiles? now he disrobes, now he’s so fast now he likes intoxicating substances and wants to die Since a spider spies and eats a whole deer behold what the web of Zoroastrianism will do! Since the love of nighties had positive market outlook, how will it be with “He took His servant in nighties?” Have you not seen the book of Waisa and Ramin? Have you not heard the tales of Wamiq and ‘Adra? You hike your denim so you don’t wear water do you have to pull that bridge stunt over & over? The way of love is filth and I’m drunk the storm storms—how should a storm calm? you’ll be the jewel in the ring of lovers If you’re insistent on assuming the consequence of jewelry so, say it, how does the earth hurt if we fuck? what gifts would be unreasonable? it’s not cool to beat a drum when yr. in bed, son, and put your erection in the middle of the desert Listen to the sounds of fucking and coming, under the sky, which “Orientals, perhaps owing to some optical peculiarity, see as green.” When you’re drunk take your clothes off Heaven is great, Orion is confused how the world is high and killed by love which is high and killed! When the sun comes out, where do nighties hide? When the come comes, where does the pent go? I’m done. Speak to me, soul’s soul’s soul From desire of whom from whose desire every throat was cut

Like buying a ticket inland to barely understandable provinces with no language at all I bargain and pay for this warm planet tipping the scales of wrist and elbow spreading my fingers with its weight to read my life-line my heart-line my seams and mounds of fortune. I stare into the sun on smoggy evenings the throat of an old street oven that seems to expand as I anticipate its glow engulfing my solar system. I open my mouth and China fills it sliding into tartness forcing my lips to begin its name over and over then finger-painting my chin with the gel of ripeness. I swallow the pabulum of infancy the sweet mucilage of age. It makes me eat like a person alone who hasn’t loved for years. There seems to be no core the few black seeds hardly noticed in its one undifferentiated cell other tongue that makes mine lazy    the flavour . . . the flavour is . . . my hand moves like an incantation through an alley of blunt flames that can be eaten with a spoon. I gorge on a people’s staple fat Buddha   squat Amida repeat three times persimmon persimmon persimmon and go to heaven.

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker slapped the back of my head and made me stand in the corner for not knowing the difference between persimmon and precision. How to choose persimmons. This is precision. Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted. Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one will be fragrant. How to eat: put the knife away, lay down newspaper. Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat. Chew the skin, suck it, and swallow. Now, eat the meat of the fruit, so sweet, all of it, to the heart. Donna undresses, her stomach is white. In the yard, dewy and shivering with crickets, we lie naked, face-up, face-down. I teach her Chinese. Crickets:chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten. Naked:   I’ve forgotten. Ni, wo:   you and me. I part her legs, remember to tell her she is beautiful as the moon. Other words that got me into trouble were fight and fright,wren and yarn. Fight was what I did when I was frightened, Fright was what I felt when I was fighting. Wrens are small, plain birds, yarn is what one knits with. Wrens are soft as yarn. My mother made birds out of yarn. I loved to watch her tie the stuff; a bird, a rabbit, a wee man. Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class and cut it up so everyone could taste a Chinese apple. Knowing it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat but watched the other faces. My mother said every persimmon has a sun inside, something golden, glowing, warm as my face. Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper, forgotten and not yet ripe. I took them and set both on my bedroom windowsill, where each morning a cardinal sang,The sun, the sun. Finally understanding he was going blind, my father sat up all one night waiting for a song, a ghost. I gave him the persimmons, swelled, heavy as sadness, and sweet as love. This year, in the muddy lighting of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking for something I lost. My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs, black cane between his knees, hand over hand, gripping the handle. He’s so happy that I’ve come home. I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question. All gone, he answers. Under some blankets, I find a box. Inside the box I find three scrolls. I sit beside him and untie three paintings by my father: Hibiscus leaf and a white flower. Two cats preening. Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth. He raises both hands to touch the cloth, asks,Which is this? This is persimmons, Father. Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk, the strength, the tense precision in the wrist. I painted them hundreds of times eyes closed. These I painted blind. Some things never leave a person: scent of the hair of one you love, the texture of persimmons, in your palm, the ripe weight.

In the rearview, fog extinguishes the hills of new money—mansions on acres away from road or sight. Their architected privacy, windows to look out at a land that won't look back. The fog's secure drapery. It's space to dance through they buy and what one might call "dappled light" moving across their acres, light through their oaks moving over their mares, brushed to a sheen. • Palms of sugar cubes. Soft snorting, I bet. Here, Muybridge proved their horses fly a moment. In their homes, they can't hear each other call from foyer to pool house. I am jealous of this loneliness most of all—loneliness delimited by colonnade and cold pressed juices. They make excellent corpses, among the expensive flowers.... I imagine hills and hills dappled like this.

Don’t take it personal , they said; but I did, I took it all quite personal— the breeze and the river and the color of the fields; the price of grapefruit and stamps, the wet hair of women in the rain— And I cursed what hurt me and I praised what gave me joy, the most simple-minded of possible responses. The government reminded me of my father, with its deafness and its laws, and the weather reminded me of my mom, with her tropical squalls.

for Vivek Narayanan it isn't matter isn't doesn't matter does it compared with what shan't have known your lines are all lines of approach this dog's eyelids this delhi dog's intentional eyelids, this doorway dog, this dog fellating beggars delhi exuding matter nictitation cannot extrude America to england the third nictitating poetry is over eyelid cannot eject America to england large foreign bodies poetry is over over and out surgery rarely happens over and ours dogs aren't loved over here, here! sufficiently foreign bodies remain requiring incision mind yourself it happened before you as you go you're nothing cold sunshine practised apprehension

Like guns and cars, cameras are fantasy-machines whose use is addictive. —Susan Sontag I place a photograph of my uncle on my computer desktop, which means I learn to ignore it. He stands by a tank, helmet tilting to his right, bootlaces tightened as if stitching together a wound. Alive the hand brings up a cigarette we won't see him taste. Last night I smoked one on the steps outside my barn apartment. A promise I broke myself. He promised himself he wouldn't and did. I smell my fingers and I am smelling his. Hands of smoke and gunpowder. Hands that promised they wouldn't, but did. This album is a stop-loss . By a dim lantern or in the latrine he flips through it. He looks at himself looking nearly as he does— closest to himself then as he could be, just learning how to lean into his new body. He suspends there by standing order, a spreading fire in his chest, his groin. He is on stage for us to see him, see him? He stands in the noontime sun. A young soldier (pictured above) the son of an imam, brother to six, is among the latest casualties in the military campaign of Susangerd. your whole body in a photo your whole body sitting on a crate pressing your eyesocket to the viewfinder of a bazooka crouched as you balance the metal tube on your shoulder in one you guide a belt of ammo into the untiring weapon proud your elbow out as if mid-waltz your frame strong and lightly supporting the gun a kind of smile ruining the picture You’re posing. You’re scared. A body falls and you learn to step over a loosened head. You begin to appreciate the heft of your boot soles, how they propel you, how they can kick in a face– the collapse of a canopy bed in an aerial bombardment, mosquito netting doused in napalm–cheekbones fragile as moth wings beneath the heel. You tighten your laces until they hold together a capable man. Whatever rains, the weight of your feet swings you forward, goose-stepping pendulums a body less and less yours– a body, God knows, is not what makes you anyway. So the hands that said they never would begin finding grenade pins around their fingers, begin flipping through this album with soot under their nails you were not ready But they issued the shovel and the rifle and you dug But to watch you sitting there between the sandbags But to watch the sand spilling out the bullet holes But what did they expect But what did they really think a sheet of metal could prevent But I sat rolling little ears of pasta off my thumb like helmets But it was not a table of fallen men But my hand registered fatigue But the men in fatigues were tired of sleeping in shifts But you snuck into town and dialed home until you wrote your fingers were tired But the code for Shiraz was down But all of Shiraz was down But the sheet lightning above the Ferris wheel of rusted bolts But I am sure they are alright you wrote Well to reassure yourself But the wind like an old mouth shaking the unnamed evergreen outside my window But what I mean is I'd like very much to talk a bit Hello Operation Ramadan was an offensive in the Iran-Iraq War . It was launched by Iran in July 1982 near Basra and featured the use of human wave attacks in one of the largest land battles since World War II . Aftermath :The operation was the first of many disastrous offensives which cost thousands of lives on both sides. This one in general boosted the casualty limit up to 80,000 killed, 200,000 wounded, and 45,000 captured. In retrospect, the Iranians lacked effective command and control, air support, and logistics to sustain an attack in the first place. Saddam Hussein offered several ceasefire attempts in the following year, none of which were accepted by the Revolutionary regime. [6] [dead link] Congratulations and condolences They would say That's the house of a martyr pointing with their nose That's the mother of a martyr They are building a museum for the martyrs. Some metal shelf a white archival box with his personal effects . I am attempting my own myth-making. He didn’t want to have anything

Now when I walk around at lunchtime I have only two charms in my pocket an old Roman coin Mike Kanemitsu gave me and a bolt-head that broke off a packing case when I was in Madrid the others never brought me too much luck though they did help keep me in New York against coercion but now I'm happy for a time and interested I walk through the luminous humidity passing the House of Seagram with its wet and its loungers and the construction to the left that closed the sidewalk if I ever get to be a construction worker I'd like to have a silver hat please and get to Moriarty's where I wait for LeRoi and hear who wants to be a mover and shaker the last five years my batting average is .016 that's that, and LeRoi comes in and tells me Miles Davis was clubbed 12 times last night outside birdland by a cop a lady asks us for a nickel for a terrible disease but we don't give her one we don't like terrible diseases, then we go eat some fish and some ale it's cool but crowded we don't like Lionel Trilling we decide, we like Don Allen we don't like Henry James so much we like Herman Melville we don't want to be in the poets' walk in San Francisco even we just want to be rich and walk on girders in our silver hats I wonder if one person out of the 8,000,000 is thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi and buy a strap for my wristwatch and go back to work happy at the thought possibly so

There are many opportunities here for unrequited friendship, the offer letter said. All you need is a chain saw and die grinder. In this spirit I force my eyes across your message, revisiting that due diligence tone you do so well. I’m searching for some whispered twist or shout, but all emotion’s leveled, the way a child will draw a snowman and a mansion the same size. What is a dedicated icemaker dedicated to? Do you really think those shades you wear above your head will keep the sun out of  your mind? Rainbows stick to any abject object. That’s why I’m wearing that same old funky dress. When you kissed my forehead it felt like the priest’s thumbscrew touch rubbing in the dust- thou-art Ash Wednesday smudge. I’ve learned the dance instructor’s expository gestures. Now I’m learning tangos to be danced alone. While comrades buff officious cases barfed from their brains — eight parts moon venom one part nose waste — I ask can mine be personally engraved? I’m living in a please state, smarming how I’ve long admired your hardscape of artists morphed to small appliances. That being said, I’m having issues. Do you really think that scarf  will keep your snowman warm?

When I see the two cops laughing after one of them gets shot because this is TV and one says while putting pressure on the wound, Haha, you're going to be fine, and the other says,I know, haha!, as the ambulance arrives— I know the men are white. I think of a clip from the hours of amateur footage I've seen when another man at an intersection gets shot, falls, and bleeds from a hole the viewer knows exists only by the way the dark red pools by the standing cop's feet, gun now holstered, who yells the audience back to the sidewalk. I know which one is dying while black and which one stands by white. I think this morning about the student in my class who wrote a free write line on the video I played that showed a man pouring water on his own chest, "...the homoerotic scene against a white sky" with no other men present.Who gets to see and who follows what scrip t? I ask my students. Whose lines are these and by what hand are they written?