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I turned to speak to God, About the world’s despair; But to make bad matters worse, I found God wasn’t there. God turned to speak to me (Don’t anybody laugh) God found I wasn’t there— At least not over half. Originally appeared in the April 1936 issue of Poetry magazine.

What I adore is not horses, with their modern domestic life span of 25 years. What I adore is a bug that lives only one day, especially if it’s a terrible day, a day of train derailment or chemical lake or cop admits to cover-up, a day when no one thinks of anything else, least of all that bug. I know how it feels, born as I’ve been into these rotting times, as into sin. Everybody’s busy, so distraught they forget to kill me, and even that won’t keep me alive. I share my home not with horses, but with a little dog who sees poorly at dusk and menaces stumps, makes her muscle known to every statue. I wish she could have a single day of   language, so that I might reassure her don’t be afraid— our whole world is dead and so can do you no harm.

Adolescent white pelicans squawk, rustle, flap their wings, lift off in a ragged spiral at imaginary danger. What danger on this island in the middle of Marble Lake? They’re off to feel the lift of wind under their iridescent wings, because they were born to fly, because they have nothing else to do, because wind and water are their elements, their Bach, their Homer, Shakespeare, and Spielberg. They wheel over the lake, the little farms, the tourist village with their camera eyes. In autumn something urges them toward Texas marshes. They follow their appetites and instincts, unlike the small beetles creeping along geometric roads, going toward small boxes, toward lives as narrow or as wide as the pond, as glistening or as gray as the sky. They do not know why. They fly, they fly.

I Promises to keep was a lie, he had nothing. Through the woods. Over the river and into the pain. It is an addict's talk of quitting as she's smacking at a vein. He was always going into the woods. It was he who wrote,The best way out is always through. You'd think a shrink, but no, a poet. He saw the woods and knew. The forest is the one that holds promises. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, they fill with a quiet snow. Miles are traveled as we sleep. He steers his horse off the road. Among the trees now, the blizzard is a dusting. Holes in the canopy make columns of snowstorm, lit from above. His little horse thinks it is queer. They go deeper, sky gets darker. It's the darkest night of the year. II He had no promises to keep, nothing pending. Had no bed to head to, measurably away in miles. He was a freak like me, monster of the dawn. Whose woods these are I think I know, his house is in the village though. In the middle of life he found himself lost in a dark woods. I discovered myself in a somber forest. In between my breasts and breaths I got lost. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I've got promises to keep, smiles to go before I leap. I'm going into the woods. They're lovely dark, and deep, which is what I want, deep lovely darkness. No one has asked, let alone taken, a promise of me, no one will notice if I choose bed or rug, couch or forest deep. It doesn't matter where I sleep. It doesn't matter where I sleep.

my god all the days we have lived thru saying not this one, not this, not now, not yet, this week doesn’t count, was lost, this month was shit, what a year, it sucked, it flew, that decade was for what? i raised my kids, they grew i lost two pasts–i am not made of them and they are through. we forget what we remember: each of the five the fevered few days we used to fall in love.

The sky was laced with Irish cream mist, that mellow tan overhanging the hills, which were studded with deathmasks and baskets spilling flowers from both ends. We scanned the haze for lightning. They were studded with earthworks and iron forks inserted between leaves of grass, jacks and bearings and balances, sinuous fingers of pink marble and synovial joints in bronze. But if we got struck by lightning—not a lot; say glanced, or shaved, there was a chance (we heard) it wouldn't be so bad: a little refreshing, a little like La Vita Nuova in a readable translation. "In a flash," as they say, we could acquire a self-renewing subscription to classical music (it's always classical in the scientific literature) accessible at all hours and piped into the forebrain from the hypothalamus. This space available for celebrations. Someone visits for the first time and says, "Oh, let's get married here" and guests drive in and eye the hors d'oeuvre tent before finding a folding chair. But it isn't long before the mirroring going on between, for instance, the sculptures and the trees—the trees looking more like sculptures, the sculptures getting seasoned, growing bark (patinas) even—it isn't long before it hypnotizes the guests. Who would wear a wedding dress in such a charged atmosphere, having heard that ghost story of the wedding dress with the power to possess the soul of the bride? Actually it was a horror flick from somewhere, Tokyo or Calcutta . . . It was a wedding dress that took possession of the soul of its bride the minute she saw it in the mirror, or it saw itself—and this we know happens, but not with the malevolence of this dress that wreaked havoc at the reception, set the hall on fire and dropped a crate of champagne on the string trio. "Aha," cries the groom as he realizes the chrysalis of evil he must divide from his bride: "You are hardly an unruffled surface!" No you would not want to wear that dress amid the wireless network of gigantic sculptures and their wind-scraped murmuring. When the wind stirs, is it not the gardeners? The gardeners are invisible, they don't garden during business hours. As you'd put a dye in the air in order to see it, a bird sucked through its drafts advertises the invisible and upgrades it to naked.

A bullet is made of copper or lead. Gunpowder is poured into the case. The firing pin hits the primer at the back of the bullet which starts the explosion.  Altogether, the bullet and the case are typically about two inches in length and weigh a few ounces. My father said that the Vietcongs told him and the other prisoners while in "re-education" camp that they were not worth a bullet. They would work for the Vietcongs and then die. A bamboo tree is smooth, long with roots that hold the earth with the strong grip of green knuckles and fingers. They are used to build houses, fences, etc. A bamboo tree can weigh sixty pounds or more and be twenty feet tall. The prisoners were forced to walk barefoot up the mountains and carry bamboo back to the camp. Due to the weight of the bamboo, they were only able to carry one at a time.

Without even knowing it, I have believed in you for a long time. When I looked at my blood under a microscope I could see truth multiplying over and over. —Not police sirens, nor history books, not stage-three lymphoma persuaded me but your honeycombs and beetles; the dry blond fascicles of grass thrust up above the January snow. Your postcards of Picasso and Matisse, from the museum series on European masters. When my friend died on the way to the hospital it was not his death that so amazed me but that the driver of the cab did not insist upon the fare. Quotation marks: what should we put inside them? Shall I say “I”  “have been hurt” “by”  “you,”  you neglectful monster? I speak now because experience has shown me that my mind will never be clear for long. I am more thick-skinned and male, more selfish, jealous, and afraid than ever in my life. “For my heart is tangled in thy nets; my soul enmeshed in cataracts of time...” The breeze so cool today, the sky smeared with bluish grays and whites. The parade for the slain police officer goes past the bakery and the smell of fresh bread makes the mourners salivate against their will.

The alternative to flying is cowardice, And what is said against it excuses, excuses; Its want was always heavy in those men’s bodies Who foresaw it in some detail; and failing that, The rest were shown through its skyey heats and eases In sleep, awoke uncertain whether their waking cry Had been falling fear only, or love and falling fear. When the sudden way was shown, its possibility In terms of the familiar at last shown, (How absurdly simple the principle after all!) Any tyrant should have sensed it was controversial: Instrument of freedom; rights, not Wrights; Danger should never be given out publicly. The men could easily have been disposed of, They and their fragile vehicle. Then the sky Would perhaps have darkened, earth shaken, nothing more. In practice the martyrdom has been quiet, statistical, A fair price. This is what airmen believe. The transition to battle was smooth from here. Who resents one bond resents another, And who has unshouldered earth-restraining hand Is not likely to hear out more reasonable tyrannies. The woods where he died were dark even at sunup, Oak and long-needle pine that had come together Earlier, and waited for the event at the field’s edge. At sunset when the sky behind was gay One had seen the lugubrious shapes of the trees, Bronze and terrible, but had never known the reason, Never thought they were waiting for someone in particular. They took him at night, when they were at their darkest. How they at last convinced him is not known: The crafty engine would not fall for their softness, (Oh, where were you then, six hundred cunning horses?) In the end it had torn hungrily through the brush To lie alone in the desired clearing. Nor the wings; (And you, with your wide silver margin of safety?) They were for the field, surely, where they so often Had eased their load to ground. No, the invitation Must have been sent to the aviator in person: Perhaps a sly suggestion of carelessness, A whispered invitation perhaps to death. He was not badly disfigured compared to some, But even a little stream of blood where death is Will whimper across a forest floor, Run through that whole forest shouting. Him now unpersoned, warm, and quite informal, Dead as alive, raise softly sober interns; Lift gently, God, this wholly airborne one. Leads out all his life to this violent wood. Note that he had not fought one public battle, Met any fascist with his skill, but died As it were in bed, the waste conspicuous; This is a costly wreck and costly to happen on: Praise and humility sound through its siren shrieks, And dedication follows in car. The morning came up foolish with pink clouds To say that God counts ours a cunning time, Our losses part of an old secret, somehow no loss.

With statements by President Donald Trump I write my body, as border between We have some bad hombres here this rock & the absence of water. & we’re going to get them out. I cut myself with a scimitar, When Mexico sends its people, as political documentation. they’re not sending their best. How do you write about the violence They’re not sending you. of every man you’ve ever loved? They’re sending people Macho, you that have lots of problems breathe bright in the neocolony, & they’re bringing those problems to us a problem of Empire pulling They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing the capitalist threads of my border. crime. They’re rapists. Empire: you were so sterile Mexico’s court system [is]corrupt. & shiny with your dead man’s coins I want nothing to do with Mexico & castration, your white roses other than to build an impenetrable & that trash bag full of a Mexican WALL & stop them from ripping woman’s dark hair. Empire: you off U.S. I love the Mexican people, made us hungry for the glint but Mexico is not our friend. of machismo, the dim glare They’re killing us at the border of marianismo. Tonight on TV, & they’re killing us on jobs & trade. muted montages of the largest FIGHT! Happy #CincodeMayo! ICE raid in Texas. I drink The best taco bowls are made pink champagne in a hotel bar, in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! & correct the pronunciation of   my name.