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O! wonderful for weight and whiteness! Ideolog whose absolutes Are always proven right By white and then More white and white again, Winning the same argument year After year by making the opposition Disappear! O! dear miniature of infinity with no End in sight and no snow- Flake exactly like Another, all A little different no Matter how many may fall, Just like our own DNA or the human face Eternal! O! still keep covering the street And sidewalks, cemeteries, even Our twice-shoveled drive, And all that is alive, With geometries that sleet Will freeze into Death's Impromptu vision of a heaven Wholly white! For we know who your sponsor is, whose will You so immensely serve, Whose chill is more severe Than any here. Though his name may be unspoken, His commandments are unbroken, And every monument that you erect Belongs to him!

Hell-raiser, razor-feathered risers, windhover over Peshawar, power's joystick-blithe thousand-mile scythe, proxy executioner's proxy ax pinged by a proxy server, winged victory, pilot cipher unburdened by aught but fuel and bombs, fool of God, savage idiot savant sucking your benumbed trigger-finger gamer's thumb

(I hope) the only reason That I am this pre-autumn Afternoon in the privacy Of my suspicious living room Grant myself permission To believe in god once again Is solely because I saw An unexpected grasshopper Staring at my thoughts On the table that keeps The telephone from having A mind of its very own At first I was startled And then I was startled less At the sight of this insect Put together in green details To pay me an afternoon visit 39 floors above floor level In my High Rise Hobo apartment Miracle on 53rd street Grasshopper hopped all the way 39 floors above floor level To deliberately invade my privacy And I didn't mind at all After grasshopper assured me It didn't speak English or Spanish Or Chinese with an Italian accent So we hit it off right away You mind your own business And I will not ask you Any personal questions aside From how the hell did you get here I've never written a poem About grasshoppers this high up before And I know it wasn't something My non existing paint brushes Conceived behind my back and The only grass I have here is To smoke & not hop around in Until I get dizzy and levitate There has to be a mistake Or did the grasshopper take The elevator to the 39th floor And enter my apartment without knocking To make it obvious grasshoppers Have the right to remain silent also And give credit to the desert For his arrival and not no Almighty The only other mystery capable

Here, among the market vegetables, this torpedo from the ocean depths, a missile that swam, now lying in front of me dead. Surrounded by the earth's green froth —these lettuces, bunches of carrots— only you lived through the sea's truth, survived the unknown, the unfathomable darkness, the depths of the sea, the great abyss, le grand abîme, only you: varnished black-pitched witness to that deepest night. Only you: dark bullet barreled from the depths, carrying only your one wound, but resurgent, always renewed, locked into the current, fins fletched like wings in the torrent, in the coursing of the underwater dark, like a grieving arrow, sea-javelin, a nerveless oiled harpoon. Dead in front of me, catafalqued king of my own ocean; once sappy as a sprung fir in the green turmoil, once seed to sea-quake, tidal wave, now simply dead remains; in the whole market yours was the only shape left with purpose or direction in this jumbled ruin of nature; you are a solitary man of war among these frail vegetables, your flanks and prow black and slippery as if you were still a well-oiled ship of the wind, the only true machine of the sea: unflawed, undefiled, navigating now the waters of death.

And what if I had simply passed you by, your false skins gathering light in a basket, those skins of unpolished copper, would you have lived more greatly? Now you are free of that metallic coating, a broken hull of parchment, the dried petals of a lily— those who have not loved you will not know differently. But you are green fading into yellow— how deceptive you have been. Once I played the cithara, fingers chafing against each note. Once I worked the loom, cast the shuttle through the warp. Once I scrubbed the tiles deep in the tub of Alejandro. Now I try to deciper you. Beyond the village, within a cloud of wild cacao and tamarind, they chant your tale, how you, most common of your kind, make the great warrior-men cry but a woman can unravel you.

To Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, James Dickey Were you guys lucky, too, to caddy, the light on freshly-sprinkled fairway delicate and bright as eye of an Indiana owl or glitter of fish flickering in the Shedd Aquarium of the imagination, the tough but tender touch of leather socks covering the cobra- headed clubs, the crack of brassie on golf ball like whip of mule skinner filling all Death Valley; or to anoint oneself in grease and oil, sweating beneath the belly of a car or truck in the pit in Shimskis' Garage in Homewood; or to find felicity at Marshall Field's as a stockboy numb and dazed by rawboned, adolescent lust, stumbling about beneath a pyramid of boxes past models cooly on parade among the customers all day, filling immaculate brassieres with flesh like fortune cookies and in silken Oriental half-slips as I sweat like Sydney Greenstreet examining the statue of the Maltese Falcon in his hotel suite; and to fight, like a goddamn fool, in Navy alleys behind black-and-tan saloon in Minneapolis, my iron ring, its longhorns, slashing, can open up a cheek; and to sweat out a basketball game of one-on-one, the comments cryptic and intense as a fragment by Archilochos; and to pitch papers onto porches on a bike route as if your arm were Bobby Feller's blazing corncobs at a knot-hole in Des Moines; to cut the uncut hair of graves beneath an R. Crumb "Keep on Truckin'" sun large as a lemon drop, and to hawk cufflinks made by Swank as well as cashmere sweaters from the Shetland Isles, to scrub as if they had the London Plague of Robert Greene dying in a bed of straw in Cheapside Gran Canyons filled with dirty dishes in the Phi Gam kitchen in Bloomington, to tool around behind wheel of Checker taxi as if it were a chariot in a race in Babylon, to tote the 85¢ YWCA Blueplate Special to the widows of the ghosts of pioneers, to mix drink behind the bar as if concocting cocktails for Long John Silver and Blind Pew or Bathhouse John and wee, shrewd Hinky Dink, to create a 100 half-moons in a night by manipulating the control box in this elevator roomy as a shoebox purchased by Paul Powell here in a hotel with its 50 bags full of the fleas of Illinois— this great, unique chance to hear the language where it lives.

Because it changes O’Hare to o hate, o hate, o hate — over and over, no matter how many times I retype it. O hate, like an American tune, an American fable where, yo, you can enter an o hate bathroom, take a selfie in the mirror cuz your sister wants to see the pockets of your Great American Rhinestone Jeans. Because, on a street called Viewpoint, I get home becomes I get guns, off a road on a mission to kill every squirrel-ish pedestrian. Because he was packing, concealed, threatening to use it, use his hands or feet.My feet, iamb of a son of a birch, of a brick chatting with the devil, with God, with a listener not listening. Because he’d gone bonnets, his garden bounty a faded wine, his wife’s linguine a longing for a golden ear, so I took her to the botanical gardens in my getaway car, to a fruit on a vine, but the limes went lemur, the night to nonfat, the clear to catastrophic. Because driving away from the frog man croaking hypocrite, heavenly went down like a melting hedge, a gal gone hog-tied, a fish crying, a tiger- tiger togetherness, flight or fucked, a heart, stroked, racing to its vicarious carousel, a fungus lashed to a beam gone beleaguered. Because he will kill her, that’s his plan: to kill us all. Can’t commit or commute, can’t debone his breath, can’t take his acute paranoia, chalk it up to cute. Because this here’s a Josie madhouse, a bedroom bedrock-locked. Because Blvd morphed to Bled, spirit summoned with a Ouija board. Because soap holder went love hen, though love had flown the Calycanthus like the grilled portobellos messing with his vowels. Please please, I pleaded to the pleading day. Because prayer is like a bread line, a penny for your exploded mind. Because lots of logs to you

Who gave thee, O Beauty, The keys of this breast,— Too credulous lover Of blest and unblest? Say, when in lapsed ages Thee knew I of old; Or what was the service For which I was sold? When first my eyes saw thee, I found me thy thrall, By magical drawings, Sweet tyrant of all! I drank at thy fountain False waters of thirst; Thou intimate stranger, Thou latest and first! Thy dangerous glances Make women of men; New-born, we are melting Into nature again. Lavish, lavish promiser, Nigh persuading gods to err! Guest of million painted forms, Which in turn thy glory warms! The frailest leaf, the mossy bark, The acorn’s cup, the raindrop’s arc, The swinging spider’s silver line, The ruby of the drop of wine, The shining pebble of the pond, Thou inscribest with a bond In thy momentary play, Would bankrupt nature to repay. Ah, what avails it To hide or to shun Whom the Infinite One Hath granted his throne? The heaven high over Is the deep’s lover; The sun and sea, Informed by thee, Before me run And draw me on, Yet fly me still, As Fate refuses To me the heart Fate for me chooses. Is it that my opulent soul Was mingled from the generous whole; Sea-valleys and the deep of skies Furnished several supplies; And the sands whereof I’m made Draw me to them, self-betrayed? I turn the proud portfolio Which holds the grand designs Of Salvator, of Guercino, And Piranesi’s lines. I hear the lofty paeans Of the masters of the shell, Who heard the starry music And recount the numbers well; Olympian bards who sung Divine Ideas below, Which always find us young And always keep us so. Oft in streets or humblest places, I detect far-wandered graces, Which, from Eden wide astray, In lowly homes have lost their way. Thee gliding through the sea of form, Like the lightning through the storm, Somewhat not to be possessed, Somewhat not to be caressed, No feet so fleet could ever find, No perfect form could ever bind. Thou eternal fugitive, Hovering over all that live, Quick and skilful to inspire Sweet, extravagant desire, Starry space and lily-bell Filling with thy roseate smell, Wilt not give the lips to taste Of the nectar which thou hast. All that’s good and great with thee Works in close conspiracy; Thou hast bribed the dark and lonely To report thy features only, And the cold and purple morning Itself with thoughts of thee adorning; The leafy dell, the city mart, Equal trophies of thine art; E’en the flowing azure air Thou hast touched for my despair; And, if I languish into dreams, Again I meet the ardent beams. Queen of things! I dare not die In Being’s deeps past ear and eye; Lest there I find the same deceiver. And be the sport of Fate forever. Dread Power, but dear! if God thou be, Unmake me quite, or give thyself to me!

Pretty soon the Negroes were looking to get paid. My partner, Big Trend, wiped his ox neck and said He wasn't going to wait too much longer. You Know that look your daddy gets before he whups you? That's how Big Trend looked. There was a pink scar Meddling his forehead. Most people assumed a bear Like him couldn't read anything but a dollar, But I'd watched him tour the used bookstore In town and seen him napping so I knew he held more Than power in those hands. They could tear A Bible in two. Sometimes on the walk home I'd hear Him reciting poems. But come Friday, he was the one The fellas asked to speak to the boss. He'd go alone, Usually, and left behind, we imagined the boss buckled Into Trend's shadow because our money always followed.

Two spiky-haired Russian cats hit kick flips on a vert ramp. The camera pans to another pocket of  the room where six kids rocking holey T-shirts etch aerosol lines on warehouse walls in words I cannot comprehend. All of this happening in a time no older than your last heartbeat. I’ve been told the internet is an unholy place — an endless intangible stumbling ground of false deities dogma and loneliness, sad as a pile of shit in a world without flies. My loneliness exists in every afterthought. Yesterday, I watched a neighbor braid intricate waves of cornrows into her son’s tiny head and could have lived in her focus-wrinkled brow for a living. Today I think I practice the religion of  blinking too much. Today, I know no neighbor’s name and won’t know if  I like it or not. O holy streaming screen of counterculture punks, linger my lit mind on landing strips — through fog, rain, hail — without care for time or density. O world wide web, o viral video, o god of excrement thought. Befriend me. Be fucking infectious. Move my eyes from one sight to the next.