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I held a jackhammer once. It matched me in height and weight and I planned destruction, ripped everything solid from the ground. The concrete was my prey, but it was the tool I fought to master, its metal body trembling beneath my hands. Or, perhaps, its electric heart was what shook me through my last held bones. The concrete, gone, the rented machinery, returned— and I wondered if Sisyphus had imagined a garden where the rock came from.

By then, of course, they’d done plenty in the name of recklessness — their word as well, though incorrect, for wilderness. Ah, scutchweed, rushlightitude, if not, why not, strowbegone, nor sheep, fa la, shall graze. The way, incredibly, for most it’s still enough to have noticed a similar weather pattern between regret and the windy plains of remorse, like that must make them the same, or should, or at least no more different than a fetish for being eaten alive and whole is, apparently, from the desire to leave loneliness behind forever — a reasonable desire, I suppose, but in the end a useless one, since actual loneliness isn’t leavable: love distracts from loneliness, it doesn’t crowd it from view    ...    some could almost see this, eventually; others chose not to. Some — the luckiest — arrived at, then clung to, that point in love where to be understood entirely stops being the main thing, or a thing at all, even. They could let the nights unfurl before them, one after the other, each a seemingly vast underworld of damage they didn’t have to talk about, not anymore, they agreed it was there now, they hovered over it, what light there was was their own.

On Mother's Day it isn't smart To give your mom a broken heart. So here are thing you shouldn't say To dear old mom on Mother's Day: Don't tell here that you'll never eat A carrot, celery, bean, or beet. Don't tell her you think smoking's cool. Don't tell her you've dropped out of school. Don't tell her that you've drowned the cat. Don't tell her that she looks too fat. Dont't tell her when you're grown you'll be A starving poet—just like me.

I went out walking in the old neighborhood Look! more trees on the block forget-me-nots all around them ivy   lantana shining and geraniums in the window Twenty years ago it was believed that the roots of trees would insert themselves into gas lines then fall   poisoned   on houses and children or tap the city’s water pipes   starved for nitrogen   obstruct the sewers In those days in the afternoon I floated by ferry to Hoboken or Staten Island then pushed the babies in their carriages along the river wall   observing Manhattan See Manhattan I cried   New York! even at sunset it doesn’t shine but stands in fire   charcoal to the waist But this Sunday afternoon on Mother’s Day I walked west   and came to Hudson Street   tricolored flags were flying over old oak furniture for sale brass bedsteads   copper pots and vases by the pound from India Suddenly before my eyes   twenty-two transvestites in joyous parade stuffed pillows under their lovely gowns and entered a restaurant under a sign which said   All Pregnant Mothers Free I watched them place napkins over their bellies and accept coffee and zabaglione I am especially open to sadness and hilarity since my father died as a child one week ago in this his ninetieth year

My father in the aluminum stern, cursing another fouled blood-knot: all the shits and fucks as integral to the art of fishing as the bait-fish, little silver smelts I sewed like a manual transmission, the same inbred order and precision needling the leader through the ass, out the mouth, through the jaw, out the nostril and back down—suffering as my father suffered the bastard no-see-ums and the guttering Johnson the obligatory dud, orange egg-pearls ballooning from its bust underside, hundreds of duds like every shit-luck setback that drove us on, fed by the huge image of everything we'd never caught, moving in joint blindness under Munsungun. And whatever it was it was the fight that delivered us—a tension like a sequestered muscle, the line spooling, unspooling, the holy-shit- litany pulled from our awed mouths contracting with distance until a whole silence surfaced, the viscid, slapping body absorbing and reflecting raw light like the bit of cornea above a pupil. And then his tremendous, decent hands brandishing an oar-butt; the brilliant lace of the gills, their crumpled hinge flaring in bilge water; and the line, whipping and shuttling, feeding invisibly back, moving on on Munsungun, sons survived by the same damn hunt they heired.

Here lies, to each her parents’ ruth, Mary, the daughter of their youth; Yet all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due, It makes the father less to rue. At six months’ end she parted hence With safety of her innocence; Whose soul heaven’s queen, whose name she bears, In comfort of her mother’s tears, Hath placed amongst her virgin-train: Where, while that severed doth remain, This grave partakes the fleshly birth; Which cover lightly, gentle earth!

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy. Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate, on the just day. O, could I lose all father now! For why Will man lament the state he should envy? To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage, And if no other misery, yet age? Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry." For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.

Good Heav’n, I thank thee, since it was designed I should be framed, but of the weaker kind, That yet, my Soul, is rescued from the love Of all those trifles which their passions move. Pleasures and praise and plenty have with me But their just value. If allowed they be, Freely, and thankfully as much I taste, As will not reason or religion waste, If they’re denied, I on my self can live, And slight those aids unequal chance does give. When in the sun, my wings can be displayed, And, in retirement, I can bless the shade.

we make midnight a maquette of the year: frostlight glinting off snow to solemnize the vows we offer to ourselves in near silence: the competition shimmerwise of champagne and chandeliers to attract laughter and cheers: the glow from the fireplace reflecting the burning intra-red pact between beloveds: we cosset the space of a fey hour, anxious gods molding our hoped-for adams with this temporal clay: each of us edacious for shining or rash enough to think sacrifice will stay this fugacious time: while stillness suspends vitality in balance, as passions struggle with passions for sway, the mind wends towards what’s to come: a callithump of fashions, ersatz smiles, crowded days: a bloodless cut that severs soul from bone: a long aching quiet in which we will hear nothing but the clean crack of our promises breaking.

Fate piles up On the bloody Norman shore. If you must swim there Swim on your back.