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My first best friend is Awful Ann— she socked me in the eye. My second best is Sneaky Sam— he tried to swipe my pie. My third best friend is Max the Rat— he trampled on my toes. My fourth best friend is Nasty Nell— She almost broke my nose. My fifth best friend is Ted the Toad— he kicked me in the knee. My sixth best friend is Grumpy Gail— she's always mean to me. My seventh best is Monster Moe— he often plays too rough. That's all the friends I've got right now— I think I've got enough.

there is a dark mass following me. these legs are clumsy. they flap quickly. I want to slow them down. but my nerves.Lord, these pensive endings. the sun slumps against the merging fall on red leaves. and where the natives are unenlightened, the mass comes closer. only white people swim in lakes nowadays you know . . . Crystal Lake? never seen a black person jump in a lake; let alone a river till this summer. the Bronx River is said to be clean: we care about clean. a month before, two boys drowned in the Bronx River. a week after, a boy jumps into it unfazed. abandoned tires, relics of its sewer days, river herring spark no fear. and a publicly funded park with a biology class, a boat-making workshop for the children of Hunt’s Point, gives me hope we’d wet our hair again. (these follicles don’t surf; don’t swim) but here in Virginia, there’s little comfort. the blush current from underwater springs makes me tense. white people form groups to paddle on boards across the Hudson, taking on trends from Hawai’i. they tap into the yesterdays of Algonquian tongues. Wappinger. Mohican. a sporty new aged (like gouda) convenience. a luxury to admire when Long Beach is too far and Rockaway too dirty. black folk don’t swim. we splash and cool off. we a ways forward from a Splenda hint of Senegalese manliness diving from a ferry, miles off shore from Gor é e. that water got too much memory. we much prefer chlorine. that salt and fresh water our hypertension. and that ocean is curiously scary. and this lake is charmed and churning with tales from the deep. profound is this river of B-rated torture. deep are shadow people speculated through my rave tangerine goggles. on Lake Champlain at night, the chilly air felt like a presence. swamp monsters (this ain’t a swamp). tubular amphibians (they’d be in rivers). aquatic reptilians. ancestors distraught and vengeful (like Jason). but this is smaller and gnawing like chiggers; something from my weed days could live. down. here. my arms fight the green clearness. so mud olive I cannot see the bottom. beneath me is crisp. a fallen branch is mistaken for an eel.

My friend, I am not what I seem.  Seeming is but a garment I wear—a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable. I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do—for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action. When thou sayest, “The wind bloweth eastward,” I say, “Aye it doth blow eastward”; for I would not have thee know that my mind doth not dwell upon the wind but upon the sea. Thou canst not understand my seafaring thoughts, nor would I have thee understand.  I would be at sea alone. When it is day with thee, my friend, it is night with me; yet even then I speak of the noontide that dances upon the hills and of the purple shadow that steals its way across the valley; for thou canst not hear the songs of my darkness nor see my wings beating against the stars—and I fain would not have thee hear or see.  I would be with night alone. When thou ascendest to thy Heaven I descend to my Hell—even then thou callest to me across the unbridgeable gulf, “My companion, my comrade,” and I call back to thee, “My comrade, my companion”—for I would not have thee see my Hell.  The flame would burn thy eyesight and the smoke would crowd thy nostrils.  And I love my Hell too well to have thee visit it.  I would be in Hell alone. Thou lovest Truth and Beauty and Righteousness; and I for thy sake say it is well and seemly to love these things.  But in my heart I laught at thy love.  Yet I would not have thee see my laughter. I would laugh alone. My friend, thou art good and cautious and wise; nay, thou art perfect—and I, too, speak with thee wisely and cautiously.  And yet I am mad.  But I mask my madness.  I would be mad alone. My friend, thou art not my friend, but how shall I make thee understand?  My path is not thy path, yet together we walk, hand in hand.

My frog is a frog that is hopelessly hoarse, my frog is a frog with a reason, of course, my frog is a frog that cannot croak a note, my frog is a frog with a frog in its throat.

My galley, chargèd with forgetfulness, Thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass 'Tween rock and rock; and eke mine en'my, alas, That is my lord, steereth with cruelness; And every owre a thought in readiness, As though that death were light in such a case. An endless wind doth tear the sail apace Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness. A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain, Hath done the weared cords great hinderance; Wreathèd with error and eke with ignorance. The stars be hid that led me to this pain; Drownèd is Reason that should me comfort, And I remain despairing of the port.

We must be slow and delicate; return the policeman's stare with some esteem, remember this is not a shadow play of doves and geese but this is now the time to write it down, record the words— I mean we should have left some pride of youth and not forget the destiny of men who say goodbye to the wives and homes they've read about at breakfast in a restaurant: "My love."—without regret or bitterness obtain the measure of the stride we make, the latest song has chosen a theme of love delivering us from all evil—destroy. . . ? why no. . . this too is fanciful. . . funny how hard it is to be slow and delicate in this, this thing of framing words to mark this grave I mean nothing short of blood in every street on earth can fitly voice the loss of these.

Protestants pray for grace, Scientists look to space. Jews find truth in the Torah, New Agers, in each other's aura. Catholics are blessed by a Pope, Yaquis enlightened by dope. Maoris use ritual chants, Navahos get up and dance. Muslims bow daily to Allah, Norsemen aspire to Valhalla. Feminists swear by a She, Quakers swear not, silently. Confucians kowtow to ancestors, Hare Krishnas, to airport investors. Hindus revere Lord Brahma, Richard Gere, the Dalai Lama. Baptists believe in the Ark, Physicists, in the quark. Moonies obey Reverend Sun, Mormons say Brigham's the one. Daoists extol yang and yin, Sufis transcend in a spin. Shintos seek peace where it's grassy, Rastas, in Haile Selassie. When we meet in the Afterlife, We can laugh at sectarian strife. But meanwhile back to the wars, 'Cause my God's better than yours.

1. We like to think of it as parallel to what we know, Only bigger. One man against the authorities. Or one man against a city of zombies. One man Who is not, in fact, a man, sent to understand The caravan of men now chasing him like red ants Let loose down the pants of America. Man on the run. Man with a ship to catch, a payload to drop, This message going out to all of space.. . . Though Maybe it’s more like life below the sea: silent, Buoyant, bizarrely benign. Relics Of an outmoded design. Some like to imagine A cosmic mother watching through a spray of stars, Mouthing yes,yes as we toddle toward the light, Biting her lip if we teeter at some ledge. Longing To sweep us to her breast, she hopes for the best While the father storms through adjacent rooms Ranting with the force of Kingdom Come, Not caring anymore what might snap us in its jaw. Sometimes,  what I see is a library in a rural community. All the tall shelves in the big open room. And the pencils In a cup at Circulation, gnawed on by the entire population. The books have lived here all along, belonging For weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence Of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face, A pair of eyes. The most remarkable lies. 2. Charlton Heston is waiting to be let in. He asked once politely. A second time with force from the diaphragm. The third time, He did it like Moses: arms raised high, face an apocryphal white. Shirt crisp, suit trim, he stoops a little coming in, Then grows tall. He scans the room. He stands until I gesture, Then he sits. Birds commence their evening chatter. Someone fires Charcoals out below. He’ll take a whiskey if I have it. Water if I don’t. I ask him to start from the beginning, but he goes only halfway back. That was the future once, he says.Before the world went upside down. Hero, survivor, God’s right hand man, I know he sees the blank Surface of the moon where I see a language built from brick and bone. He sits straight in his seat, takes a long, slow high-thespian breath, Then lets it go.For all I know, I was the last true man on this earth. And: May I smoke? The voices outside soften. Planes jet past heading off or back. Someone cries that she does not want to go to bed. Footsteps overhead. A fountain in the neighbor’s yard babbles to itself, and the night air Lifts the sound indoors.It was another time, he says, picking up again. We were pioneers. Will you fight to stay alive here, riding the earth Toward God-knows-where? I think of Atlantis buried under ice, gone One day from sight, the shore from which it rose now glacial and stark. Our eyes adjust to the dark. 3. Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone, That the others have come and gone—a momentary blip— When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic, Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding, Setting solid feet down on planets everywhere, Bowing to the great stars that command, pitching stones At whatever are their moons. They live wondering If they are the only ones, knowing only the wish to know, And the great black distance they—we—flicker in. Maybe the dead know, their eyes widening at last, Seeing the high beams of a million galaxies flick on At twilight. Hearing the engines flare, the horns Not letting up, the frenzy of being. I want to be One notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial. Wide open, so everything floods in at once. And sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time, Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke. So that I might be sitting now beside my father As he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe For the first time in the winter of 1959. 4. In those last scenes of Kubrick’s 2001 When Dave is whisked into the center of space, Which unfurls in an aurora of orgasmic light Before opening wide, like a jungle orchid For a love-struck bee, then goes liquid, Paint-in-water, and then gauze wafting out and off, Before, finally, the night tide, luminescent And vague, swirls in, and on and on. . . . In those last scenes, as he floats Above Jupiter’s vast canyons and seas, Over the lava strewn plains and mountains Packed in ice, that whole time, he doesn’t blink. In his little ship, blind to what he rides, whisked Across the wide-screen of unparcelled time, Who knows what blazes through his mind? Is it still his life he moves through, or does That end at the end of what he can name? On set, it’s shot after shot till Kubrick is happy, Then the costumes go back on their racks And the great gleaming set goes black. 5. When my father worked on the Hubble Telescope, he said They operated like surgeons: scrubbed and sheathed In papery green, the room a clean cold, a bright white. He’d read Larry Niven at home, and drink scotch on the rocks, His eyes exhausted and pink. These were the Reagan years, When we lived with our finger on The Button and struggled To view our enemies as children. My father spent whole seasons Bowing before the oracle-eye, hungry for what it would find. His face lit-up whenever anyone asked, and his arms would rise As if he were weightless, perfectly at ease in the never-ending Night of space. On the ground, we tied postcards to balloons For peace. Prince Charles married Lady Di. Rock Hudson died. We learned new words for things. The decade changed. The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe. The second time, The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is— So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.

i think in spanish i write in english i want to go back to puerto rico, but i wonder if my kink could live in ponce, mayagüez and carolina tengo las venas aculturadas escribo en spanglish abraham in español abraham in english tato in spanish "taro" in english tonto in both languages how are you? ¿cómo estás? i don't know if i'm coming or si me fui ya si me dicen barranquitas, yo reply, "¿con qué se come eso?" si me dicen caviar, i digo, "a new pair of converse sneakers." ahí supe que estoy jodío ahí supe que estamos jodíos english or spanish spanish or english spanenglish now, dig this: hablo lo inglés matao hablo lo español matao no sé leer ninguno bien so it is, spanglish to matao what i digo ¡ay, virgen, yo no sé hablar!

I I am asking something gone return: at least one night, her face a girl’s, just twenty, and to be married in a month, holding the dress’s hem to her lips as places are called. And I, come along too late to know her trembling, parting the curtain— let me hear her now perched on the ladder, recite “But Mama, . . . am I pretty enough . . . ?” II When Emily marries, ladies in hats drown out the proper vows —it’s what the play requires; the everyday over the sacred. Even the set is made of items found in the actors’ garages so we always see back to the bones. Here my grandmother stands at the altar with her fictional George and gossip swells in the pews which are rows of folding chairs. III Among the murmuring departed, in the cemetery, my grandmother takes her place at the empty plot. She’s the newcomer who can’t believe she’s dead if the living roam just on the crest of this hill. My grandmother in white poplin dress and hair ribbon lifts her arms in despair— Emily, untouched by the rain. IV Tomorrow her face will glow on the cover of The Shreveport Times— a gorgeous girl demanding her life. “But oh!” she cries in Emily’s voice, “I can go back there and live all those days over again . . .” V So Emily steps back into childhood though the wiser dead have told her don’t— into her mother’s kitchen, her twelfth birthday, a moment she thought she was happy. She watches now that life: mother speaking gruffly, father late to work. Dead Emily kisses the cheek of the classmate playing her mother— understanding, in that kitchen, they’d all been blind: they never knew those people they said they loved. VI My grandmother maintains her grace to the end. She is the queen of the theater; all of Shreveport melts for her smile. She holds her palms out to feel the heavy drops as the curtains close, though she knows this rain is only the sound of rain.