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Intractable between them grows a garden of barbed wire and roses. Burning briars like flames devour their too innocent attire. Dare they meet, the blackened wire tears the intervening air. Trespassers have wandered through texture of flesh and petals. Dogs like arrows moved along pathways that their noses knew. While the two who laid it out find the metal and the flower fatal underfoot. Black and white at midnight glows this garden of barbed wire and roses. Doused with darkness roses burn coolly as a rainy moon: beneath a rainy moon or none silver the sheath on barb and thorn. Change the garden, scale and plan; wall it, make it annual. There the briary flower grew. There the brambled wire ran. While they sleep the garden grows, deepest wish annuls the will: perfect still the wire and rose.

Out of the golden West, out of the leaden East, into the iron South, and to the silver North . . . Oh metals metals everywhere, forks and knives, belt buckles and hooks . . . When you are beaten you sing. You do not give anyone a chance . . . You come out of the earth and fly with men. You lodge in men. You hurt them terribly. You tear them. You do not care for anyone. Oh metals metals, why are you always hanging about? Is it not enough that you hold men’s wrists? Is it not enough that we let you in our mouths? Why is it you will not do anything for yourself? Why is it you always wait for men to show you what to be? And men love you. Perhaps it is because you soften so often. You did, it is true, pour into anything men asked you to. It has always proved you to be somewhat softer than you really are. Oh metals metals, why are you always filling my house? You are like family, you do not care for anyone.

You, functional space variants in voltage, the only light Transitory effect of Love several different lights Sustain Sustain them you sustain them.

For a while after he died my father didn’t seem to discern dream visitors, but I was amazed nonetheless to witness his swift and serene rejuvenation. From time to time I’d find him dining outdoors in beautiful locales, a multicolored grain on his plate I’d never seen elsewhere. Yes, laughed the server, it’s a staple here; a sort of national dish, I guess, like potatoes in Ireland, pasta in Italy, couscous in Morocco, rice in Japan or Madagascar. We can’t get enough of it, and it’s remarkably nutritious. What’s it called? I asked. She replied, metaphysics.

yours is not the majestic Gypsy the Codling    Luna    Wax or grander Atlas with the appetite of a plague     entire fields succumbing to them    whole generations of bees    this is the unseen    closeted    unassuming gray that seeks out last winter’s cloth    another season    drawn to the body’s scent    what was its heat    to consume early    that scant much of you    fragile    lace-like the constellate    erasures    of the coat it makes for you to wear

In the dirt you dig fragments. Turn them and ponder. Weed chard. Forms morph like clouds. At lunch, you write down how in this jungle a gem-backed toad startled and hopped away— how June tiger lilies trumpet the sun. In the bean patch brown spiders, egg sacs on their backs. Toddling through shadows, sturdy, wobbling, fragile, pregnant as summer is—

In cities there are tangerine briefcases on the down-platform and jet parkas on the up-platform; in the mother of cities there is equal anxiety at all terminals. West a business breast, North a morose jig, East a false escape, South steam in milk. The centres of cities move westwards; the centre of the mother of cities has disappeared. North the great cat, East the great water, South the great fire, West the great arrow. In cities the sons of women become fathers; in the mother of cities the daughters of men have failed to become mothers. East the uneager fingers, South the damp cave, West the chained ankle, North the rehearsed cry. Cities are built for trade, where women and men may freely through knowing each other become more like themselves; the mother of cities is built for government, where women and men through fearing each other become more like each other than they care to be. South the short, West the soap, North the sheets, East the shivers. In cities the church fund is forever stuck below blood heat; in the mother of cities the church is a community arts centre. West the Why-not, North the Now-then, East the End- product, South the Same-again. In cities nobody can afford the price; in the mother of cities nobody dares to ask the price. North the telephone smile, East the early appointment, South the second reminder, West the hanging button. In cities the jealous man is jealous because he is himself in his imagination unfaithful; in the mother of cities the jealous man is jealous because he reads the magazines. East the endless arrival, South the astounding statistic, West the wasted words, North the night of nights. In cities we dream about our desires; in the mother of cities we dream about our dreams.

to forty-six UC Santa Cruz students and seven faculty arrested in Watsonville for showing solidarity with two thousand striking cannery workers who were mostly Mexican women, October 27, 1985 “Mexican” is not a noun or an adjective “Mexican” is a life long low-paying job a check mark on a welfare police form more than a word a nail in the soul but it hurts it points it dreams it offends it cries it moves it strikes it burns just like a verb

THERE ARE HILLS LIKE SHARKFINS and clods of mud. The mind drifts through in the shape of a museum, in the guise of a museum dreaming dead friends: Jim, Tom, Emmet, Bill. —Like billboards their huge faces droop and stretch on the walls, on the walls of the cliffs out there, where trees with white trunks makes plumes on rock ridges. My mind is fingers holding a pen. Trees with white trunks make plumes on rock ridges. Rivers of sand are memories. Memories make movies on the dust of the desert. Hawks with pale bellies perch on the cactus, their bodies are portholes to other dimensions. This might go on forever. I am a snake and a tiptoe feather at opposite ends of the scales as they balance themselves against each other. This might go on forever.

Half of my life is gone, and I have let The years slip from me and have not fulfilled The aspiration of my youth, to build Some tower of song with lofty parapet. Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret Of restless passions that would not be stilled, But sorrow, and a care that almost killed, Kept me from what I may accomplish yet; Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,— A city in the twilight dim and vast, With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,— And hear above me on the autumnal blast The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.