When you bit me
Out in the shade
of the apple tree,
I came
Harder
Than I’ve ever come.
Maybe it was your straight teeth
Or maybe it was my tough skin;
I don’t know
But I remember
Wanting you to do it again.
Will you follow me
Out there
Where you bit me
And made me come?
Or do you want
To bite me somewhere else,
Maybe another place
Out of reach of the sun?

I wish my Life
were a CD-
I'd find track 21,
hit REPEAT,
and listen
to all the dumb shit
I used to say:
proclamations of Empire
from the once-and-future king
of his own demise.
Insanity's never been a problem.
Lives, like songs, create themselves,
only to be discovered
by blubbering fools.
Why can't they end
the way they begin,
a sputtering,
The Big Bang,
perfect,
without a scratch
or skip,
mysteries for generations
to come to solve,
just before they push STOP?

I try so hard to say
something that hasn't been said before
that I say nothing at all.
Silence.
Silents.
A theater full of hats and gowns,
colored by black-and-white images,
reading words they'll never hear
but in their minds.
We can only do so much
with what we've got
that our tears don't mean anything anymore.
When the thought-
THE THOUGHT-
arises, grab it, shake it,
don't let go
till it's stood the test of time,
then watch it float away,
shrinking with distance
until another comes along.
I try so hard not to say
something that's been said before
that I say nothing at all.

Write your song
and leave out
all the important words

One-Man Circus

I refuse ever to join the circus
after so many nights
watching my father
walking his tightrope.
He deserved a place in the circus.
But the circus didn't deserve him.
He was Strongman.
I swear he thought
he could support the house.
And he was Magician,
trapped in his glass casing,
trying to escape.
And he was Ringmaster
on those rather dull, intoxicating nights,
making proclamations about what was to come
and why so many things hadn't come already.
He was master of the bluff,
but Mom and I knew his acts were the only ones
in the show.­ Father used to tell
my nervous, worried, frightened mother
she lived in fear.
Mom would say she had no choice.
And Mom and I knew she'd never
been in so much fear
as to have hidden in a bottle.

Oppenheimer

Twenty-three years from the present
I will leave my husk,
take my soul as painfully as allowed,
so as to let me know of my importance
because all important people die slow, painful deaths
to show they are recognized by one god or another.
I will make my all-too-soon exit
having defeated every mountain,
dried every body of water,
rooted any trees left by my brothers,
crushed houses of those known and unknown,
ended lives too long and not long enough,
made rulers and kings and presidents put lips
to my enormous, calloused feet,
created large, terrifying pink, blue, and gray toadstools above
wide eyes, beaded brows, wrinkled foreheads,
exposing the vitality of writers
of verse, diction, song, prophecy.
"The one who tried to conquer all,"
future liars and their media will exclaim,
"has finally been conquered!"
And I will laugh at false exclamation,
for they will make sure
my victory will be finalized.

A Dream of Cavalry

Ay! Look!
my mother’s mother!
A marble Jesus;
We stand on Golgotha.

A slight slouch of the head;
His solid, flying
form calls.
It is my turn

to die for the world.
The Earth and her creatures
refuse to die
for themselves.