A-1, A Landscape
17 ottobre 00

The hemmed work of the half moon tonight
On the horizon
Launching flags and shuttles of smoke but still
Still
As a wolf-prairie;
What is not bleached by the dim fallen clouds
is absorbed in its own depth, and turned black

still are the blue pines above the ghosts.

the mountains are blue (or violet) , the fields pink to gold,
the sky full of soft chickens
Darkness is only one, heavy and empty, warm and cool together.
The town is yellow, your house is heavy rosewhite in the morning, steel grey the afternoon
when your window recovers from its highlight, and the roof begins to blush
then bleed, then rust, then turn completely back to night
one fifth a fists worth of yellow light

The sound hurt, the light went out

Before the summer of departure
I lived in an old peoples hole under the Squirrel Hill highway

poverty in the Pittsburgh winter.

at a fashionable alternative concert or
perhaps somewhere in the halls of the Italian department
I saw

then it was Easter.
I brought a sugary present shaped like a bunny
For dinner
There was expensive wine, she was
hairy as an Italian

At Nomentana station now all trams and trains
Once an address in Brazil (once a long distance phonecall)
Now across town on my hands and feet

Still nothing.

Watching the TV floods and drinking the Torri’d wine
The Queen’s hem and the war
Salt is the salt of life I said
On bended wing and wounded knee
Like blood to the steak and steak to the bone

I saw all the bridges in the rain over the foaming Po
Like over Panther Hollow to the Spanish Frick
Or the guana canal, from Queens with NY lit, to Greenpoint
my Brooklyn barracks
And on the Ides of October marching
Ponte Milvio from Rome, over the rapid Tiber, to Rome
The moon as big as the city and filthy yellow
behind the torches of Corso Francia,
its arch made circle on the still side
And walked the Mahattan Bridge, in a scattered group, moving from Discomfort to Drunkeness
that Chinese Apocalypse in the cold spring
And over the Brooklyn Bridge with an Italian, seeing the mosque of money
and Philip Glass between the twin towers
when, itchy after work, I wanted to buy a t-shirt
but instead stopped
at Border’s.

The overgrown Po is the Lega’s fault
Getting wet is mine

A short circuit from broken bark, my fire of wisteria and wet leaves
All fallen feathers of the stark peacock season
From the fog and smoke of engines the steel glitters, cold until above them We pass

I chuck the stump with a paddle, the axe handle hit dryly to thy wrist then elbow then shoulder

Then with the same hand slowly paint
The flag of the Neverlands

While the continents shift

All the town-yellows are equal after,
heavy caravans
move like continents the clouds push
northward, where no shadows were
now vacant

There is too much to drink
everything just grew

* * *

now, should we
chisled under the slate
/ where homes are
the clear just before night.

You may have two colors : One for every element
the cliffside counts as earth;
the mountain is sky

* * *

now gone
the grey volcano
the blue is cloud and white the sky

a horizon

doesn’t relate.

Forget about how your house looks.

A wash, a line of smoke
There that fire, that hill the farmers bundle around
Under the olives and the foil

Heavy blue ledges go under
from chimney to tombstone

and lets loose smoke like a foghorn stops
then flames back in red
it indicates itself with white edge
windward disappearing
where birds do

The dotted glass soldiers that form the horizon
gather in the glow of pitchforks—
heads driven down
of rivets, the sharp edge.

Any formation is a mob
I deem the burrows
the sullen mailbag squat, with you

By the ends of me let the dead fall to their own
By our own hands let’s be cast into the sand

And to think it was the last winter to fear --
“I’ve spoken now and forever ”

To don the miracle or no
To spot the coming blue jay,
hawk late winters exhaust
from Umbria
from the North.

Soon I’ll be captured,
The lions anymore don’t help.
There, my crib.

Separate dust , the stalks the sun rusted
Among branches, here I am

As long as my long arms grow
Finding deep bitter & sanding off the cut’s splinter
My thumb
On the sides of grounded weeds, patched over with seed
The split-hoe coughing rocks

As long as the fire takes the moss & the malva
out

An arm on every rock, my militant throw
To help out the hungry cat & the shades of his want
To lick first the T-bone and the stick
Before dogwards letting go

Wandering out through the curtain, after midnight,
into the moon’s hole
the backwards head of a blackbird
To my group of stars said

Hunt me
With neither slingshot nor rake

Hand in the bully
to you,
Fragrant palms.
This is the butter that moved you.

Year-wise, we gave up
the plan .
Dried pumpkins ticked like clocks

Mud made the pigs’ blanket, Until the rain called it off

We took our
Shells down the slopes of the ravine
Where foxholes made a city
& calcium icesicles drooled like dried ice smoke
under roots

I aimed the slingshot

See that fire, that ghost?

Looking long at your frankenstein arms, the sleeves that cover
The side the whole mountain’d face--
The birds cry from being in my pan
Altenate from bent to jointed
& undo it again

It’s March if the cherry-sparrows carpet the budding
Where I buried the seeds shallow
in afterthought
when deep tulips and I lift big stones and small stones.

Sheepshit and straw
Like a shipwreck in a whirlpool
That I build pyramids above the roots with
and simulate erosion with hose and boots

Someone sinks a fence post / notches on a scale, popcorn
off the house and over the valley shrapnel
accelerates and stops

The only thing vital to a mystery is ignorance.

Scared for the flora in this emptiness.

Drain the pollen bags
Under my eyes / run water
Dull steps towards the dusty afternoon
Drops , compresses, steam

The coffee the morning is mighty
extract dripping more
concentration, while the sunshine tells lies, haze varies temper
& swelling attests to pressure.
The wind relieves the winter and rattles the grass.

Spring is sworn in
on its own four calf-wobbling feet
It’s not the rain but the waiting

Hurray for the brushfire, hurray for the haze
Who turn the land blank

Hurray, like the sky.

Sandbags is my bladder
Heaving sides, a bucket.

Where my eyes and ears confront
the universe, tender pores bruised.

my witness weighs and ache
are hooks in my face, trans-
parent tar, to brittle my tubes.

batters and clicks, as if a bird
fluttering punctured, my pump
only a vampire could restore.

There are some charred trunks, unsettled scabs
those aiming, and those resigning to lump. Then
elegant silver pencil marks, an alphabet, the scars.

What’s my side to you I have no idea, in the blind
field of the blankets, in summertime/mirrored well
and turning thinner/ salt bleach cleaned

what’s pink reddens, white (at least) ochres,
maybe roses.

I can stand the missing crown
Broken weather, dust.
With some thought, I can figure the distance
& either stock up, or sleep.

To fill the bucket I adjust
Just sit out the storm &
stay warm.

Even where the river was
Is dry all year.

Writing for “ the general good ”
In jotted landscapes
In the season of the white sky
--shades of violet above the haze
Faint with heavy hand --

I can bear the brunt of “the cruelest month” & stand the swarms
I see why sometimes it’s so loud
then dead.

Makes you want to shoot every sign.

The filter quiets the turnpike

off the road is black from the headlights

straight workhorse/ blind burrow
in windows of coal
snow banks & hawks

pay the gates to the hilly outskirts, the dark drive
all lanes, then all lit houses, constellation
on the glass: coffee steam
mountain gas

every morning is cold & Virginia-misty

Sixteen wheels on the Kellers fields
one blue Amish summer

down Panther Hollow, all stairs

The rain comes endless, to
Day comes endless, dissolves to smoke
Fields and their dark trees, senseless to
Day dissolve and wither into it
Again.

There is snow atop this morning the mountain
Late-season-snow, from hip to knee
From the blue triangle up, yanked-white-weather
mutes the bed.
North goes the hip, waist where the Flaminia lies -- low road with lumps
To pale Reatine bosom
Blushed by winds further up, with a little sugar.

Smoke disconnects from a circle of cypress
The land-fire becomes clouds

Arms rest along the river, fingers of delta
On the shoulders, umber-shadowed back
abandoned under the moon and fields forever

Pinks rust in the dark
You,
another mountain somewhere

In it, a lake.

On bummed knee
Trying to qualify why
The bruised bone is always Left:
Thumb or fractured index.

Today the fault goes to a fascist hammer, the back side of an axe
Once before split the same thumb open
Cuticle toned Tabernacle
Choirs go from nail to neck.

The rawhide tomorrow will help
While dressed up for hoeing
When I’ll recall a dark Pgh street towards the Nothside, then the airport, then suddenly above
thecathedral, & Soldiers & Sailors
and dream Orte, a cavern sotto Orvieto, a red spider & my bèby ---
I’ll wait for the gloves to crust and
The sun
to boil out the fatt off my back.

The other limp is in the temple, and due to dust: what
All living things do in spring

The X-ray of my left hand
Holding
And the long line up
from the nail on

and a host of other things

A garish dish and its garnish
Wet downstairs where William was

Una ballerina seduta

Force becometh
Joyce, the one
Who’d sand me

Did I leaveyouforsomething good --

Among shell bones, married couples
and unanomous reservations

Begotten by fog
One to the other
Offered oysters
One sterling morning
With the huffy subaru
Raw flesh gift
To cook with
: Menemsha

* * *
(Later on)
Hurdled above by loose stars firing
The long last summer now cresent
the season of masks
The beaches cold at no cost
We
with visor-hidden lists
Gave sense -- ridded of us,
not taking pain away

the past I understand / From the title of a book
Library / Bike

how did we always have nothing else to do
MVY, many apt paths and
seasides --
Don’t consider me among the mighty, not here.

* * *
If you can afford me crosswise
In a blind handshake of tangled hair:

I’ll give you what you steal
If I can keep what I rob
Deal?

Will it begin, the wind to whistle
Under now born almond flowers ---
I fear the frost.

Will it wind --

I owe a great deal to birth
They fit me with the latest

Now it’s too late to cancel me
an ample cheese sandwhich is in my hamd
The bread laws, Fixd

No need to battle with the wheat

if the bucks don’t shelve it , I will.

The rain tonight came senseless.
I thought of lining the gates
I thought of emptying out.

The sky was like a well-tossed sea
Heavy, & opened up
light came
& hollars from deep.
bright sounds and dark sounds--- soft insides
I fell out of a window on Greenpoint Ave
offered coffee or fresh samantha
on a stomach curdled up
& teeth raw from a strange sharp toothbrush
I was clean everywhere, homeless
(my wallet was clean, if not for the card that says I’m (still) me.)

That morning I thought I’d just walk and walk, (and passing my house decided to pace it off in doors—)
But the day old beer or the fear of adding to it gave me courage to polish my injury and set off, bikeless, to capture somehow the end of it. My last Greenpoint like my last Tisbury, and last Germantown
Like going to sleep.

What will numb it tonight if beer won’t
I had moved : my empty room in boxes
My portrait of Marx was quite cold when I talked to him about it.
My Satchmo gone, playing only the itchy ends of the side (is this LIVE?).
The shadows bent towards late, creased and darkened more.
The town appeared after the fog and disappeared again as the clouds came in and
disappears again now at night,
save some yellow lights
faint like candles on someone’s porch.

I wait for fall, after the rain goes,
no more green paint or blue paint to buy
But brown and red and
a new axe to split the newfallen tree to burn with me, late.

When they created the normal spell
The nubs of our hands burnished it
And were found old after

The wintering recedes.

I’m back from the long arc, the bricklayer
Drug back from the city all its
Sexy
Dumps-- age-old crap, ancient
Dreamy city stuff
A cardiac-smoke-pump
dancing and running its knees down me
I beg it to return---
(I was too young when they outlawed that.)

at night in the fort I twitch (snore?)
daily stagger under the rim
of farmers shade.
in the spring everything will be decided
the hulls of stripped ships , birch bark chips
who missed the landward star
banked heavy with the tide
all the lights suddenly blinking

we stole work on the path
our people pursued by stalkers
who own the road
the sad river sides
someones dog is tied by their rope.

Morning Glory, your dirty hands,
your long back & brown back & back that bends,
I would like to
once again

in a field of flowers.

We are above the whole city
my mouth near the red petals
and all they surround

Just touched.

You press down & I think
If you partake of the flesh, you become one

only taking is taking away.
The summer is long, I am thirsty
growing only smaller
among these Missouri poppies.

The city’s a wall
the river is deep
on the shores of Acheron
I’ve just crossed

On the beach of balanced stones
we are quiet
& watch the waves-that-no-boat-made

I see
through you an inlet
to the sea.

Upstairs, where the stains were, the marks of thy
Motion
All the sides of the coins said
“Tails, You lose”

When on lonely rooftops, on Wightman avoiding
Civic responsibility: traffic claims court and my voting rights, an
“obstruction” never reconciled by community service
harmonizing above
the first spring day,
when the girl in the rainbow scarf said
“hi.”
when the soup kitchens and hunger strikes seemed so

down on when dawn expired (we had a song about that
all the voices echo, this is 1992, when
I wished I’d never had a Volkswagon
until 1997, when dispersed overseas
I had The Great Old Swamp remastered
And the van sold.

The night bike-battles through Schenley Park, the Carnegie melons
Kiss parties (somehow a dawn in the cemetery) and
One West Virginia halloween*
One disguised as drunken campers

One night walking home from grilling Allen Ginsberg’s salmon
With an hour’s work of beer in the twenty below
I lost the heel of my boot.

I.

Oh, youngsides
Because maybe you have
nothing else

I don’t want to touch anything
first.

II.

When you go away
I’ll think about the colors (soft you)
against
My work
Your shirt