Denied membership
in the exclusive club
of the deceased, I resolve
to do away with wings,
keeping only the wingbones,
like a songbird in August
half-naked from the molt.
Ditto with hams & hambones,
which are only fit for split
pea soup. Human beings
are the other white meat;
pork is a poor substitute.
I resolve to give up bread
& salt & the speaking of truth
or its reasonable facsimiles.
Too many calories. Bad
the fires we thought far off
burn now
burn the high places
burn down to the water
burn poor people in their houses
burn wings and the very stones
burn every creature
burn tar and oil and wood
burn art
and burn bards
burn carcass
burn ruin
burn the moon we move to
thinking that the safest place
I value an enemy head
higher than his life
if he dies I love him for it
a no one who pierces like a thorn
a who who to which
we can give no answer
the snappish owl
is dead and buried
we ward off witches and spirits
with the noise of profit
my eyes sore I write
long into the dark
after a drought
a good shower of rain
but the guns made a hole
in people’s discourse
out of work
they break up
all the vehemence and rhetoric
of wind in the night
alone with horses
you see in what fear
people live
mad at the dead
at Monday
even at my drink
in the park
they lease new buildings
where the morning grew
they do all the hurt they can
the more a man serves
the less he finds of joy
like the death of so many things
to make me content in my life
the war took another
which seems my due
as if the rain had
a design in raining
see how people other others
as the news guns gun for our kindness
as if they would buy time
by the help of a watchmaker
in the papers
news is a plague
growing and not thinking
like an ignorant ear
our vexation at expecting change in society
an abortive child preserved
fresh in salt
we press the little ex-hand
and after some time at the office
die of apoplexy