I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills…
death and torture
in the news tonight
escaping the prison
of what is certain
I drive toward the mountains
which make so low a sound
Poems on the topic: death
Poems on the topic “death” on Poets.by.
Spotted owl
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
Spell for a widow-maker
Snag turned deadfall,
dread widow-maker with
your fag-ends caught
in the crotch of a living tree,
hold fast while the chainsaw
gnaws through your limb,
don’t pinch the bar in your haste
to get free, but as soon as
the uppercut meets the undercut,
drop straight, don’t twist
or kick. Sink into the soft
mulch of your many autumns,
the bed you made for just
this final fall.
Planting sang
Sing a song of sang, that human root:
wrinkled homunculus growing slow as thought.
Even the seeds take twenty months to sprout,
stones that finish growing in the ground
as if traveling through the interminable gut
of some great beast that vanished in the Pleistocene.
Sing a song of burying in haste,
the berries’ flesh a tempting prize for mold.
So if picked on a morning in early September,
nestled into a plastic vial & sent by overnight mail,
you must plant them as soon as they arrive —
don’t put it off till after supper.
Choose each resting-place with care,
moving slowly through the woods & stopping often.
Pretend you’re burying a grandparent, piece by piece.
Make a hole with your index finger
Sublimation
with love but no touch
my hand may become a wing
in the company of the dead
I find the light ravishing
Coil
midsummer
and the rose is dead
after being married
to a stake
a creature
that having sunk
from want of spirit
died pretty
no one is awake
beyond the ordinary
violence of
a peak
but if we be eaten
we shall again live
and a cat will be a cat
circumspect and factious
Mind crime
the multitude I had in my head
lie dead
everybody with his flag
standing by him
Cowboy poem
alone with horses
you see in what fear
people live
mad at the dead
at Monday
even at my drink
Full fathom five
I entered the sea
only to talk to the dead
loving
raging
Papers
a nest of papers
convenient as one’s own pale horse
not yet dead
but open to it
an ink body to carry me
away by night
Swan song
the swan all alone
growing so sickly it dreams
of dead tunes
Burial at sea
out on the water
rain is no making of a field
but a great kindness
when I die
who will offer any advice
what will be the question
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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