this grave I occupy
you may have after me
by accident or angel
like a long last word
I could not say and so
must be
at the undertaker’s I
shall lie in the light
I shall have no body
to give to age to tend
morning comes white among great
supplies of visions
all seeming to save us
and yet my one head
being out this night
is a thriving ship of the dead
where the plague grows
where desires make a rough freight
promise me night comes to pay
one day
I have gone good and dull
left alone in a hole
caution now used
against any door
to another time where it seems
I fell down dead
but am pretty well
the war was hard to fit
into a silk coat
how many possess a cry
and never a body
and find it burdensome
to continue to see
I sat on a grave and dined
the day mixed with evening
routed and red
night’s industry is all
for an extraordinary past
see how much of it we have
but took no notice of
we who miss not having any heart
and wake up dead
a falcon just dead
it and the rain raw as parted friends
Consider what one might learn
by meditating on a corpse:
how the flesh can crawl, the bones
of a beautiful face break
the crust of fantasy like little moons
out of the ground, vacant snail-shells
still glistening with an off-white rheum.
Or consider swallowing two squares
of LSD & looking in the mirror:
what perfectly disintegrating visions
might be yours, & with what slight effort.
It’s exhilarating, really, to find this
blind matter – that it somehow coheres
despite its utter insensitivity to longing
or loneliness. It gives itself
only half-grudgingly to the chance
as if set upon by dogs
and worried to pieces
I am a sorry man
sand to the moaning sea
coming to sign the new
draft of my death
who will secure us against security
the lock on discourse
the breaking down of valor
a thing avoided on all occasions
like the adventure of death
or being surrounded by art