Disregarding constructs, I want to murder all mice

  I want to murder them and snuff out their sadness

  And I want to flip their bodies in the air

  And prevent them from enduring

  An eternal sadness of being laid out

  As human corpses

  And the eternal sadness

  Of body becoming word

  What word might I transfer to a mouse

  To let them know how I feel

  Nothing. What words can I say to the nanoscale

  To make it hear me? Nothing. It will be silence

  What words can I say to the dark macrocosm

  That is circling above me? Nothing.

  I am dizzy. I am dizzy in its magnitude

  My body is so small, it might as well not even exist, at all

  In face of it all, I speak softly

  In face of everything I write loud words

  I color the pages of the book

  Which is actually the wall

  I get frightened by the shudder of the bodies next to me

  Who are ghosts

  Who I love despite the fact

  I will never understand them

  Nor will they ever understand me

  Bright lights circling in some other macrocosm

  Loved ones, who are ghosts, loved ones

  My loved ones swirling above me

  And I am so alone

  And I am alone here

  With the idea of ghosts

  And the idea of humanity, which is a cruel idea

  Humanity is a cruel idea but not a sad one

  Animal ideas are sad, but only because they

  Are the same as me, and I can’t ever admit it

  And to have a soft patch of eye and bone

  Is a kind of sadness you will never get over

  And to have a voice is to not have it one day, too

  Which is awful

  Which is much worse than to never have a body again

  I think instead of being sad

  At death

  I’ll sleep with mice

  And have them crawl on my legs and hands

  And I will open my eyes for them to put their eyes upon

  And I will open my mouth

  So that they can crawl in

  And make their nest

  What flattening it would be to be a mouse home

  To take in the sadness

  And thus negate it

  And to cancel out humanity

  By them inside of me

  And I wouldn’t let anyone kill them

  If they resided within me

  Not even me. I wouldn’t even let myself kill them

  And you

  I wouldn’t let you take them

  With your cruel sadness

  And I would no longer feel the pressure to be human

  And to change my mouse behavior

  And to change my behavior

  Which is gentle

  Which only wants to love and live

  And never go away

  I FEEL PITY

  I feel pity for my sister who is dying somewhere in a lonely house

  I feel pity for my dog who had to die without me on a table after months of pain

  I feel pity for the stranger in the hospital bed who is never touched but sleeps there nonetheless

  What love for me

  What love for them I feel

  Absolute pity, tenderness

  I feel pity and sadness for the children in the schools who are not given a fair shot

  I feel pity for the books that are published and then burned

  With bodies that fell a thousand trees

  I feel pity for the trees

  Left outside in the cold and wind

  To fend for themselves with roots so thick, and no one sees

  I feel pity for the sky, with blue vapors

  It hugs the clouds, and the clouds don’t care

  I feel pity for my legs, this desk

  I feel pity for this desk, its wooden face

  Won’t I just throw it away when I am done with it

  I feel pity for the moon

  Raging against the day, and what for, its crazy face

  All ghostly, that is what they really say about it

  I feel pity for the stars, the blue stars, and the red stars

  And the green stars, I feel pity for the stars that shoot sparks

  And the green-grey

  I feel pity for the colors

  I feel pity for this room

  Where I will go and bring a life in

  I feel pity for that life, and more

  I feel pity for all of the lives

  That go on and no one even stops to notice

  I feel pity for the flowers

  The birds, all of them

  And even pity for the birds

  But I don’t feel pity for you

  I don’t pity you

  You big hot thing

  I don’t feel pity for your arms

  Which could hold for me a thousand hours

  And I want them to

  I don’t feel pity for you

  Among all these things, I love you more

  More and most of all

  And you are careless, and ceaseless

  Like you always are to everyone

  I don’t feel pity

  You have this poem, this book

  I don’t feel pity

  They will talk of you for a thousand years

  You gorgeous spirit you

  You crazy nothing

  Blond hair and sublime torso

  Smile more than a million men

  A truly million dollar man

  In greenish suit

  Wild spirit, you

  I love you

  I love you when you’re rocking

  I love you when you’re rocking

  Always for me

  But never for me

  Always always

  In the wind

  GEORG TRAKL IN THE GREEN SUN

  Georg Trakl, in the sun

  I am in love with you

  I want you to come back to this earth

  So that we can be lovers

  I will wash your hallucinatory sheets

  With bleach

  And give birth to your Austrian kin

  It took a while

  Now I am me

  You were always you

  Come back to this earth

  I will wash you in a bath of violet milk

  I will take all of your cares away

  I will be your mother father

  I will be your sister, little bunny

  I will birth you in the ocean

  And when your head disconnects from your body

  I will scoop up the black water

  Until I find it

  And put it in a pail of blue

  And sail the ocean back to land

  To put your eyelids in a jar

  A tiny capsule

  To take with me, everything

  Yes I will eat

  I will swallow your eyelashes

  And if you don’t think I’m serious

  And if you don’t think I am serious this time, poetry

  I am

  TO DREAM

  I was living

  But to wake into the dream

  To sleep and not sleep

  And to not make

  Anything

  But a world that was always a dream

  So that I never knew what it was to be alive

  What is living

  But fear

  Orange couch and drink with bitters

  Water too and leavened animal

  Or what the world wants

  My eyes do not make

  Whatever color they are

  Still, song and breath are there in dreams, too

  And people coming to your aid

  And when I was sorry in my dream

  It was part of this one

  That I felt such remorse

  For things I did not know

  Or could not

  And green cockatoo that landed in a hazy nightmare

  Were its eyes sullen or surprised

  When I took my hand from behind the bed

  And held the pickaxe

  Sliced him in half

  And soldered to one half part of a man

  And to the other, my soul, which was dead by then

  And an offering

  WILD

  It’s like the world went wild

  Wild with me

  And I couldn’t stop it anymore

  I was a really good poet

  But more than that

  I wanted you to not have to

  Eat the pigs with the other ones

  Baby honey baby

  When I think of your head and breastbone

  I go wild

  You wear the red necklace

  And I sweat sweat on the pavement

  Still I think I will take the crushing pain

  To whatever narrative

  The men talk of

  Whatever thing they mean

  Means fire

  I think I will wake and walk

  And walk with you

  Until they put me under

  Until they put me under

  I will cross the blue forest

  With only you on my mind

  Dumb spirit

  Only you on my mind

  You made me dumb

  When I had only you on my mind

  So I took the red necklace

  Dumb spirit

  There there

  Always always always always

  Always always always

  Always on my mind

  WHAT IS A MAN IF NOT A SIPHON

  Don’t talk to me about class

  A man writes a bourgeois poem and you don’t even care about it

  But to me you give me a letter

  Call me a thing that a million others deserved

  I have come to terms with who I am

  But who are you and have you

  I don’t have time but have one arm closed tightly on the tree that is outside of the song

  My friend wants to go into his bed and be in the song but it is lonely for him

  My fear extends into the stars

  Don’t you know I never will

  I will go to Paris and then to the exaltation

  Remember only the poems that gave me a fair shake

  You took my poems and threw them in the air

  But these are not air poems

  These are, or what are they

  Oh what are they

  I have to go to the post office

  No I have to go to the dead

  One arm so tightly on the tree outside of it

  I would I could start to think that I don’t care about the song after all

  And would you care

  When everyone lies so furiously, so ferociously they tell lies within the winter

  I went there with my hair in my hands

  And he didn’t take it for a sixth time

  But by then my hands were both so tightly on the tree

  I told myself I didn’t care about the song

  His lips and head were boring

  And I was sick of his smell

  I wrapped myself in leaden sheets

  And sank deep into my own infernal ocean

  And there I was

  Until you picked this poem up, so hello, hello there

  You sickly thing

  It is these words now that are your medicine

  DAWN SONG

  When I hear sweet songs I think of you

  I don’t know why, but I do

  When I hear sweet songs I think of you

  You don’t believe me

  But it’s true

  When I hear sweet songs I think of you

  You went along

  You thought I knew

  When I hear sweet songs I think of you

  But I am dumb

  I never knew

  So I wandered thru and thru

  Dear thing of mine

  When I hear sweet songs

  I think of you

  You don’t believe me

  But it’s true

  When I hear sweet songs I think of you

  POEM FOR MY FRIEND

  Is it possible that it is grief that brought us together

  Yes it is

  It is possible

  Dear friend, we sat on the sun-soaked fields

  But I would have a strawberry with you anywhere

  Or when they said of Julius Caesar: that his life was gentle

  Dear friend, I would paint your eyes anywhere

  The elements so mixed up in me

  That Nature might stand up and say: Now this is a man!

  And when they burn me up into the trees

  I hope you are the trees

  The set of neat green things

  Come waiting for me

  I hope you are the bushes

  I hope you are the neat green bushes

  There waiting for me

  RELATIVE CERTAINTY

  I am relatively certain that I was an animal in a past life

  Why do I know

  Because of my snout

  Because of the fur that surrounds me

  Because of my love

  My She-wolf my She-wolf

  I love you

  All of my hormones

  The naked body

  And then the dead one

  The days, sweet and long

  And then no dates at all

  Utter space

  To make a deal with

  I am relatively certain

  It was the fur that was important

  Before I was trapped in this body

  I know before the planets engulfed me

  I looked at people and tried to talk

  And it was my vocabulary, my tone

  That did me in

  THE STATIC NATURE OF IT ALL

  I wake up in a house full of trash

  And eat some cheese before I go out in the heat

  Everything just doesn’t move

  When you can’t make it to

  Another day, another let me think about this

  But you don’t call you don’t write you don’t care

  You don’t want to see me

  I want to see you so bad

  But what is the trees that give shade

  Even in my own voice I am calming

  But what are the glowing yellow bunnies I kick around

  You know what is going on

  Still you stand there stand there

  Even though I am the one from the other world

  Who is in love with you

  It’s hard for me to even defend you

  To the legions of seers, crazy birds and bugs

  That I call my “friends”

  Even as they try to mix the potions for me

  They can’t help but ask me why why

  Why this one

  And it’s hard for me to say anything

  When you just sit there every day, so still and boring

  Just the static nature of it

  And I go looking looking for you in the streets

  And I never find you

  I never find you at all

  PALM TREE

  The last kiss I will ever take

  Will not be with you

  But with my child

  I will feel the breath leaving me

  I will feel not the endless circle but the broken one

  And the green tongue they will place on my lips

  Will be soft like breezes

  Pillows and the orange flowers

  I remember when I was born

  Everything seemed really new

  I was blue

  Then I woke up and I belonged again

  To someone

  THE WALL HANGING I NEVER NOTICED

  I never noticed before

  How the red flowers hang from the blue branches

  I never noticed before the light in this room

  I never noticed the way the air is cool again

  I never noticed anything but you

  But you but you

  So that I couldn’t sleep

  I never noticed what was anything but you

  Until I noticed you

  And could not help it

  Until I noticed you I could not help it

  Until you made the red flowers alive again

  Until the blue branches

  The lemons you loved, but also the way you loved me, too

  Until all of this I never noticed you

  But once I did

  I never minded noticing

  I never stopped noticing

  Until I noticed you

  I never stopped noticing

  Until you, I never stopped

  THE RAIN

  What is going to happen

  Is that it’s going to rain

  Rain my love

  A poem not about sex

  But love

  The true kind

  You talk of things

  To myself and others

  You think of things

  Her long tanned arms

  You will realize you love me

  But it will be too late

  You will cry out for me

  I will be long gone

  This is not a wish

  But what I knew to be so

  This is what I knew to be so

  Under the pouring sun

  This is what I knew to be so

  Under the pouring sea

  Where they will find us

  You and me

  THE ART DECO OF THE WEST

  In every scene I am a young woman

  In every scene I am a young girl

  Waiting to be helped by the train conductor

  The silent geometry of the sun

  In every scene I am waiting for you

  To be with me in dreams

  To hold my beige suitcase, as we wander out the door

  On the train to the West

  They have very old people

  Who do not need my help

  But help me

  Move my brightly colored cases

  Into the waiting room

  In the night, every night that there is

  I call out for you

  Is it Tuesday, Saturday

 

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