FIVE STARS

*

Let the day be lazy.  Think about light.

These are too easy to carry, the apples.

The kids on their razors are smaller

than cupcakes, smaller than books.

No surprise, I’m always surprised.

I’m always the bloodwork, my own

backyard.  I look out for ghosts

through a thick haze of flowers, pink

white and yellow and the grass

with its serious.  My philosophy

is not to have a philosophy,

because thinking only murders

all the shadows in their glory.  I prefer

to party on a gently drifting kite string,

the apples reconfigured as a mountain

of pie—O pie and vanilla ice cream

for the people.

**

Dear ice cream, you should know us.

You should know us not to cry.

Any date this year is a date

that will date this in oblivion.

It’s hard to say which.  The smell

of wild onions.  A white van rattling

through Benjamin Franklin.

Here it is asleep again.  I miss

like crazy my life and the equations.

My daughter with a stick

sticking warships beside me.

As always, she’s just like the clouds

and it’s smarting.  We might be

your friends or your neighbors.

***

So what can I say, and more importantly

what should I?  Lately I’ve enjoyed it

with my head against a pillow.

I think I may never wake up

this time.  My stomach full of vitamins

and my head a description.

Noise is the stabilizing fact

of my existence.  I wink

at the romantics in the throes

of my resistance.  Let me be the bear

with its head in a saucer, screaming

for vengeance, so what

if it’s metal.  The blood on your pants

leads directly to my liver.  Do not

let it stop you. We can mop it up later.

A picnic awaits us at the finish.

****

Finally, the hand

in front of your face.  Clear but not

transparent, the wall.  You’re lucky

you’re barely in a jumpsuit beaming.

The wind blows your back out.

The wolf eats your window.

Good riddance in the leaves,

as you miss your home town.  A fastball

connects with your cheek to remind you

that every last second is a second

to cherish.  Your spirit agitating

with your body in the bushes.

Peach trees wave sweetly

in the distance.

*****

How long can I survival?

This blown-out ever after.

The questions get fatter in the meadow

with grasses.  No one as usual sits beside me

on her hands, and the people speed by

in their miniature poodles.  This life

may not seem attractive,

or even real, to most people, but to me

it’s the one that I’d most like to have.

Each day disappearing, and the invisible

planet also disappearing, the cow and the cat

and the meteor shower.  My family

on the porch looking forward

for an hour, taking cover in the basement

when the star starts to fall…

Happily the morning shows its face

like an eagle.

I fry up some bacon

for the children.

DEAR ACCOMPLICE

Your money

It’s never been more

When the suit-coat flies

When the nitrogen’s damage

I’m reading the Chilean

You wait by the embankment

So many buckets of gold dust to carry

I’ve never before seen so beautifully

A cloudless afternoon, only

The horizon’s purple feathers

In the car we sped away in

What could you have reasoned

The amusement park’s reticence

Leaving your husband and children

For somebody else’s husband and children

Running all those marathons

Divorcee’s divorces

After breakfast I take an aspirin, and

The stars begin to vibrate

The mouths go to pasture

It’s time, you say, to sink a little better

I add up the numbers

I work at the ledger

In a thousand lighter contexts

We snatched the cash register

The grass around the picnic’s laughter

Waving goodbye to the friendless poets

A single mark you scratched on paper

With the pencil in your mouth, your signature

The failure of most people

My dumbness goes deeper than ever and ever

The desert, how fragile

When we killed it

The oyster stew so incredibly delicious

We grew into citizens

Adults with streaks of surprise in our hair

An indelible rubberized darkness contented

Every sitter’s underworld

If only, lovely people

The volcano

The lucklessness of so many friends to consider

Tearing meat off the bone

The aesthetes of fire

Over coffee and pound cake

The shape of a windmill

Your cheeks stuffed with cotton

So wholesome and ridiculous

The crocus

The crocodile

The after party swinging

More and more angry, I beat myself

Against the garage door’s hinges

You were waiting for hours, for enlightenment

Bags and bags of Benjamin Franklin

Drugs by prescription

I’m off to the races with a fistful of

Lightning, and the sky like a sentence

I can’t begin to wonder

Your body