Standing at a Desk of Cranberries

Standing at a desk of cranberries     a small triumph of jumps     I wait longer than the rescue of rains     I send prayers to the terror walking north

I do a pantomime on the edge of the cliff     overreacting to the sea and the creatures in back of the house     if  you had just looked out I would have said this is my little resonance

The guile of parrots     a carnival     a killing     a crusade    the final 
pursuit either a panorama or a demon

The fan click refuses to stop or to cancel its insistence     stubborn in the face of carnage     the once famous once child fortunes     the fifty days of posters     all the field deaths     all the cries of Jimmy! Caddie! Victor! Are you coming?

Today not to beard but to wear black     today not to trace the creases on my face     today caught in parts     today to bicep toward justice but not to beard     as if that were even a possibility     even with lasers and goats     an ocean of black dogs and boats     searching for better swells     a more favorable forecast     a mast out of water     I want what the pelican sees

An answer comes in the smell of woodsmoke as he passes     by a personal note at the slope of his neck    trials of bridges and the moon alongside Pont Marie     I follow that smell with the O of sails and sorted shoes     with brushes and the corners of candles     a firm clap then the rubber stickiness of stones     I follow the tremble with the white noise of busses and a can of coins     surrounded by Joyce and daughter     blind on a broken chair     hearing cobbles

I’m just like you     some dying     some grief     some scotch     my final please unhooked from fire and earrings     knees in the grass     sinking into the sorted dirt     my beach a tree pleading with the summer surf    walking or chased    a finned orange fish that sucks at my sleep    a morning trail in lavender musk     preacher mounds    a human fever    a corner room settled in blue plaid    a pot of red bowls     a curtain of frames     a pitted eye    a hill    a chimney     a pear

Where would these words be without a subject?    little carvings of mosquitoes landing on my hands     headaches digging an elision of craters     a great empty blow of air that follows my feet    the big lumber of my dog’s no longer here     his hair an excursion still fluttering on the tile     slush and whispered breath     where the naked man on the street washes his back with purple flowers

You keep saying boy like it’s the belt that was used to tie you to the bed     you keep saying bull like you were forced to fight     you keep saying dragon as if courage had no sound     you keep saying hair and crib like babies come out of shells

From button to button     what spunky rope    what cold claustrophobe    what caravan of pack dogs    what kink and rocky tunnels do I have to sliver through     every exhausted moon    batteries dwindling toward unnameable and permanent night     my knees pray the floor will open to a new city

A door to my back     the molding cheesy and rectal     I run with the horses across the field     the town wiped off the track and left behind    you curl up at the back of my neck and we go bucking over the whole knot of trails     the whole veiny land