Long after the laughing crowd disperses by one person at a time,
The triumph of the individual, the sorrow, collective of the losses.
Brown the lawn, tight the spiral, anomalous the throw deep down field
Concealing all of the territory, the frozen ample ground.
River of ice, chunk of melt water.

Table me foolish, follow me friendly.
Back up, back up, frown demons of tight ambivalence, gratuitous,
Falling out of fashion, able to listen to others.
What the others say on a hill, on a monkey ledge at night
With lantern swinging, a cistern filling.
All of the old alphabets beyond their depths, rubbing digits,
Eyeing the eye piece of a telescope, an impression of the growing dark,
The sweeping wind storm,
Nothing sufficient. Everything carrying on.

You gave it the twenty dollars’ worth and turned over the names.
Why did you come so easily to this pass, this forgiveness gone sour.
The apples as vinegar, the potatoes as vodka, fierce fire.
Big, bold and bad, the river, the digits, the number of us crowding the door,
Pushing our way, away.

Dull tools, agile minds looking for reception,
Bearing away glass supplicants and red slippers of the Czarina preparing for bed.
Change the channel. News has come.
Graphic novellas and smears.
Limber up ten thousand board feet of timber gratefully
Laying flat as pick up sticks, as novelty after the strike,
The meteor, the explosion of excuses.
Names of the rest turned over.
Sorrowful dark names like Torture, Spider and Lace.
Give us the grace.

Penultimate flight
Cloud barrow, pitch black, fortunate to be alive and then giving back.
Giving blanks, fireworks, the sky lit to the South,
The winds bashful as a sneeze in the crook of an arm.
Holding up the line with sacks of things rotting.
What we have gotten is rotten.
What we have is a rattle of the boom,
Something dim and unmentionable.
Ask us again, unmentionable, too soon, too synchronized,
Allowable but only in pairs with pants down, snaps,
Water based, easy for cleanup and comfortable.

Don’t give in too easily.
Lined up to fire, counting backwards, counting forwards
Fire!
Space graceful as place and lasting.
Tracing madness like a track up the arm,
A funeral rendition done too early, too slow and too somber.
You gave me your money.
You sell me.
I tell you and sell me you do.
Crop duster, hand cuffer.
Deluge mask bright as sunflowers
Temperature of pig iron.
Attitude clad in comedy.
Ravens and magpies on bare limbs.

Cold air, just barely
The water in the creek moves below the ice
By the bank of crusted snow dusted lightly with new layers
of delicate flakes, not fakes.
Not fangs, not even made of paper or flesh.

The poems hang around like bark on the tree biting.
Like stage direction marked in bright pink tape X’s, arrows,
Which way to go now.
Bodies writhe, ropes above,
Camera obscura showing the masses outside
Peering in sometimes to parked cars by the curb.