I have been too timid, too dry, like something in me refusing to be said.
The cast of bronze, the past of butter heated in a pan
I would go liquid if I could and flow all over,
Hot into your mold, your sun, your disbelief in any true future of the self,
Differentiated, yet whole and wet,
Just born as a day’s morning,
A season’s Spring on her humble pilgrimage to the ocean’s mouth,
The dawn’s hang over of night leaves, shadows and silence.

To suddenly go mute before us all as an audience,
The restless tide, the sniff of animals careful lest they disturb their prey.
Little monks in cloistered holes,
Little moles and voles in my ears urging on with a sound of nibble or a giggle
Sold out to some traveling show of baggy pants and Tom Boys.

Your girl, you know her, your lover,
You feel him near as the suitor, the groom, the bride,
The imposter of your self all dressed to breed and please and posit the seed,
The sprout of the dead poet’s weed,
The care free and the heavily taxed need.
You can get it here or around the corner,
For barter or on loan,
She has her garter and pale skin, her hum in tune
As soon as the moon’s rise is harmony
And the sun’s set is surety, just as promised,
Just as a cold dunking tied to a plank by the sea.

See if we suffer to be woken up
Or only made to sleep another ten thousand years
Before the beach creep and sand blows
As to smooth glass in the image of purity and
Her twin sisters of innocence and decadence.

The spoils grumble like oil and the old gas engines
That sputter on the boats that smoke and
That smell of brine and sheen on the water is the end of humanity,
Her little green turtle with the world on her back,
The little black beetle rolling his ball of dung,
How clumpy and cool,
Cold and relaxing,
The whimpers from the hole,
The card house and glass thimble
So careful not to catch ourselves in evil
With a prick of the finger running red
All of the way up the coast.

Up the dreary dead river,
Over the water falls and dams,
We want the climax to come.
Day and night, anytime,
We want the tug of Rasputin’s beard,
The belt of Santa’s belly,
The big black steer with his Universe within,
Finally split, made asunder like the ritual slaughter,
The game around the rosy,
Penchant for predicaments,
We want it all to end.
Black of the entrails, red road of the blood,
We want the smear that separated sky from water
To be a howitzer and the bomb to be a cyclone of flowers.

We all remember, dire and sweet she cried
Like Nature’s Mother in her chain links and finery,
Her bent knee and humility.
Grace of the somber shade,
Tirade of the grass hill caught up in a wind storm of waving.
As I give over, sumptuous feast and delicate dance
To touch faces with moistened eye
And clench of teeth released as stone from the mountains,
Have pity, have heart for the club foot of beasts
To survive us as the turned in snail
With whorl of spiral and her hair blowing
And the taste of breakfast,
Touch of air,
Have us as to space where I am interrupted,
Just in time,
Where my chance to say has the humility to wait,
As the crowd settled for the final act.

Come dun colored one,
Come dusty servant of the highest need,
Bend sweet supplicant
Your jewels as the pearl and sanctity,
As the dim to the bright,
The next wave comes
Washing so gently her feet by the shore.