Collecte Works (28 page)

Get a load

        of April's

                      fabulous

frog rattle—

      lowland freight cars

          in the night

Poet's work

Grandfather

   advised me:

          Learn a trade

I learned

    to sit at desk

           and condense

No layoff

    from this

           condensery

Property is poverty—

I've foreclosed.

I own again

these walls thin

as the back

of my writing tablet.

And more:

all who live here—

card table to eat on,

broken bed—

sacrifice for less

than art.

Now in one year

         a book published

               and plumbing—

took a lifetime

           to weep

                       a deep

                              trickle

River-marsh-drowse

and in flood

       moonlight

              gives sight

of no land.

They fish, a man

takes his wife to town

with his rowboat's 10-horse

       ships his voice

to the herons.

Sure they drink

—full foamy folk—

                till asleep.

    The place is asleep

on one leg in the weeds.

Club 26

Our talk, our books

riled the shore like bullheads

at the roots of the luscious

large water lily

Then we entered the lily

built white on a red carpet

the circular quiet

cool bar

glass stems to caress

We stayed till the stamens trembled

To foreclose

or not

on property

and prose

or care a kite

if the p-p

be yellow, black

or white

To my small
electric pump

To sense

and sound

this world

look to

your snifter

valve

take oil

and hum

T. E. Lawrence

How impossible it is

to be alone

the one thing humanity

    has never really

moved towards

As I paint the street

I melt the houses

to point up the turreted cupola

I make hoopla

of the low tavern's neon cross—

very like a cross from here—

I honor the huge blue distant dome

valid somehow to the fellow falling high

Art Center

Glass

and wide seaview

Race that walks

              from there

you are lovely

You have
seen

Homemade/Handmade Poems

Consider at the outset:

to be thin for thought

or thick cream blossomy

Many things are better

flavored with bacon

Sweet Life, My love:

didn't you ever try

this delicacy—the marrow

in the bone?