You don’t get the sense
      he has a lot to say; but he says it
      very well. The search
      which is a deference to the caving
      walls of essential acts, potential facts. Circling
      caustics in seas of suits. [I]
      want a phone, a sea, a
      curb; body parts impede essence. (Relation

      Precedes production.) Athwart
      knack (flagon). As homemade
      bestiary enthrottles boheme. Bruce
      is bruised by bluster (Buster). Fight
      fire with water (warper). “This
      is a powerful, original, and deeply
      moving work and many will
      find it a disturbing one.”

      When in falcon time and of a ripe
      rage, I bloat a board, as ever
      has accord in a day-long waft . . .
      as or like may gird, sift, stultify,
      perish, churl. Anyone blessed with
      pumice. He said he had a mouse
      in his hard disk. Then apoplectic, disappointed.

      “I purely couldn’t tell you, partly
      couldn’t consider, penultimately
      unavoid[avail]able.” Even Pope John Paul II
      agrees. “I have read Professor Bell’s
      letter with amazement. In my review I said
      his research was fascinating and most skillfully
      presented. As for
      the misgivings I felt (and still

      Feel), they were expressed in as considered a
      manner . . .” Those things
      which I beheld as child—chair, table
      floor—concrete, that meant a life. Or
      blind to purloined recall, dodges for
      bull or Bill, only to inappropriately
      will. These china dolls, Moroccan
      scrawls: the cost of it all.

      Retention that squanders its own demand,
      see-sawing and then fawning. “My ink
      is not good, my paper dirty, & I
      am altogether ashamed.” Standing,
      stunned; strutting, stunted. He
      who is lost hesitates and hesitating finds
      (but not what he looked for). She
      who meditates is tossed. Let geese

      Be geese! (He does not care whose house he
      sets on fire as long as he can warm himself
      by the blaze.) There stands the hood,
      there the barking knife. Take a scissors
      to write. “She sure put a spook
      in my wheels!” Like two dogs with one
      prick. Nor cast your hose before
      gnomes; that is, skin them but don’t

      Fleece them. For it’s better to be led
      by the nose than by the hairs, better
      to be led by the nose than to have a lead
      nose. Which is to say, he was
      a hatchet without a handle, a pudding
      in a puddle. What a muddle!
      “I only say suppose this supposition,” propose
      this proposition. Not a tragedy, just an

      Inconvenience. & don’t be harsh without
      a reason. (Just after she screams
      she picks up her bottle & dreams.)
      Then we came upon a grand beech forest
      Where once I lost my good friend Morris.
      Willingly, I’ll say I’ve had enough. Wet
      as a mule and twice as
      disgusted. Take my husband,

      Please! But the pleasures are entrusted
      to the wrong partitions: the cant of
      intellectual fashion (Paris) lies
      a decade behind leather design (Milano). Harsh,
      that is, without accuracy. For with Rehnquist
      & Meese, the only ones with rights
      are the unborn and the police. & reigning over all,
      the Great Communicator—master of deceit. No release.

      Heave, hoe this
      firmament.
      What is here
      only that; no
      less. The tide
      pulls back its
      brim—in which
      we spin.

      The prolonged hippopotami of the matter
      swivel for their breakfasts, fall in the middle landing soft
      with the horse shrill of honeysuckle, to the decimated
         acid of the sweet
      tub. They are hobbled, dejected
      & lie frozen with salted humbling.
      To the ocean of shorn horizon, averting America’s
      sentient emptiness, here where the body’s sightless ascent
      revolts in paltry recompense.

      Obscurity beckons from down the block
      oblivion, too, bids me come & knock.
      The water calls me but I shall not go
      for a man's place is on the sho’.
      You can sing and you can pray & you can shout lots
      but you’ll never get to Heaven without a box.
      Lox & bagels, bagels & lox, kreplach
      is on the stove, time for a plate of hocks.

      I’d ask that you call me by my Christian name, Buddy
      (since I don’t know your name, I hope you don’t mind
                  my calling you that).
      It’s not a lot to ask; purely, it’s a small thing
      but I think it’d help to bond the cement between us
      put us on indistinct terms, if you know what I mean.
      What I want to bring across to you, Buddy
      is the vanity of conceits
      though you may call it what you please—

      The story is told that a man came to a house noted for
          its views
      & was told, look to the West, at the mountain ranges that
           loom over the land
      & was told, look to the South, at the turquoise-blue lake
           shimmering in the blue-bright sun
      & was taken, then, to an Eastern balcony, overhanging
           a garden unrivaled in its varieties of plants & flowers
      & he looked to the North, at the thick-grown forest
      & listened to the birds that filled the branches of the
            cascading trees
      & he was ushered to the Western windows
      & he said, “But I’ve already seen that.”

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