The Animal Park
where zoos house
opinions and macaws
striations of the sun
yolk over your
imagined body
bare and there
where dolphins'
empty pool
pachyderms and
elephant house
country rat and
city mouse
tigress
and the stoical
mule deer
my dear
evolve
together
in the striping light
on the island nation
glowing and shorn
in the crotch of 2 rivers
under new constellations
where back arched you quiver
and ideas are born
Lorn
The eloping deities cavort to English music
and the doomed they leave behind
in a struggle of ash and the mundane
serve the hothead on zinc
and the promise of primrose
and the absent deities’ liquidity
the absents' shimmering
the leopard's sapphire drinking bowl
the emerald boulder we carried on our shoulders between bamboo splints the long miles from Sri Lanka in a journey of blistered heels and forded streams our court engraver chiseled on the palace walls
all of it
the decades hence
Pol Pot's sunglasses and the mute erasures
of musicians dancing under the weight of their instruments
my mother's teenaged thighs
the short white sleeves of CIA agents phoning for air strikes
mutterings of villagers
cuckling of chickens
the jejune peasantry with a sleeve of rice
whittling bullets from a banana tree
all the absent lords' minutia
their white teeth and glazing
diminishes beneath the slithering vines
We are human plants in the age of machines
The monkey sucked up in the vacuuming
Rust running little birthmarks of rosy orange around the tin roof's nails
Hello hello
Hare Murare
High grow the orchard's weeds
Ocean On Fire
when the world becomes a map
of the world
the blue infinities a khaki skein
all the leaves hanging
woodsman's hats in the centuries
after the woods
the woods a transmutation
spelled haikea hack particle board
the vast warehouses a dream
of escalators limed
in the inventor's tomb
when the oceans on fire
are a contest
called ocean on fire
and your flanks are a memory
your sioux bride's hair
three words on a page
and the perfect utterance
an inch of type
in a dead language's dictionary
when the snow falling is papery
seeds falling
the chicken is its eggs
when black ink runs ocher
and the last poems
are made
at last
by microwaves
when war is an orbit
of titanium owls
and brides are movies
about wedding gowns
when the sure thrush
the driveway robin
and the choruses of birds
singing their sweet disdain
are the names of birds
not the white birch flashing
in a flare of sun
when the driveway birds
are minuets and the cold
sky is carbonate
when all your pages of max ernst
tumble into dreams
of your unreal cities
where you are lost
and unimportant
in the alabaster streets
when all your invitations
to the perfumed mosque
of the back room
your kneeling song your susannah
your ululation and hosanna
are songs cooed by driveway birds
and the long stripe of your body
is a promise sealed in an open car
beyond the twelve hours
of white desert bleeding blaze
under the infinite blue sail
that carries the world
over the oceans of empty hands
when the name of god
muttered in the meteorite
is barked by a dog
and lion the name of love
is mumbled in a crowded bar
the green fireworks illuminating
the white sorrows
of new year's eve
shining globes of icy jade
swallowed in the fog
when your arms
are not around
my waist and your hair
is not a coarse
tibetan beard
across my face
when the dusk birds holler
and you do not hear
and the hasps rasp in your harbor
twelve deserts away
all the fanged flowers
the april thorns = may thorns
april perfumes = lilac
the mazzy clouds = my bright heart
and dissolve + empty + me - you
corrode + silver = flowering tree
the flames mean emptiness
and whole zoos sleep
the visitors cough
and lie down among the zebras
and the extinct forest bears
the orangutans curl around the calves
of the sleeping elephants
while the lion tamer dozes
in the leopard's pen
and not one of the world's abandoned
creatures dreams when you are far from here
—for Aurora
