Kegger
Kids in seed company
hoodies kept closed
with safety pins
since the zipper broke
are burning stanchions
their grandfathers milked in
taking turns jumping
over the bonfire screaming
whenever they catch
somebody's steel toe
boots clip the flames
Doesn't even count bro
The Door of the Season
That time of year when deer confer
In rings around the coldest springs,
Their antlers woven into chandeliers
Lit with eyes. The door of the season
Is about to open, a door that is flush
With the earth, its jambs brimming
With light that pours up from the secret
Room in which dead fathers embrace
Their solemn sons, who pull away
To climb the rungs, pushing the door
Up with the butts of their guns.
The hinges creak and the door falls
With a heavy thud to the forest floor.
The deer hear it and begin to sway,
Unlocking their antlers, then back away
Gallantly into deaths all their own.
Kid had an awful big heart
Even if he kept it pretty much
Covered up in blaze
Orange and camo
For Jean Follain
Some evenings a poet will turn
Down a ride and decide to walk home
After the banquet where he was honored
By members of a boat club
Still feeling the roughness of their hands
In his soft hand as he walks
In his coat the medallion they gave him
Already forgivably forgotten
It will be that hour when women change
For dinner before bathroom mirrors
Pins pressed between their lips
Listening over their shoulders
To what their husbands
Aren't saying from the bedroom
Where they stand wiping their glasses
On their untucked white dress shirts
They don't yet know that
They'll never make it to dinner
Because they're fated to
Hit a poet on the way
Though even as his body lies
Bleeding in the street
He will go on walking
Invisibly along the Seine
While in the restaurant where
They had reservations
The silverware is entering the dark
Of others' mouths
Artifice
Poorly shot perhaps by a shy boy taken
Hunting for the first and last time, I find
What remains of the deer years later where
It finally fell, dead in the door of another season.
These bones, staves in winter's anti-still,
Bequeath to the aging air their calcium…
Stop the poem a minute. If I'm being honest
(I try to be honest), there is no poetry
In these woods. That's why I left a house
Full of books of it and drove here.
Let's start over.
On a whim I went off trail and almost tripped
Over a rib cage. The cage holds nothing captive
Because it isn't a cage. And the woodpeckers
Aren't carpenters with hangover headaches
In the scaffolding of the canopy,
They're woodpeckers and they're hungry.
But all this aside, I think it can be said
With some degree of certainty that somewhere
In time a boy is closing his eyes precisely
When they should be open.
Also, that it's fucking cold.
The Signs
This man! No,
this man! This
man! No, this man!
the sign shouts
at the sign across the street.
Each name five letters long,
beginning and ending
in consonants,
b, n, t, p;
some vowels,
i, e, u,
sandwiched in between;
the same colors,
red, white, blue,
for the background.
The men the signs stand for
stand elsewhere,
talking at each other
like these signs do,
while
in the space between them
very heavy things
rush so fast
they're just one bright blur.
These Days
are like when, at the height of autumn,
the trees have by lonesome paths all reached
the apotheosis of color,
but then one night
a big banshee wind blows through
and one wakes to a world that appears
to be burning beneath bare black branches.
Just to Clarify
They said I'd die in fire
Or did they say
I'd die in flowers
Pretty big difference
So I called them
Been on hold an hour
People Can
People can have a beer or two.
People can have a glass of wine.
People can go into the shop, have a look around.
People can meet up for coffee.
People can finish a draft.
People can take this call.
People can feel the inner body.
People can hold space.
People can put down their phone.
People can swing by around six.
People can probably make that date.
People can circle back soon.
People can leave it for tomorrow.
People can offer a little feedback.
People can use their airline miles.
People can put down the deposit.
People can forward that email.
People can pick up where they left off.
People can tell you what you missed.
Your Watershed
One day the watershed
Nearest to where you were born
Decided to stand up
Out of the valleys it had carved
And become a tree.
It had grown tired
Of being given so much.
It had never wanted
To be given anything,
It had only ever wanted to give.
It was like a tree of glass
Still flowing, full of fish
And waving green weeds,
A few stunned fishermen
Standing on its branches.
But it was a tree so someone
Came along and chopped it down.
Two people, actually.
A father and son.
They used an old crosscut saw,
Pulling the quivering blade
Through those rings of water,
Dampening their boots dark,
Then bucked it up
And sold it off in cords.
All winter people burned
It in their stoves.
It burned beautifully.
Even the fire was deceived,
Believing the water
To be wood, but its smoke,
Its smoke was like
The smoke of veils
When all the bride wants
Is to be invisible.
The Garden
For the first time in weeks
I walk out to the garden.
It surprises me to find there
are still things growing here,
rooted in the earth but forsaken,
like people on a road somewhere.
They don't know this road.
They've never walked it before.
I was the one set them upon it
and now I've abandoned them.
When I drive past they wave
vaguely, having given up hope
someone will stop and take them
wherever they're going.
But then, in a sudden reversal,
I realize I'm the one walking,
wishing I could go
wherever they're going.
Stunt
The last light tried to pull off
A straightjacketed underwater escape stunt
But couldn't get out of either
The jacket or the water in time.
Later, its lifeless body was found
Floating facedown in the river
But no one thought to drag it out
Having mistaken it for the moon.
Shortage
When in doubt as to
What to use in the loo
In lieu of bathroom tissue,
The newest issue
Of Poets & Writers
Ought to do.
Rally
Our fürher,
Who farts in sevens,
Shallowed he lie vain;
Thigh dingdong dumb,
Thy kill for fun,
On earth as it is in weapons.
Sieve us this day our daily dread
And poor live us our yes masses
As we poor give rose to
Yes pass against us;
And bleed us rot into damnation,
But baa shiver us numb evil;
For thine is the wring crumb
And the cower
And the gory
For bow and for sever,
Ah men.