ON THE LEAVES

Bend down and kiss the Earth, wench:

spread your genitals for me

and let me watch them glisten.

Let me fuck you in the rain

and stay close and deep inside,

bathing my whole seed-shoot

in your juices.

We can laugh on the leaves

and kiss afterward.  We can

roll around in them

and let them stick to our skin,

we can let leaves

be our clothing for a day.

ROSA

Diamond mind

how I wish I could

find you in your epic dreams

and resurrect you

take you to a place

of luminous cool

and heal your wounds

with light.

BIOLOGICAL TRASH WITH SOUL

Your fecal gods, your fecal lovers,

are coming to tear you up

and attach your fragments

to an endlessly crawling vine.

You will be dispersed

in conscious pieces,

watched by hateful, luminous eyes

that never stop staring

in fascinated disgust

at the mottled pieces of your hubris,

which was the only form

you chose to inhabit, so that now

this wreckage of your form shows

what it was actually worth: little chunks

of cosmically imprisoned meat

carried far by overwhelming forces.

NO SORROW

The angel of death

is the only one left.

Humanity is foul

inside and out.

They wander in the paths

of their worst fathers,

who abandoned them,

and still they follow

like the shades of anti-life

they really are.

Their footsteps kill.  And I

can only walk away from them

so far.  It's never far enough.

I won't worship this race.

I know my hideousness too well

to think I could do fundamentally better.

We think we pop the latch,

but we attach the fetters.

ALPHA THE ROOSTER

Keeper of the Coop

Little feather footed warrior,

little speck of heated red,

your plumage is bright again,

face down in your dish

on a nest of wood chips.

That raccoon that almost

tore your head off

left your beak battered

and your tongue swollen.

Food could barely catch your smell,

much less your taste.

You survived for a week

on the water that I used

to bathe your wounds

plus whatever I could pour

down your throat.

And you were thirsty.

One day you choked

and I turned you upside down,

pouring the water out of your little body.

You fluffed your neck feathers

and emitted two little croaks.

I tried to feed you figs,

I peeled them first,

I brought you a dish of fish

crushed into paste.  But by then

all that was left of you

was will and water.

So that in the end, in the morning

when your body was rigid with death,

there were few flies and no feces.

You were purified, clean,

ready for deep, rich sleep in the earth

where you defended your coop.

Oh my brave little bantam,

these forests will remember your fury

and your sterling cry.

MIDDLE AGE

I'm done trying to figure it out.

I know the maze leads

to another maze.

I'm going anyway.

I want to know just how much more

I cannot really know.

I want to see its mystery unfurl.

I'll sing it a song: it might

be an ax, it might be a lullaby.

Either one is right.  I love them both.

Time has forgotten me.  I've been quoting

things that someone never said,

and yet it fits.

Time has remembered my best bits,

said a doll on a dashboard.

That was in a foreign car, that

was in a foreign year.

Some in mid way say

let somebody else steer, let go,

relax.  I'm getting off

before their naps attack.

The bus chugs on its river of tar

the street is going elsewhere

I no longer need imagine it is mine.

Into the glories of the netherworld.

Into the astral blossoms of the void

that pop like rice paper walls

in another realm

while this one remains almost

soundless, and red.

Galactic amber spilling into bed.

The threads of space

are pulling many webs.

The shutters bled before:

they are painted in such

slow drips.

ALPHA

Alpha, our little feather footed

bantam rooster, is the only one

in the hen pen.

Most of the old hens

are four times his size.

He lives to defend and fight.

When I bring a saucepan full

of chicken feed

he attacks in a red blaze.

I dump the food quick

for the hens, turn the rear of the pan

towards him as a shield: he bounces

off the thing like a dragonfly

or a hummingbird,

but when I close the pen

and look at the pan

his beak has left a scar

on the copper bottom.

This morning, Alpha's head and tail

were mangled, he was blind and covered

in blood, but still he stood.

His crow was silent: he had fought something

bigger and stronger than himself,

in the night.  The oblivious hens

strut back and forth, nobody

else was touched.

Now we keep him

alone in the smaller chick hatch coop,

with some fresh grubs and feed

and torn figs.  We wash his injuries in a pool

and leave him with fresh water.

Chickens don't like to move

in the dark, and he is blind.

His tongue is swollen in his mouth

from the wounds of his battle,

but his tough little feet

are strong and sure,

gripping the edge of his dish.

His pride is quieter than his crow

but his pride is not broken.