right now i am in that old motel.
i am writing this from a bamboo desk and the walls
are not that sweet.
the walls (since i mention them) -
not exactly free of
discernible traces - need further
study -
there are forms and lines
no bureau could perceive.
we all need more time.
take the absent geranium -
the balcony 's lost sorrow and the
rush for speed that is
pure and soft as
o! the wind against
your cheek.
we wait for them
who will burn
the next room
and the realignment of our
happenstance
on vectors that can
only converge -
are you digging
this transmission -
we wait for a shotgun and
a long
written road.
you find the meaning of
these birds in the
feathers of her
crowning achievement .
or you do not.
the moon is more than
a good idea -
we will never forget rue
mouffetard and chez franprix -
why leave this city? -
a ruthless baguette stands at the gate
and many fail to pass.
the roman soccer field and the way buildings
lean way back and touch
those lost deeds, the crusted and frozen jewels
and cigars soaked in the burnt language of
our lingering dreams - o the flash and bitter
streak against that morning and this
sunset clouded reminiscence
i am not afraid to tell anyone
that these rooms have my scent -
i have seen this one bad word at a time -
ive watched a clean surface punctured and wounded
until each glacier wept -
each for a daughter now lost - how?
have you seen the way eyes roll back until
everything is forced into the stall -
squeezed through the chute - we say its
humane (o this intrusion - this de-rarefied air -)
takes more in the tank than it carries.
that
spot on the interstate , that
mile long stain.
have we been to this very here
before?
its the motel and the fast
stop. 9 or 19
miles to empty.
i've cleaned my windshield
now and again - sure, we all have -
i've taken
as breaths the sins
of the father - worn my
own skin to dust
on the machines of
our labor.
ive knocked mortar from bricks with
a chisel and a
hammer
each night
beneath the snow filled sky of some
mountain somewhere in the
mountains.
its easier
than i thought
to get almost
anywhere but
there.
if the headlights catch the bird in its teeth
its the way of the road to fill a blanket
with relief and let it lay with hard mittens
by the side of bleached grass.
mixed with piss,
this world can sting.
there are shipwrecks
you'll never know about -
each live thing
in turn
sliding down
have you seen the tail lights flash
and pull away and while you shake hands
with the king
of the delta who
sings the merciful truth
about the red light
and the blue
into everybody
turned toward the ground
and how starlings return with
kahoutek.
these flames of that bird -
that dog is
no dog -
that dog,
my friend, is
coyote.
this poem
cannot go on
but how
can it be stopped -
this is central
to the mission
as the mission
was conceived.
we are talking
about this spool of desire
and our widened hearts and
the way some carry what they can and
some what they cant.
nobody wants
to be the one
who smells likes a bad check -
i am writing this from
the
arena of that dismay, -
much later and filled
with feathers and that ancien regime
of eye
that you or you might explain -
its an uplift, they say
that made the
high cutting edge of the
sierra nevada -
yes real, yes real, yes real.
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