GOING AWAY OR COMING HOME

GOING AWAY OR COMING HOME

From some sucked cocoon in a bitter cellar
Comes that most wished to be done with and over:
Going away or coming home.

On the last broken bus ride across a horizon
Brimming fiery with shimmering poison
Came that most wished to be done with and over,
Going away or coming.

Asked of a buck-toothed cashier
Brimming fiery with shimmering poison
Is the petty diplomat fallen?

Asked of a buck-toothed cashier,
Who, in fear of reprisal, shrugs dumbly in answer.

The petty diplomat is fallen,
Is departed, and shall never again
Be going away or coming home,s

Who, in fear of reprisal, shrugged dumbly in answer.
The weary question of his flat feet: Are
We going away or coming home?

INTRODUCTION TO THE HARROWING OF HALYCHYNA

INTRODUCTION TO THE HARROWING OF HALYCHYNA

The giant dirt fields.
Under the ruined cupola’s September shadow,
At the lee of the lingering autocracy’s blade yields
To historical, neck-slung grindstone inertia the furrow,
Slow, of the eroding collective,
A sweat-sweet plead to the sky, impassive.

Such rank mouths
Under the foiled Union of a half-continent of timber.
With so few prepositions as to confound sympathetic behemoths
And the behemoths’ jingoistic younger
Set come the ignorant assertions, the prideful
Foot stamps in the dirt, so uncivil.

Near-absent means
Lie drunk, blind really, in the dirt: our red-eyed uncle.
The empty cooperative crumbles, like broken beans,
Together jigsaw a cheek-denting pillow of rubble,
And as our uncle snores at the sun and farts
And sleeps away from the present in fits and starts

His dream column
Rolls forth: rumbling German planter-spreaders.
From under each a dozen axles shriek the solemn
Terms of the inky lease that permits such gleaming invaders
Their tires-full-of-water and systematic
Turning over of our village-state’s bucolic
dirt.

THE END OF WASTE

THE END OF WASTE

The end of waste is upon us!
We have each our seedy habits considered,
We have realized much room for improvement,
Now off we stomp into the desert!

We have each our seedy habits considered
Through an earthen pair of deliberate lenses,
Now off we stomp into the desert,
To the wrong end of wilderness,
and we not knowing it.

Through an earthen pair of deliberate lenses
We, sadly, have allowed ourselves to go off
To the wrong end of wilderness, and,
we not knowing it,
Have on impulse used each other up.

We sadly have allowed ourselves to go off
With demonstrated consensual willingness,
Have on impulse used each other up
Running our mouths together in darkness.

With demonstrated consensual willingness
So tightly we have gripped the hooked carpet knife;
Running our mouths together in darkness
We cannot undo our hands on its haft.

So tightly we have gripped the hooked carpet knife
And so fiercely have we swung, jaws set.
We cannot undo our hands on its haft,
We flail on and away till nothing is left.

So fiercely have we swung, jaws set
That we know our true condition; although
We flail on and away till nothing is left,
Till our insides dry up, are loose gravel;

That we know our true condition, although
We have realized much room for improvement,
Till our insides dry up, are loose gravel,
The end of waste is upon us!

ME AND WALLACE DOWN AT THE HORSE OPERA

ME AND WALLACE DOWN AT THE HORSE OPERA

Although we don’t together share
An ossified physis circumscribed by prairie-wastes,
I recognize what you’ve put there
In your looking book of wolf-willow tastes,

And, Mr. Stegner, though I’ve never met you
I also came up from the Horse Opera
(We both have myths charred in the dream flue)
And, like you, at my memory’s high-as-a-

Miserable-twitching-frozen-veined-nag-
Cutbanks, with aid of such deceptive instruments
(Frustrations, failures, embarrassments, disappointments)
I can’t see why we ever needed a backhoe to drag

The animal up the eyelevel embankment.
Knee-high gumboots did fit. Peril doesn’t.

ANY ILLITERATE BUNDLE OF BLOWSY ...

ANY ILLITERATE BUNDLE OF BLOWSY

Any illiterate bundle of blowsy
Can make a noise in a burning tee,
Can kiss the idiot on bended knee,
Can piss itself at the village pillory,

Can proclaim to dawn its egg uncommon,
Can reckon sincerely what the typhlopidae has seen,
Can forsake the principle of tissue rejection
For the sake of its transplanted spleen,

Can, after hours of struggle, positions shifting,
Confusion, embarrassment, legs losing feeling,
Infestations within and without, thumbs throbbing-

Today I woke. I did not conduct below
Wilted rushes and stumped cars a sub Iulio-
Born corpse. I may to you say I don’t know.