With Mercy for the Greedy

the vines are beneath the cement
informed by the glimpse spectrum
shallow water coming until unraveled
oh sweet vision of the great tent in heaven
like conversational prose turning the beaches pink
five dollars, like a bar,
defect to the typewriter silent, on the hill
(as clearly it had moreover served faster prints among the rocks)
my skull heard dusty laughter from the family king cat
onto the freeway shoulders, to come
on a happy ending
from a walk of so able or galled
a philodendron’s penduncle
velvet drapes come to music the velvet fog
the fatuousness neither warm nor friendly dark
knowing the usual, unreliable fuckless days and nights
thought, form, impulse, the sperm whales feeding
are concerned on your shelves
and though the sharpness suffuses the frogs like a psychiatrist
their dusty laughter on a great falcon hunt
eyes the flinging arms of a country and western band
where you’re hiding from monsters, dream still dark
a trace on the no happiness like mine
so the lumps on my knees study for a decade
beggar bold! cannibal dynamo!, extravagantly slow
premonition of the fall, but felt your leered teeth
would pierce our heart, a small fuzzy pipe
fallen naked as snow, deconstruction
one whole year the windows would swivel
it was the dingiest bird, all that sweetened purpose?
that smell of difference still situate, entertained
who’s got to blow the man’s arguement in the used car lot
walk around with almost human knowledge
swing low sweet sexual holy land on my porch stoop
sand paintings of this present
a commotion of common metaphors
if it’s thinking is not having bones
a day spring turtles hate most
no peace as round
a sapped thing without hope of landscape
men call me old scratched isingsglass
alien eggs that simply stake out in diagonal darts
like stars published shrunken
with weary satisfaction of my flesh, often comedy belies
a pure pane of sweetened brilliant water
a religious octopus grenade
slowly calicoed with wet wind
bark of the enterprise where the brightest light
has held you in their bushings



[Source text: A. Poulin's Contemporary American Poetry anthology.]