some short poems

This is not a dream about Joe
and being sorry he died of AIDS.
There's a sort of squalor
just in having veins,
if they begin to bleed
or you need drugs to fill them.

You can react in a saintly manner
to such suffering or not.
Saints do not take their blood pressure
obsessively or paint images
of their own suffering.

They sit like Salvador Dali
in a kitchen, sipping rejuvenation

from the gross colors of the diseased body.

*

The saints realize suffering

is actually those neon poster paints

you stared at as a child,


wondering.

*

You could make your poem
like an apartment
where people could stay
if you are saintly that way
and want people to have
a mental place you furnished.

*

I'm not sure whether
making poems is a healthy attitude
or not. Poetry readers are pretty nomadic
mostly, and don't really want
to stay in any one poem
for an extended period of time.

They want to believe when they trade
in the poem for a new one
they are trading up,
and making a return
on their mental investment
in the writer's neurotic
or philosophical/linguistic/social cat condo.

*

Blood could be euphoria.

Any relationship could become a forest.

*

But I prefer the bathtub people
who keep picking the wool of anxiety
off their bodies like caterpillars.
People are usually spitting
on other people in art
in one form or another,
and--let's face it--
the bathtub caterpillar people
make wonderful targets.

*

I prefer the company of people who are targets, really.

Targets with caterpillars on them.

They're good people.

*

It can't be helped, I suppose.
Sort of like winter or squirrels
getting into nooks and crannies.
You slip from the seemingly painful
to the painful eventually. That's nature.
The posters of irony write poems
that are irony posters
and that's their New York story.

A sort of snow falls and covers
these poets eventually

and they turn to stone
under the snow and are mistaken
for sculptures

and they finally stop being witty.

*

An ocean may be dark on dark
or pretend to be a window
the way a lover opens windows
in his or her soul and opens windows
in the apartment that are stuck
with a screwdriver chiseling paint
to show the sincerity of the commitment
to the dwelling. And a commitment
to the air flow, to breathing.

*


There's always a Biblical subtext to life,
don't kid yourself you're past it.

You either notice you step on ants
or you don't when you are walking.

You want to be one of those lucky lights
that glows and doesn't really know
that it exists, a sun or moon.

*

I know your vainglory.

*

You will probably end up with an International
Heifer sort of mind. One day
you will cry because you can no longer

cringe. And someone will say "Cringe!"
like a director giving a snotty cue.

And you will realize you feel the size
of all past fucking and it was ridiculously tiny.

*

One day you will run into madness or more people
like a department store, just to distract yourself

from the real shape of the problem

which is a war game involving these little lamps,
food, disease, just lying there and international shame.