(from STAND, December 1999)


The Spirit of Gravity Gets Down with Me

How far up the lark now, wingtip?
Nocked flange to spur astride, flushed
for all your downy stuff and dashed--_en
blade_? Just there, where you had no use
for lean or rest, nor heard the hot flaps of
that windup chariot, your own, back then.

That's how it goes, pinwheel, what becomes
from behind--wound or sprung, it ups and does
without (hoist must, windlass), it cuts to a
vane vastly more empirical than those duds,
the liar stars and fibber numbers of your slow
dairy love--count that thought net if not so
sweet, bird which ever were none too
glad, dun in an even shinier hour.

Tirra lirra what a river to croon, swanny, down-
tuned to ebb, with a wildtype strain of alarm
sirening off at the end of your mind--no balm to
settle for less, your hash, or whatever's cooking
up the evening, dogged as french dusk on its spit.
Bank on it, farrago or shadow (though you're not
half-sick of shadows), to smoke, then rain you
out with all the lyric barometrics of your grand
autumnal style. But soft, why not steal apace
to look a wile in the gift? If your horse

beggars belief to throw every race, you are too
near hobson's door, thus far from the only one,
without. Choice cuts, it stands to reason like a
lone cheese or (your hard luck) an epistemology
to ride in on, at last. A word to hang upon
azuredly, consigning all physics to dust, it
comes to gloss and sounds so full of itself,
overtime as _moon_ or _gone_ up tower with
miles to lapse from your specific gravity,
periodically (as if you could ever forget
to always historicize). Such is the birth

of basketcase, too bulrushed for any child as this
to be laid to rest (lullay lullay), not our pearl
priced to float her mischances perchance to sell
upon the tithe (read _barcode_ for what says _you_
like nobody's business). By duskbark the bats are
in the stirfry all right, the mean revamps the while,
so home sweetly on your own--_north_ it is, you say,
belated as _breath_ to yourself, close enough--and
wheel to wrack up the screws of that drill you
know so well: locksmith to clovehitch, knot
the right to be left more fit to be tied.

Let the choosers beg for change and be plagued,
stupid or contagious as the spirit whiffs, the
lilies blow. This is no time to be weaving or
coining some green marvel cast in brazen grief
off your own brown shade. Forget the hair,
it's all about the tower now. How did you get
up here? How could you come down with stockholm
syndrome all alone? Nonetheless, rapunzealot, put
it behind you to shoulder yourself--pardon your
hair as mere prolegomenon, scout at the split
of featheredge, leg-up for dead release
--your glossy countenance!--turn
to your face--the music, you know,
the follow-through

          so far
          your rain

          so hard
          your own


                                 _star too swift
                             offcast    late mantle
                                me     your shred or
                                             mine ahead_