Dear Cut/Throat,

Let us not façade
fall loosely waiting
with a very slow

and easy motion
the contents of the
poem the dish of

fruit rotting in the
pantry carelessness
which I have compared

to a flat glass dish
in the bare blue skies
a woman’s gesture

the contents of the
poem broken ice
still carving new lips

but even the chips
find you on the page
astonished stammer

and they look crushed here
as your tight lashes
the sun wet with dreams

            slowly feeding a
            delirious speech
            to a taut barbed tongue

Dear Cut/Throat,

Let us resume
unmarred, that is
to say more civil

save in the poem
in our winter clothes
where our bodies take

for a moment
anonymous
reluctant holds

over modern verse
ironically for-
getting a naked

girl half rotted
on the half rotted
bench underneath trans-

mission remitted
without stirring sod-
den paths the poet-

ic zig-zag through near
indecipherably
hollowing our hearts

though I must confess
I used to follow
you from the ladies’

room to the ends of
the earth emerging
pitifully in love

like a scared flower
whose roots are restless-
ly learning the lines

cleansing mystery
this too I love art
below the belly

a low dissembling
reprehensible
tenderness denied

a blood-spattered walk
whose encrusted branch-
es compromise kiss-

es witnessing mere-
ly preservation
itself as descent

Dear Cut/Throat,

A.

In your mind
you jump
from an unmoving roar
mostly silent
beyond the hill
the sharp light of stars
winding through
and out a distant bombing.

B.

In the damp night
by the laboratory
carved by the pulse
of your counterfeit sex
your entrails
rock like a baby carriage
layered and beaten
as an unchanging mountain.

C.

In the first act
the burden of all
outward forms must break
through.  The broken hinge
completes the picture
which has already been celebrated:
Icarus drowning bare-assed
everything in motion.

D.

In my world you contract to
a recognizable image this
climate a missed
syllable miraculously fixed
on a sensitive young boy
the modern poetic
thinking of Venus dead on
the lawn by a magenta flower.

Dear Cut/Throat,

           

            “My secret life
                        has been made up” -WCW

We forget sometimes
that no matter what
no one knew
or exactly knew
the delicate defeat
could not endure
completely
the lost symmetry

the contents of the poem
like fumes of a burning
automobile
the eyes of a fly
the petty imagery
of clichés
pursuing our mouths
the squirrels and pigeons
defying death in their
shallow suits
the disconsolate tegument
a flayed rose
hunting the poet

and no end
among the woods
and no end
among the words.

Perhaps I am less
an artist
than a sonnet buried
under savage snow-

What good then
expecting your
warm still arms
startled
before dawn
for practically anyone?

Dear Cut/Throat,

Yet no image is decisive.

As the fog moves in and the creek rises we have our own
wounds in this geography.

At nightfall,
I thought I heard sirens,
the wet streets of my abandoned city speaking to me.

The baby in your belly
argues that mother’s milk is indebted forever.

Your tongue is your only accomplice, a classic love story of two desperate entities. 

Don’t touch me.  Don’t touch my private language. 

We can only talk in nonsense rhyme.  

Dear Cut/Throat,

it began as a drawing of lines
a measurement of faith

mapping an imperative topography
the disquisition of tongues
a volatility contesting end

but soon the lines began
intersecting—reaching  

shorter distances until
they became dots/markers/
references of location/
place—as in: you are here

and drawing lines
became something
we only did in sand

but there are no beaches here