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

61.

phone sex isn’t a long term solution
as we travel along this path of challenge and change
it is simply a belief in reach
a rubbing against the cut
a person in the room who never speaks
the poetic-critic
the nets
more slowly, losing altitude

27.

appealing to the reader’s self-interest
I have scribbled the following notes on pages 14, 15, 16, 23, 26, and 29:
the last time we rubbed faces
someone turned the page and laughed
and yet, it didn’t seem to matter at all if they stayed or left
they didn’t exist anymore except as a warning
like a cat ignoring the traffic
an incinerated butterfly fathomed only as ash

51.

the war you only just heard about
for Allen Davies
bottomed out selling promises
in Los Alamos or something
rushed from the crucified city
to start again
climbing up the back of the legs to the silent crotch.

7

I turn now to the book’s methodology
when the fog hangs low
jostled as are the waters approaching
rewritten from the perspective
of the little old lady

one manifestation of what I call intermediation
gathering mist and letting it fall
and to concern myself less with the publishers of poetry
the very concepts of homogenous national cultures
there against the fierce blue of the sky

making, storing, and transmitting
in renitent release
the human situation that motivated my phone call and visit
of the asymmetrical worlds that exist
there in the home of the little old lady

however, in regard to the poems I left with you
I like to think there is overwhelming evidence
of the city that extends before us
complex transactions between bodies and texts
contrary to a sculpture in a museum