Collected Poems Read Online Free Page A

hooked together like flowers on the water,
    who will die flashing in the air,
    shaken in the beak of sunlight.
    The surface tainted with small blood,
    there can be bees and water hydra,
    sea-grasses and blown seed,
    and before a man’s eyes life and death,
    silence and the dim scream of love
    can rise and furl up
    from the bottom like smoke
    and thin away.

Downwards
    This is the last day of the world. On the river docks
    I watch for the last time the tide get higher
    and chop in under the stinking pilings. How the small creatures
    who drift dreaming of hands and lungs must sting,
    rotting alive in the waste spill, coming up dead
    with puffy stomachs paler than the sky or faces.
    There is deep fire fuming ash to the surface.
    It is the last tide and the last evening and from now
    things will strive back downwards.
    A fish thrown up will gasp in the flare
    and flop back hopelessly through the mud flats to the water.
    The last man, an empty bottle with no message, is here, is me,
    and I am rolling, fragile as a bubble in the upstream spin,
    battered by carcasses, drawn down by the lips of weeds
    to the terrible womb of torn tires and children’s plastic shoes
    and pennies and urine. I am no more, and what is left,
    baled softly with wire, floating
    like a dark pillow in the hold of the brown ship, is nothing.
    It dreams. Touching fangs delicately with cranes
    and forklifts, it rests silently in its heavy ripening.
    It stands still on the water, rocking, blinking.

Shells
    It’s horrible, being run over by a bus
    when all you are is a little box turtle.
    You burst. Your head blasts out like a cork
    and soars miles
    to where the boy sprawls on the grass strip
    beside the sidewalk. In mid-air
    you are him. Your face touches his face,
    you stutter, and you will go all your life
    holding your breath,
    wondering what you meant.
                                                      He forgets now
    but he knew it in his cheek scorched
    by the sweet blades and in his wild groin.
    In his mother’s arms, screaming,
    he knew it: that he was crossing
    under the laughter and there was the other voice
    sobbing, It’s not far, It’s not far.

Beyond
    Some people,
    they just don’t hate enough yet.
    They back up, snarl, grab guns
    but they’re like children,
    they overreach themselves;
    they end up standing there feeling stupid,
    wondering if it’s worth it.
    Some people, they don’t have a cause yet.
    They just throw their hate here and there
    and sooner or later it’s hollow
    and they say, What is this?
    and after that it’s too late.
    After that you can barely
    button your sleeve in the morning —
    you just take breaths.
    Some people are too tired to hate
    and so they think, Why live?
    They read the papers, wince,
    but they’re hardly there anymore.
    You go by them in the street
    and they don’t spit or mutter —
    they look at themselves in store windows,
    they touch their faces.
    Some people, you give up
    on them. You let them go,
    you lose them.
    They were like children, they hardly
    knew what they meant. You think to yourself,
    Good Riddance.

Patience Is When You Stop Waiting
    I stand on the first step under the torn mouths of hours
    in a new suit. Terrified of the arched webs and the dust,
    of my speech, my own hair slicked with its thin pride,
    I jut like a thorn; I turn, my pain turns and closes.
    Tell me again about silence. Tell me I won’t,
    not ever, hear the cold men whispering in my pores
    or the mothers and fathers who scream in the bedroom
    and throw boxes of money between them and kiss.
    At the window, faces hover against the soft glow
    like names. If I cry out, it will forget me and go;
    if I don’t, nothing begins again. Tell me
    about mercy again, how she rides in eternity’s arms
    in the drifts and the dreams come. The night is dying.
    Wisely it thinks of death as a thing born of desire.
    Gently it opens its sharp ribs and bites through
    and holds me. Tell