Every morning the maple leaves.
                               Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts
            from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big
and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out
                                             You will be alone always and then you will die.
So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog

         of non-definitive acts,
something other than the desperation.
                   Dear So-and-So, I'm sorry I couldn't come to your party.
Dear So-and-So, I'm sorry I came to your party
         and seduced you
and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
                                                         Your want a better story. Who wouldn't?
A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing.

                  Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on.
What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.
            Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly
                                                                              flames everywhere.
I can tell already you think I'm the dragon,
                that would be so like me, but I'm not. I'm not the dragon.
I'm not the princess either.

                          Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
             I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow
         glass, but that comes later.
                                                      And the part where I push you
flush against the wall and every part of your body rubs against the bricks,
            shut up
I'm getting to it.

                                   For a while I thought I was the dragon.
I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was
                                                                                                the princess,
cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,
          young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with
confidence
            but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,
while I'm out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,

                                                              and getting stabbed to death.
                                    Okay, so I'm the dragon. Big deal.
          You still get to be the hero.
You get the magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights!
                  What more do you want?
I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you're
            really there.
Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live?

                                                      Let me do it right for once,
           for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,
you know the story, simply heaven.
                   Inside your head you hear a phone ringing
                                                               and when you open your eyes
only a clearing with deer in it. Hello deer.
                               Inside your head the sound of glass,

a car crash sound as the trucks roll over and explode in slow motion.
             Hello darling, sorry about that.
                                                       Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we
lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell
                                    and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.
            Especially that, but I should have known.
You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together

           to make a creature that will do what I say
or love me back.
                  I'm not really sure why I do it, but in this version you are not
feeding yourself to a bad man
                                       against a black sky prickled with small lights.
            I take it back.
The wooden halls likes caskets. These terms from the lower depths.
                                                I take them back.

Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.
                                                                              Crossed out.
            Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something
underneath the floorboards.
                   Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle
                                                                            reconstructed.
Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all

              forgiven,
even though we didn't deserve it.
                                                      Inside your head you hear
a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you're washing up
            in a stranger's bathroom,
standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away
                           from the dirtiest thing you know.
All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly
                                                                            darkness,

                                                                  suddenly only darkness.
In the living room, in the broken yard,
                           in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport
          bathroom's gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of
unnatural light,
             my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away.
And the airplane, the window seat over the wing with a view

                                                  of the wing and a little foil bag of peanuts.
I arrived in the city and you met me at the station,
          smiling in a way
               that made me frightened. Down the alley, around the arcade,
          up the stairs of the building
to the little room with the broken faucets, your drawings, all your things,
                                                I looked out the window and said

                 This doesn't look that much different from home,
            because it didn't,
but then I noticed the black sky and all those lights. 
                                    We walked through the house to the elevated train.
            All these buildings, all that glass and the shiny beautiful
                                                                        mechanical wind.
We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too,
            smiling and crying in a way that made me

even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I 
                                       
                           just couldn't say it out loud.
Actually, you said Love, for you,
                            is larger than the usual romantic love. It's like a religion. It's
                                                                               terrifying. No one
                                                               will ever want to sleep with you.
Okay, if you're so great, you do it—

                 here's the pencil, make it work . . .
If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the window
            is over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathing
river water.
            Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it
                                                                                              Jerusalem.
                  We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not
what we sought, so do it over, give me another version,

            a different room, another hallway, the kitchen painted over
and over,
             another bowl of soup.
The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell.
             Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time.
                                                                            Forget the dragon,

leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness.
                                        Let's jump ahead to the moment of epiphany,
             in gold light, as the camera pans to where
the action is,
             lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into frame, close enough to see
                                          the blue rings of my eyes as I say
                                                                              something ugly.

I never liked that ending either. More love streaming out the wrong way,
             and I don't want to be the kind that says the wrong way.
But it doesn't work, these erasures, this constant refolding of the pleats.
                                             There were some nice parts, sure,
all lemondrop and mellonball, laughing in silk pajamas
             and the grains of sugar
                         on the toast, love love or whatever, take a number. I'm sorry

                                                                         it's such a lousy story.
Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently
                     we have had our difficulties and there are many things
                                                                              I want to ask you.
I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again,
             years later, in the chlorinated pool.
                               I am still talking to you about help. I still do not have

             these luxuries.
I have told you where I'm coming from, so put it together.
                                              We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor . . .
             When I say this, it should mean laughter,
not poison
.
                  I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.

Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.
                                           Quit milling around the yard and come inside.

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist 
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like. Look,
there's a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he'll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you're busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it's sex you've always wanted.
Well, they lie together
like the party's unbuttoned coats,
slumped on the bed
waiting for drunken arms to move them.
I don't think you want me to go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this
is a poem for the entire family.
Right now, Budweiser
is dripping from a waterfall,
deodorants are hissing into armpits
of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don't know what music this poem
can come up with, but clearly
it's needed. For it's apparent 
they will never see each other again
and we need music for this
because there was never music when he or she
left you standing on the corner.
You see, I want this poem to be nicer 
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I'll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.
The poem is saying that to you now.
But don't give anything for this poem.
It doesn't expect much. It will never say more
than listening can explain.
Just keep it in your attache case 
or in your house. And if you're not asleep
by now, or bored beyond sense,
the poem wants you to laugh. Laugh at
yourself, laugh at this poem, at all poetry.
Come on:

Good. Now here's what poetry can do.

Imagine yourself a caterpillar.
There's an awful shrug and, suddenly,
You're beautiful for as long as you live.

To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,
The inquisition yet would serve the law,
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills;
May criticise oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and childbearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.

Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.

Although it's not a fear of crowds, since
getting around them isn't so bad; no,
or a fear of open spaces, I like a big sky
rather more than a tunnel
and I even like people okay, though I
prefer them one at a time;
however I have refused to go
out in the cold, wishing to avoid the cruel
bite of the winter wind and my frozen tears when
i only ever want the kiss of the sun
and the warmth of one person's arms.

Summer sings its long song, and all the notes are green.
But there's a click, somewhere in the middle
of the month, as we reach the turning point, the apex,
a Ferris wheel, cars tipping and tilting over the top,
and we see September up ahead, school and schedules
returning. And there's the first night you step outside
and hear the katydids arguing, six more weeks
to frost, and you know you can make it through to fall.
Dark now at eight, nights finally cooling off for sleep,
no more twisting in damp sheets, hearing mosquitoes'
thirsty whines. Lakes of chicory and Queen Anne's lace
mirror the sky's high cirrus. Evenings grow chilly,
time for old sweaters and sweatpants, lying in the hammock
squinting to read in the quick-coming dusk.
A few fireflies punctuate the night's black text,
and the moonlight is so thick, you could swim in it
until you reach the other side.

The sea is never the same twice. Today
the waves open their lions-mouths hungry
for the shore and I feel the earth helpless.
Some days their foamy edges are lace
at my feet, the sea a sheet of green silk.
Sometimes the shore brings souvenirs
from a storm, I sift spoils of sea grass:
find a broken finger of coral, a torn fan,
examine a sponge’s hollow throat, watch
a man-of-war die a sapphire in the sand.
Some days there’s nothing but sand
quiet as snow, I walk, eyes on the wind
sometimes laden with silver tasting salt,
sometimes still as the sun. Some days
the sun is a dollop of honey and raining
light on the sea glinting diamond dust,
sometimes there are only clouds, clouds—
sometimes solid as continents drifting
across the sky, other times wispy, white
roses that swirl into tigers, into cathedrals,
into hands, and I remember some days

I’m still a boy on this beach, wanting
to catch a seagull, cup a tiny silver fish,
build a perfect sand castle. Some days I am
a teenager blind to death even as I watch
waves seep into nothingness. Most days
I’m a man tired of being a man, sleeping
in the care of dusk’s slanted light, or a man
scared of being a man, seeing some god
in the moonlight streaming over the sea.
Some days I imagine myself walking
this shore with feet as worn as driftwood,
old and afraid of my body. Someday,
I suppose I’ll return someplace like waves
trickling through the sand, back to sea
without any memory of being, but if
I could choose eternity, it would be here
aging with the moon, enduring in the space
between every grain of sand, in the cusp
of every wave, and every seashell’s hollow.

I wonder what would happen if
I treated everyone like I was in love
with them, whether I like them or not
and whether they respond or not and no matter
what they say or do to me and even if I see
things in them which are ugly twisted petty
cruel vain deceitful indifferent, just accept
all that and turn my attention to some small
weak tender hidden part and keep my eyes on
that until it shines like a beam of light
like a bonfire I can warm my hands by and trust
it to burn away all the waste which is not
never was my business to meddle with.

One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.

One fine day.