Chagrin Was His Method

A grumble of butter where a whimsical to-do. All allies resemble coast. Alligator bully go do do that voodoo. Better yet, breathe. That dress reminds me of a broken thumb, a family of drum manufacturers, a gum tree in summer. A dream of north, again. Do it nicely now like a milk cow might in October. Recorded suicide notes are all the rage, he said, as if that explained anything. Plans like clams end up in fritters. It rhymes so you can remember it or at least dance. I got to have a little tenderness or else medicine for breakfast. Half a dozen debutantes opted to study Gertrude Stein while two flights below them the hired band plunged into The Yellow Rose of Texas for the eighteenth time. Chagrin was his method. Relationship to situation as handshake is to gutter. Oh furious, oh specious kites, oh ambling groans of pain. The historical impact of print media always shut her up, especially when she was drunk. I'm not dead, I'm just zero. Try the caramelized onions with feta, the steak sautéed in vodka. Every snowflake makes me sing a prettily. Of the many yous, which was?

Sound Of River

A penultimate oval to which one's obligation is deeply felt. Opacity figures in as does the red of deity. Keep title for properly a fandango.

Nobody arrives, leaving sound of river. Crepuscular orange sentiment well trodden. The snow that hill was keeping in.

A roaring bull, a declamation. They walked regular in angles like stars. At hour when voices fade, drizzling down like old rain.

A lid, a bowl, a ladle, a trowel. A soil way of declaring proclaiming. Lizzie Borden's broken wax.

Harrowing the rows along a memory of elm. Swing's the thing. He wrote bearing in mind most of a favored wind.

Instrumental occidental. Keep your Jimmy Dean. The plane stoked low a redundant basket of globes.

Light found is one's hand a plus. Char blackened bulbous as a ridden grill would also.

Nigh

At 2 a.m. the sentences were like unruly sheep, flocking this way and that through my barn, I mean brain. Competing with the old execution to fall asleep fantasy ain't easy. The naive nativity is never so nigh (as now).

Now what do you have to say? Unseasonal warmth has melted all the snow I might otherwise have had to shovel off, a simple enough fact that does prompt one to go looking for hidden meanings. "It rains so that people can swim."

"He died because that's how life is." Meanwhile, I'm watching teen dating epics and wondering how I've managed to go so long without reading Zukofsky. The back fence fell down in last night's wind, meaning I can't leave for the library until it's fixed, and there's a lesson in that, too.

Brain aneurysm vs. suicide, you decide because nobody's saying. We are friends because neither of us felt at home where we lived, and our paths kept crossing in fortuitous ways. January is the wrong month, can we make it summer, or otherwise improve on the sentence?

I've gotten too cozy with form here, and the twenty sentences themselves don't make the same demands of me, in which realizations I must now regrettably say there is - you guessed it - a lesson. I was happy in those days when all I did was file the paperwork of a lawyer who picked his nose in public. In the dream, I found your missing arrow, pulled it out of the earth, and was much celebrated thereafter, or am I projecting?

Have a burger on me, pal, and screw the calories! I haven't noticed growing old save for the ringing in my ears and a preponderance of nostril hairs. But I still do love the mail almost as much as I love a good pie.

I don't care for first person narrative either but you do what you have to, he wrote. I can feel you when you read, you know.

All Face Was Solace

The last night we sleep together we allowed we did. Faded spots farted where I'd sleep in my you. In the we moved a hallway. A dream reenacted back and forth. We rolled summer in the down hill.

All face was solace. One was the wall in near panic. Near the telephone glancing a state of pinned. Left warped whose first fear was Satan. In the record album suns a New Englandly way.

Where in winter cold and still so we. The alarm clock's pink. Our cubbies more were boxes. An execution obsession with too much oxymoron. If that is not unhealthy, yes.

The barn an early site of intense posture reminiscent of defensive. Consider the many held with eye assumed. Were that like, it were. Any life can be weighed toward meaning. Sweet pumpkin in the guts.

Glancing Reference

Ask whether upon marriage a certain extreme of weather will deliver you. He loves centaurs, writes stories about them in his sleep, so I'm buying him a half a horse for the holiday. Avoid the patently poetic, if you wouldn't mind.

The cardinal revisited the site of an old nest and fell briefly silent there. Memory vs. nostalgia, let the cage match begin! Well, for starters, I wrote a poem about cardinals.

It's been a long downhill slide/uphill slog, pick your favorite sledding metaphor. The dog escaped through a hole in the fence but went only as far as the neighbor's dung hill. Coffee stains on the work bench signify failure.

Are you ready for the fourth paragraph? Some men heft pens, others heft weapons, so let's avoid drawing any quick conclusions. The question mark is not an ox though it may be said to physically resemble one.

The sea, my friend, dreamed you up and that's how you came to be. What is the same for all of us? He wrote, believing it made a difference, but not knowing exactly how.

Pressed, they turned to the movies. A magnifying glass understood forever after as a weapon, a device of torture, which could, properly yielded, destroy the world. That was fourth grade, which more or less explains my subsequent boredom.

This line is for you, dear reader, may its icy contour illuminate the balance. She made a glancing reference to my shoulders twenty some odd years ago and the effect is unforgettable.

By Heart Barter Red

The mail coming back, what sounded like a somebody, A couple of beer cans reminded him of something but what. A double scotch with ice in a white plastic lawn chair.

A few robins cross low between pine trees, stopping to whistle from sagging fence posts. See the first nail of the moon creeping up the hills beyond her shoulder? In the almost-darkness he waited while she did.

Five years ago they shut down the crowd when everybody knew. Passing through on a Saturday, pretending afternoon. Her pickup was filled with crates of lettuce.

The same gray as lazy lemon, weathered and muscular. A drifting quality, dreaming on his feet. I know that one by heart.

Barter red deer tongue, flashy green butter oak. If somebody wants to steal, then all for market farming. A lawyer in Vermont got involved with divorce.

Montreal overnight took a last sad place. The drive you need to become the relationship hanging over your shoulder. Across the river, New Hampshire.

He opened his eyes in the darkness yes. He liked thinking of moonlight, the forest, newlyweds.

The Idea Of Safe Places

White is the new blue. Gone are the lost rat's tears. While being here with you is the night song embodied.

Sliver of old fairgrounds on you and me both. Cast iron wedding plans heard hissing with grist. Or not or else or what.

Be patient, precise, literal, in a letter, or email, to whom. You and me sort of reluctantly out. Oh hell, just call 'em love poems and get on with it!

Turtle girl you crack a bit of smile and boom my crusty heart goes bang. The writer wrote she'd had it up to here with winter and beyond. Blustering consumers, rotten with coins, you're about to be bitten by a crow.

It's this poem, not the next one, that contains the all-important fox in the far field. Declare your intentions or prepare to meet your doom! Halberds, really, who can take them seriously?

The muddled heart leaps like a gazelle over thirteen years into all over again. Same old town, yeah, but now with you in it! What else but wisdom amidst all this useless longing?

Your heart is, was always, the idea of safe places. Years later, glad tidings, you glow to me so dearly.

Reading Green Building Moon

She urged in his last letter a different narrator. Though few developing will consider stories. So I think all into all one text document then.

End up last ends midsentence. There is now parts, a whole, an ending. Narrowed down pondering narrowing down.

So possibly nine! Some combining, some some absorbed twin. A little lost what pull.

Got around watching fall save his life. Pillow and blanket, raisins and almonds. Our old dog was also I in part.

Just reheat old myths verbatim. For a cult I'd once been part of I was fast becoming weather-beaten. Starved faux riffing off.

Was at that point castles on paper using volume. Reading green, building moon. Other dogs, other obligations, and yeah, other directions.

Charged with that inner Albany sanctum again. A lot of stairs, a lot of doors and then just yesterday this flying.

The Only Upshot

Rain beside grass, broken rabbits, and all morning the dog chasing robins through the wet leggy asparagus. The mountain difficult before light back gracefully. Apples bleed green fire seeking roots.

White circle above crows between that eggshell hour of day. Goose eyes, too. The hunger out back, that fading scree.

The pulpit was like dying off to a grim beyond. At dusk, a cell phone, a robin's egg sky. Remember what it feels like and you'll never be alone!

Rocking chairs on a back deck nobody sits on anymore. My daughter offers old friends the cities of the world. Besides love, sleeping with you that summer was the only upshot.

Halfway up the curves past the talus. Underfoot, nobody. A string in summer unimpressed with cult worship.

Loosestrife in rain off a river disappearing overhead. Ten thousand songs filling empty bottles, your brown tattered sweater. Where pieces everywhere wonder at noon can I say to hell with it and drink again hard?

For a long time there was only the idea of you. Over tea, your eyes were there with me, ignoring the weather.

The Country Of No Leaves

Driving north into the country of no leaves talking. Suddenly tobacco fields become familiar, the valley fills with light. Are we my father now but years ago?

Eviction leaves cold between holes up crying. "Play," the last dog whimpers. Because the nights won't pass without drinking.

November trees between New York and a funeral, stars bright wherever one gazes. In Vermont where it snows. Staying up to write while the dog follows me down into hell.

Plane smoke, carrots, a bone about another. Expect miracles and suddenly . . . Bits of turtle on the highway and all I do is talk or laugh.

Old songs remind us to pass judgment. Reproachful eyes beneath withered apple tree limbs will see, probably. Ask if we will ever become rich?

Boiled cauliflower for lunch. Bob Dylan while the dog sleeps. Coffee for the newly married has a bitter flavor.

So sit, watch, and sing along! Watch the miles between us evaporate like tears!

That Final Calypso

My kind of telephone is blue and never rings. In that there's a country she never visits, let's go there as well. The only functions worth adverting to are those relating to the stomach.

That kid is always using a spatula to move ground water. When the snow begins the air thins to a fine silence like Q-tips falling off a counter. The rates of exchange merit no curse.

I am ancient, said the turtle, the blind room of its eyes signaling a willingness to depart. All grace is accidental, as I so often write, he wrote. Over and under, laughter and tears, the glue secures our twin roles as confidant and dispraiser.

The tariff rose with each session, making any kind of progress difficult. It was hard to see the pyramid, the wind was blowing so fiercely. Travelers heading to that specific north were advised to make use of scat.

Each of us has a role here. Of that final calypso I will say but little. Take that which is your due.

For what other reason can a donut be said to exist? The highway sign read Memphis and in that moment he realized at last that he was no longer at home. Modern is as modern does to most dwellers of the grim corporate city.

Whose voice is that lifted in praise songs? Who smelling of what height can sing a man home?

The Essential Gambit Of The Sentence

Candles reassert themselves on an empty beach. Light that will mold itself into a guide or instrument. His search to occur at the site of his loneliness.

Scale now each new ladder ever deeper into purgatory. Lust is not diminished by the appearance of effort. His gift is willingness in the Presence.

Others, somewhere, share their plight. Without locks, I find all these keys abandoned in the dirt. Tricks when one does not need them!

The essential gambit of the sentence is to make stasis. Confident the sea is more broken. The great matter is left undone, always.

Circle open fields and return. He does not care for this sentence and so nearly excised it. The word "halter" makes him uncomfortable.

Loneliness is so big every word that follows is disquieting. Braids of sunlight ascend to the moon. Now he is watching it.

He is Observer, a role to which he is accustomed. Now many others arrive, wondering what to call me in the event of an event.

Return Mute

Flurries back juncos in sudden cold. Scales watch us all. What I am doing here, warm winds in January?

Muddy trails, moon smudge clouds. Give it a big name and it has a hoof print! Order, later, attendant.

Tulips push frost yet stubborn. Sun’s declension still tucked to gather. Old deaths must return mute witnesses.

Promises raised up a temple of sun and air. Rough as anger uneasily cutting bread. Falls, turns, begins with pencil.

Whoever might come after? Truly empty-handed remains. Swam in low salt water out of rocky coves.

You want to win a fight but who is your adversary? No easy answer throws the white screen. Trim curls unfolding in soft flowers.

Later you learned you lingered in the sea. The movie is nearly over and you don’t have any answers.

You Were The Risk Gratefully Run

If one can't be too careful, then what can one be? Events rescheduled after one weather-related snowstorm are yet again canceled in the face of another. A voice may be the finest mode of recognition, given our longing for narrative.

A fiddle began its low solemn saw to indicate a change in the night's tenor. We woke, paced, began careful negotiations. Ease was not the objective so much as fresh eggs for boiling.

A new paragraph should not be taken as some new foray into meaning! You have to ask, always, did this really happen or is it just a photograph? A new absurdity, a new plot line for us all.

Yes, in fact, I was the subject of such generosity and no, I have not yet written letters of gratitude and thanks. For the sheep's wool grew dusty and dull as the hours lengthened and over the hills came the salty smell of the sea. So now you try a sentence.

I felt a crazed loss, drinking my morning coffee in the unaccustomed cold. Not Boston, but Albany, that warm donut of a city. In her hand, his felt like warm putty, yet he made her laugh and always had and that was not, in the welter the way it was, insignificant.

The offer was as so often renewed and again politely declined. Of course, memory and history are only sometimes the same. A dream not of wings but of opportunity embraced.

In the age just gone, you were the risk gratefully run. No other equals holds me in such thrall.

Emptiness Like Hunger

A direct path to potpourri. Quality is not the measure, plastic bags are the measure. By a camp lantern, they learned that they had dark souls and thus committed to writing.

Oh yes wait a minute Mrs. Postman. Long hours throwing bales onto the truck and not then needing any other life. What was coming was not trout in cool pools, not at all.

This phone call and that phone call and at all times an ache in the throat signifying what. Time passes is the least of it. Do numbers count?

They did it quickly, thorns in their feet, the voices of other hikers farther down the trail. It's true that geography locates you but only one way. A dream of whales, a river that won't drop and others, always others.

The dog looked at me patiently awaiting further orders. Semicolons are baroque, commas dither. What presented the universe in such awful - such apparently non-negotiable - terms?

He slashed his credit cards and waited for the snow to begin falling in earnest. As always, there are dreams. So you want to start a story with one of these, hey?

All morning I looked for you and at no point did you appear. My hands clasped the cold air and at once an emptiness like hunger took the lungs.

Albany Tatters

Naturally it was the crumbs left behind by Sleeping Beauty that ended up in the little orphan's dust bin. Wicked is fun to say and nobody really is anymore. The gas station of bad dreams.

More and more he cried. The air left their lungs and rose like a swarm of tiny balloons, higher and higher. What can't we consecrate?

From one rolling log to another, always whispering a prayer. It's a Waltons thing, you wouldn't understand. The tinny growl of generators up and down the cold street.

The colorful emblems of the new state. Wind up, wind down, wind all around. Fragments of a historical dress were much discussed at the Historical Society's annual dinner meeting.

I just don't understand you, he wrote. Yet every moment seemed ready to split open into reverie, insight. The dog crossed 112 to eat bird seed and shit in the neighbor's yard.

One lugging water buckets hums a familiar tune. Try this on for size. He held the same instrument, goosing it along.

Don't guess, do. Oh you in your Albany tatters.

Ached and Anyway

Pick a monarch, any monarch. Faulty trees begin to assemble and dictate to the clock. Oh what a wonderful wingspan you have!

Orchards bellow obtusely in the dark. A long one is better, everyone knows this. You want turtle for supper?

Beginnings often contain endings or can be so mistaken. They wrote together and came up with a more or less traditional narrative. The music box was broken and the same note played over and over.

It was like that in those days. A cat's cry, a last shear of light signifying grace. You can, if you want, read a different bible.

So it's questions you're pointing to. They rode a scooter on their vacation but when they fell, well it wasn't so much fun anymore. With me so far?

Broken airplane jitterbug blues. The truck sang as it sank into the snowbank. Like that only different.

He wrote to you. His throat ached and anyway.

Pure Support

One has to resemble the vanes of a windmill. But the operation of not only. Flight only ever exhibited the mere.

Acquired from descent, the impetus. They were at rest, they were in motion. Their inutility in absence of the propelling fabric.

Think only of adapting. In a word, to a balloon, the idea. As regards the mode, practice interrupted surfaces.

In revolution were four in number. The whole project was a complete failure. It was juncture, excitement, in 1837.

To the interruption of surface in the independent. Public experiment afterward removed. Like his own was an ellipsoid.

It contained about which if pure. Support its first to deteriorate escape. The weight of the whole was leaving spare.

Beneath the center was a frame. In the annexed engraving, we are kindly permitted.

Agitation of the Spirit

Agitation of the spirit confounds brilliant. The truth at length flashed upon me. I began to tour with abysses in my heart.

In one of the panels I found a sock. Upon arousing my side fell. My own voice had become rich and dense as with fog.

Overspread, disfigured. You think the oxen are okay and then this happens. A child's drawing in which the adults lean to one side.

The figure of fiends to my horror. She wrote he wrote and always the same. A wild sulfurous luster overcame them.

The dungeon was unbecoming someone whose campaign had been so high-minded. Keep your blunderbuss! A fine butternut squash infested with groundnuts.

To this one end I was finally committed. Any aspect of menace becomes manageable in the face of time. It was truly in my head.

He repeated the terms of the search many times. Thus and all.

You Exactly

First the plunge, then the adventure. He said, I want to win a bagel. Split, match, test.

Or else onto it lieu of. A leather welter breaking. She said, I've got two placentas in there.

Moonlight the day after an ice storm is lovely and magnificent but not proof of God. Pictures, not words, okay? I dreamed you put the kibosh on repeated use of first person.

A gem for Margaret, or tonsillitis. Never hesitate, only agitate. She wrote a long letter using Bossy's white milk.

The garbage floated upstream! One who plays whist is not necessarily a good companion for chess. No more edits!

He was reminded of a line from Oscar Wilde. An argument in favor of apostrophe's. What began over beer ends in a gunny sack.

But what you? Exactly.

Gospel Honor

Before tea, the zafu. Working on our walk stands behind me. Just turn the forest trying to dance.

The dog wants his down off high places. So I have never stopped writing, so what? Those drunk not holy scratch for calcium.

A man told north shouldn't try. Called out thirteen and no answer. Gospel honor and disbelief at the window.

A purse of glowing stones. The sound alone over shunned religion. Lean shadow of an apprentice.

After a fight has quality otherwise settling everywhere. Anger is hungry at 4 a.m. Quiet village work that loneliness.

Why a broken fish? You struggle to get fall apart. Late January bone house.

Yesterday still going apples in clutter of history. All this way for a broken vernacular.

More Like Broken

Rain in late November on a pilgrim with whitening wings. Crows at the old maple over the wind. My life any burglar.

Wine getting old on the window. To be happy is like more broken. Masticated bittersweet.

What's the use of greater poverty? Dog eating skunk and spiritual promise. Abundance tears the sweetness out.

Tea humming songs of the trail. Arrowing south as a river inside him is older than the interstate. Believing in mercy and desire.

Thickened or rain-soaked gathers him. The rock enters into it. Beautiful pain in shifts.

Fragmentation comes slaying with coffee. Coming resembles a thousand like a city. A place for out in the idea of you.

The new cold above the song they know. Together within me broken.

The Way Sorrow Happens

I continue to love. Which is deceptively flat, which deception I love. Life seeping through, a profluence by wonder.

Because the bizarre surfacing Prozac blear. Who is dead to the world? Some refusal seems redemptive.

So a kind of me that demands probing. Remember back at powerlessness, being trapped? This hard hint unwilling to escape.

Narrator in peril, all she can do. Beat eggs and yet is it enough? Maybe still intimates risk, that huddle against the storm.

I am presently. All the people disconnected. Place hiding behind plastic.

Farewell concedes defeat of loss. The resultant injury follows a metaphor. Real danger will be real balance.

What's the relationship between them? I love the world the way sorrow happens.

Like Citrus, A Kiss

It was again all over the Albany plan which was followed only at the heart's insistence. Heard her singing an Albany song and that was it, I was veritably slain. Days later you wake up in tangled sheets alone, dreaming the Albany dream. Let's start the Albany engine and get the hell out of here.

Then, in the night, an Albany whisper arrived, as if the usual glass windows weren't sufficient. A nickel for each loud man who fought the Albany battle to its standstill. Of course I can keep it to myself, haven't you heard of the famous Albany secret? Together they hefted an Albany bottle and drank to their future.

Tucked in the Albany shelter was a fine setter but the landlord was vehement. Up and over the Albany crest and then the ash-ridden vista'd be the rest of your life. Am I getting it at least, at last, the Albany knack? She looked up and she was 42 and so she cursed the Albany time stealer.

My theory involves the Albany bang, lots of beer, and a proclivity for spending way too much time with your memories. The Albany letter will follow me to my grave no doubt. Darkened stage, faint light comes up on a bit of laurel wrapped around a barber pole, the audience gives a low murmur of appreciation, a hum really, and you step slow and silent before them to begin the Albany dance. 'Twas like citrus, a kiss with a bit of blood, the Albany sensation.

Trust me, crack the Albany joke and the only one's who'll laugh will be the ones who bought the farm years ago. Same day, different Albany story. A flap of skin dangled uselessly off his thumb as he fumbled for the Albany handle. Stuck like a glue horse in the familiar Albany wound.

The General Point

All of the littlest words are my favorite. She spent the afternoon hemming wedding dresses for strangers, remembering her daughter who had died in a car crash years ago. Time does not wait but it often pauses, trickster that it is. A warm heart, a box of chocolates, a pot of stewed terrapin.

Running quickly to avoid the year's first snow storm to no avail. The fir tree quivered and a family of squirrels appeared to smile. The orange marker will appear dull gray to the color blind. A sigh of relief, a fountain of grief.

L.T. my wounded angel. I never saw the point of going "all night long." The message was long and convoluted in several languages but the general point was clear enough: nobody was welcome there anymore. Jelly doughnuts!

Organ notes rose into the air like blocks of cheese, heavy and pungent. Is it just me or does it sometimes seem like everyone's a Christian these days? Consider too the evolution of execution an essay on the human proclivity for kindness. A little boy passed the time by imagining each of his fingers was a dragon and having them fight one another on his lap.

This while the rest of the room hand-painted hand-crafted dominoes in silence. He wrote using words he'd never used before. Oh me oh my I gotta fly. Sirloin steeak marinated in catsup and soy sauce with onions puts me in the mind of leapfrogging social classes.

Angry Hosannas

Bored Sophia of the card I sent out. A box of envelopes quite contained. For her from me already intent.

I'm burning to write today, really I am! For the first frustration. Words equal soil, compost, seeds, water.

But in my dream she says, You always begin with a metaphor. A wish is just another word for what. So let me write you then this note instead.

Jack Gilbert at the circus buying bread. A bent smile, a pert beard, a familiar voice. I never thought to say hello as that time earlier in the library.

Listen to what does a poet do? I felt flat trying to answer against all the faces watching. Uh, diamonds not zircons in a crowd?

Etc. Saturday from a thought shower, if you know what I mean. There is still this adult I long to be.

A fiction is the child I am yet. Getting angry hosannas when I don't write or be a person without it.

Breaching Hippocampus

There was a pounding surf, a pilot whale breaching. Hippocampus in its oblong box was most opaquely. Honor and courage are not just words but then neither are apple and yellow.

Keeping up with, then passing, at breakneck speed, the Joneses. Train sounds that resemble water in the ear. He wrote, at last, again, he wrote.

Beauty wasn't the point but my oh my. Can one ever be truly worthy of the Pileated Woodpecker? The smell of yeast a wet dog.

The fall was not nearly so bad as the aeronauts predicted. So it's a cataclysm you're after. A matter of unrelating albeit.

One holds certain cities in memory forever. Traffic moves slower in inclement weather, headlight straying on the far wall like crayons. Want to get a winter bearing then go?.

And. Does a death sentence concentrate the mind or force a dissembling? Birthday parties in the dark, after much consideration.

What do you want then, after all these years. When at last in the couplet I can say.

Late Nothing

New month, new jeans. Anniversaries with Winter's son. She cries on the CDs.

Tired, teething, a little feverish. Even her tears looked peaked. Stops looks back.

Half, half. I know a new month yet. All the difficult days.

Coming slowly when I dislike it. Yesterday in what I do. Write being obsessed.

That bud fiction. Want money? Stay home, keep think.

The time I would have. Lately with Jake. This summer out with him.

Enjoying late. Nothing here.

Not Falling But Savored

An ascetic yet! Backwards thread, a mystical degree. Remember eating as a child?

Actual skin with cinnamon. Pleasure into play after I read. That remains a deliverance.

These days can't for prayer. Marriage a far embracing. Some faux going backwards.

Less simpler longer. I don't want to sustain meaning. Maybe glow inner peace.

Early stars, clouds, coffee. Fog and northern broken. I love dearly bright yellow.

She right now. Finished a supermarket hi. One set aside not falling but savored.

Differently intensely. New ground, ghost story.

Quiet Is Helpful

Events against terms of scheduling. I to be up and out. Everyone's quiet is helpful but not I.

As is a brief burst another burst lower. Says doing what more. What the next project, the real project is.

Meaning I'm sick of. Not very unfunny teaching. Anybody summarizing navel-gazing?

It's only twenty modeled on using words. Limited practicing playing guitar. Fiction a query finding opportunities.

Who can sell muffins. Well a brown. Visible logging trucks visible a mile.

The sky leaves red fuzz of yesterday out. Wet earth, car exhaust. You grow tired of life a certain way.

It requires to be isn't just a dream but more. You for the life of what universe.

The Next Impression

When you have your guard, it is not enough to know it, but to keep it so long as you are within reach or danger of your enemy. There is no way better to get the true observation of distance. For if you have been used to setting your feet abroad in your former practice, as most men do, then it will be hard for you to leave your old wont.

Meet with your enemy in the night.

When you break a thrust, you must but let fall the point of your dagger, but not your dagger arm. You may see your enemy plainly and clearly. I have known men of good skill deceived by trusting to the point, or dagger only for the defence of a blow.

You must step in with your left foot. By an active and nimble shift of the body by falling back with the right foot, and the danger being past to change hastily.

Presently pluck back your hand again.

In your practice make trial which does fit best withal. You have discretion to lie at watch discreetly. A reverse is to be made, when your enemy by gathering in upon you, causes you to fall back.

A man cannot be too ready, nor too sure in his guard.

You may fall into diverse hazards. Proffer or faine a thrust at the fairest part of your enemy's body which lies most unguarded.

I will make it plainer by and by, because I would have you understand it wisely. There is no certain defense in a close, then is a passage, for they are both very dangerous.

(As beforesaid.)

As every lesson on a fiddle has several kinds of Offence, and Defence, but here you shall find the Defence that belongs unto many of them, and the rest I left out of leisure to write them, but they shall follow in the next Impression.

The Problem Is Looking Down

Radios split open my dream. Before the intervention, behind a mansion, fierce of any inner fire. So rusty chickens won't go under even when it rains.

Silt sparkles in rivers less than rips and whistle. Below tobacco fields are still not planted. Six hot-dogs, three buns, many hungry protesters.

My mouth, old sweat sock, the lamp in the corner of the bar. Socialists and communists feel at home here so huzzah. I was dogs nosing through asparagus.

The coffee table with milk paint and stencils your mother gave us dying. Paper torn beneath a pine tree so empty. Nearby old tires barn smell in sun.

Ferns slick with night rain will do dart back. Losing my banister down four stairs and right knee. Moonlight between spokes, puddles.

Merely public crucifixions with local anesthesia. These things are the problem between dragging tail feathers. The problem is looking down is no solution.

And: this life is no bargain. I'm not the only one.

Adventure Is A Sign Of Spiritual Hunger

In the end a rain blurring world soft colors. Apple, lilac, sapling and sky. The first time with a special fondness not sexual.

Bow often and sincerely. Know that the aphrodisiac of moonlight may be used only once, after which it signifies unwillingness. Adventure is a sign of spiritual hunger.

Years ago the sea sucked its broadness on the beach. Not like anything but itself. May you find the street I found years ago.

Swans rise off clear canals to greet you. I stood for hours thinking blood signifies change. There is a second heart coursing to be silent.

Your voice a clear hills, like water hitting water. I set the fullness of my life into a vault. A slant of light would fall weeping.

The journey back, giving up forty years. Cold Aegean, abandoned cottage. A young bull or the bull's mother and then the long vowels.

In the months that came after I learned when we kissed. Crying when I told you you were beautiful, strength I remember.

Two Crows, One Bird

Gun shots across house lights through trees. Dusk comes on like a glove. Two crows, one bird.

Walking cloud banks trail the dog. Tangle slowly and laugh herself to sleep. In pockets of snowmelt and beautiful.

How sweet to talk with you still. Rain in December skies, no wind. We drove through a child, burned out mill towns, Massachusetts not Vermont.

I wink as I go trying not to be scared. Terrible kite-flying weather, yeah? Alone when I most need a dream of doors.

The umbrella, shots, a box of old holiday cards. All this anger after so many mountains. Tracking unfamiliar dogs to something else.

Going north through snow squalls and coffee. The doctor comes. Stars, bear scat, certain other songs.

Joy comes to the fool who predicted less. Learning how to pat a dog when it's asleep, last I heard.

That Once, That We

Who has accepted my challenge? They gathered to dedicate the new bell and almost immediately fell into coughing fits. A funeral, conducted with sufficient gravity, in the shadow of a familiar maple.

I once had a similar fondness for rabbits, sir. She pushed her wet hair back. What's that?

An autumn job left undone will rankle all winter. One after another the chipmunks were disemboweled by the neighbor's cat. Coffee stains standing in for decades.

But it really did happen that way! A ladder fell, a neck broke. Day after day after day.

Rewrite this. A long walk in somber light, contemplating new spellings. They sipped whiskey naked, never allowing themselves to kiss.

Or for a better setting! In this case, it's the timing, or should I say pacing. My ribcage folded like a broken accordion.

I never write to you anymore in the present. But hold a thought, always dreaming, of that once, that we.

A Little Becoming Fiction

An odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. Spinning by the fire with a row of apples roasting. Dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk homeward.

He loved his daughter better even than his pipe. The funds of rustic waggery. Clattering up to the school room door.

He rode with short stirrups. "The small birds were taking their farewell banquets." Dainty flapjacks, well buttered.

A tractable, well-broken horse as unworthy of a lad of spirit. Not a fibre about him was idle. Enable each storyteller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction.

Among the graves in the churchyard. For some time rattling along the hollow roads. So lonely and dismal.

Fearful are the feelings of the schoolboy. Jogging along on the blind side. Just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.

A hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin. A melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes.

The First High

A note said don't look so of course I did.

The first high is the best high.

We drove to Framingham Massachusetts hung over and discouraged.

Someone was always making excuses for me.

Honey grahams, sugar smacks.

The sun rose on a jack rabbit's corpse.

What was it about certain men that kept them on the periphery, their arms folded?

Fear of hunger.

As usual, Newsweek provided the necessary details.

There was a piano somewhere, up the road, I could hear the notes.

As the butt of many jokes, may I offer a bit of advice?

One does not want to flatter Christ by accident.

Repetition is inevitable.

He spread the Daily Hampshire Gazette on the kitchen table so I could see how the war had ended.

There were lines everywhere and more often than not you were left to find them on your own.

Bad things do happen on dirt roads.

A very specific degree not attained.

Olivia Newton John sang Greensleeves over and over.

Why not the best?

He looked behind him for reassurance in vain.

Rain Obscures Route

Burlington was because you were gone stubbornly beating. I crested the lake dead. Before too.

But then it was my first Albany. Heat beat a sharing the bench. Your funeral, my life.

Waiting is subtraction. Coming away with my back. Her and you.

My voice broke looking wasn't love only. Even now. Sunlight turns.

The room filled with architects for door. Chickens push the roiling sky. It might as well be said.

Rain obscures route. Waiting for Jesus is feeding cats bread. That saint rubs his thumb on my eyes.

Don't think I care about quantity. Other words I cared enough to write.

Tame Ravens

Dim first light reveals a dead cottontail, frost on outstretched limbs. That tree which gazing East revealed a thin line of blue I imagined was the sea. Paul, David, John and me.

Cattle skulls were piled to mark the farm's northwest corner. Rain falling off the barn eaves was a dream. If I carry this rock that far what will you give me?

We are no longer a family farm. Most of the kittens died and we found their bodies, little felt pockets, on the driveway. But everybody else has a tire swing.

Little gnomes here and there. West was the possibility of big, like dinosaurs. All boundaries are measurable, knowable.

Not all smiles are reassuring or affectionate. Of all the rules, that was the one I learned best. Nobody knows much about Joseph.

Cast iron crosses, rosaries that when laid out were bigger than a small boy. The male mallard in sunlight is proof of God's love. Tomatoes as heavy as baseballs.

You can tame ravens, you can feed blind baby mice to your snake. Sunshine on my shoulders.

You See A Saga Composed In Pieces

No pirate will ever pursue pyrite! Surrender to the urgent faith characteristic of all newcomers. You can hear the trucks downshifting on the four lane, a mile or more away.

Take all the time you want, he said, meaning a few minutes and no more. Switchbacks faded into mist as they tied the horses and prepared to bed down for the night. It was, you see, a saga composed in pieces.

Consider the birds, the flowers. A mission that was not accomplished, despite heralds on the rotunda, surrounded by busy cameras. Yeah, I remember him - he was everywhere until suddenly he wasn't.

A screed or a poem, both of which would matter. Up late on the couch, discussing their next move, she confessed at last. When he closed his eyes he saw colorful banners on another continent calling him.

Incongruity, a word I must remember to use more. There is no "I" up there, it's more like a pool in which a lot of beautiful fish are leaping and falling like little rainbows. Open advocacy always makes me happy.

Possibly tuna casserole, possibly a donut. The dry leaves like mummified corpses were a chore nobody cared to undertake. The noun became a verb and it was okay because it worked just fine.

But me, I just can't sleep, can't find the right dream. This sentence is a beating heart.

Against A Purpling Horizon

The detective held up as a man in control, unafraid of unraveling the most incestuous of webs. Six white horses fell in the mud! I looked forward to killing the capons, I really did.

We are no longer a family farm. A friend of my father's came over for spaghetti and left his copy of Bob Dylan's Planet Waves, I guess that was the first. At night you could hear the river like wind in the trees.

Traveling was okay, you were always between. Hansel and Gretel, understood at last as a cautionary tale for adults who have issues with longing. A shower of gold leaves but no wind.

One should sit when removing their belt. I wondered at a world in which the broad mirror over my parent's dresser could also function as a door. We shot but never cleaned our guns.

Lyn next door painted my sisters but not me. Bon Scott had been dead a year when I started listening to AC/DC. He favored certain pronouns as who in that age didn't.

This priest when he gets going on injustice is something else. I was affected by many losses, an inflection that remains. You could enter the forest by two paths, one for hunting and one for picnics.

Against a purpling horizon a warm body. Those long walks meant the world to both of us, right?

Copulating Moths

Jump, tether ball, shadow tag. Andy's tumbled rocks held me forever enthralled. Gregorian chants that lingered in my ears like copulating moths.

A fascination with glass began at that window, wondering how did I look looking out. The bread heel used to hold the giblet stuffing in was later fried in blood. I stole chunks of butter and ate them dipped in sugar.

A green fluid for drinking you might see at a friend's house. Did it really happen or are we talking about a photograph here? The tyranny of Pyrite yields up again!

"Childhood is a dream from which I am trying to awake." A can of cream of mushroom soup in that moment only was perfect. In one nightmare, Bigfoot stood in the side yard just gazing up at my bedroom window.

I'm as slippery as a trout! The bitter adult would be neither loved nor understood for decades. In the shoebox under the bed, that's where they are.

Talking as if anybody would. The loose tooth which signified death, the body's obvious inclination to disintegrate. Scratch a rhombus, reveal a plane.

Christ was splinter thin, which was a virtue. On that leash for so long.

Left Behind Stunted

The little garden in front, the bigger garden out back. The chain saw's growl that remained in my ears much longer than you would have expected. There's a bear out there, can you hear it?

My heart was the color of sand and about that solid. A laugh is an anchor and a shepherd staff. Coming to to saltiness, warm in the back of my throat.

My head hurt most when she stopped hitting me. A sled could cut you deep, send you in for stitches to the doctor. We tried to be quiet watching tv in the front room while they fucked in the other.

I found a pearl in the rocks out back. Growing up too fast means a lot gets left behind stunted. Grounder equals grinder, ha ha.

You can do things with words that nobody else can. His heart lifted, enfolded in the tune. Please don't hurt me please.

But then nobody likes a beggar. Did I ever tell you what my father said about God hating cowards? The years passed like pickles down a pig's gullet and nobody worked as hard as they could have.

Because in truth, nobody wanted to be there. There was a ghost horse that lingered in the front yard looking for a rider.

The Dust At A Whore's Feet

You are not your place. Or else. David's nose bled and when I asked why his father had hit him he answered, because he hates me.

We watched lightening in the distance, it put me in the mind of sutures. At night the coyotes howling made it hard for us to sleep. One of the cats died when the grass whip found her dozing in tall grass.

The white fence, against which we stood in homemade poncho's. The cows were named for my father's side of the family. He walked to my house to visit me, carrying with him a coffee can filled with worms.

Nobody but me appreciated the jade cocoons of the Monarchs. Nobody was allowed to tell Scott that another chicken had hatched. We ate glue as who in those days didn't.

I could have sworn I saw you running through the school yard towards me. Don't ever touch a resting racing pigeon. Rather than copy a flag, I invented one.

Detective stories were best because they offered some assurance that order was possible. Poor Richard Cory. Cinnamon jumbles were the best cookie, everybody said so.

A longing by which you would at last be defined. Jesus with his stick, scribbling in the dust at a whore's feet.

My Heart Changed Shape And Left My Body

The blue Buick was crushed by a falling maple tree in late Fall. Connie S. threw out the first pitch and we all listened on the radio. Soda with peanut butter and jelly stirred in turned out to be worth a beating.

Someone once planned to build a garage there. Once we mixed maple syrup with snow and the disappointment lingered. A cast iron pistol hung in the hallway.

With apologies to those missing from this text, I hereby state my intention to continue neglecting them. One combs their hair before visiting the doctor, even after suffering head wounds. Kiss albums were ferried through town on a star-spangled Huffy.

There were holes in the wall where the plumbing would go. A bruise can be explained, easily. Head, a melon, cement stairs.

A plethora of love letters were hidden in my closet. Looking closely, one could see their reflection in a bead of sweat traveling down his bicep. And to think that sex was only just beginning to shape my sense of myself in those days!

Contrary to later assertions, heavy metal was appealing not for its manifest anger - a fundamental misapprehension of the genre, by the way - but for its power. Running into the woods after to hunt down fragments of skeet. When she followed my heart changed shape and left my body.

A garter snake in the marigolds swallowed a toad which cried piteously. Yet another secret that can never be told.

A Specific Distraction

The other night when at 2 a.m. both dogs woke me. The moon bathed in wool settling through trees and far hills. The snowy yard now with yellow tunnels of piss.

Rain makes its peace with this winter. In Advent we learn we are broken. Redolent with mud, wind, peppermint.

Sometimes we sing. I do, I dedicate these alms to you. There are maps and cities, some of which I've actually seen.

Had he mentioned his umbrella there at that point? A pilgrim with broken hands? There are places yet where night never ends.

The florist played quietly a sonata while his daughter listened. Like that, but different. To this point anyway I have managed to listen.

A saga reduced to documentary informed by poetry. "They knitted with yarn in the family barn." Fiona wore a pink slip and ate apples.

So forgive me. You were on my mind to a specific distraction, this one.

Be More Useful

Why are you afraid of hunger when after all you eat. Does ice on the window adhere to a logic least susceptible to identification. If you feel you can't pray, then be more useful than you once were otherwise.

The light of any new day is that of which it is easy to be fond. This poem or any other contains no map but can be said to be receptively an immensity. Open is a word that presupposes a container.

Recall that self means not only this moment repeated but also a glorified obsession extremely focused. If blue is your favorite color then why fear hunger in one way opposed to another. Certain poems encourage space in a way that is duplicitous. 

The appearance of maple trees budding redly in is it late winter will cause grave concern and rightly so. To a black bear the idea of hunger is not much of one at all. A container is a large opening in a previous blue.

The lake we recall from childhood ascends as well. If you are having difficulty praying that may itself be a sufficient result. Or else are we going to continue considering hunger a matter of an argument for grace.

Authenticity of intent is always a matter of words. You cannot eat a color no matter how hungry your poems indicate blue. If it is held within narrative then it is a list which is to say primarily an instinct towards the archival.

A comma is incapable of holding anything as pauses ever were. Although being hungry can causes certain valuations to be new.

Their Own Bodies Pitched Against Them

Your punishment will be infinite, the point made forcefully. Those before him in similar plight were "cast down" into destruction. One can't say, can one, from moment to moment, whether they shall stand or fall.

Walking over the icy lake it occurred to her that on such slight and slippery ground one needed only their own weight to be thrown down. Thus were their own bodies pitched against them. Always exposed to destruction.

He couldn't procure any rest at all for those he loved. You shall endeavor in vain, in the "ineffable strength of your torments." For all it was worth, it was chainsaw-wielding angels who handled most of the torment.

He fell. He fell without warning. Without being thrown the hand of another

Restrained by no other, firmer obligation then. Words that would have implied an infinite dread were they able, capable. Not harbored otherwise in a case beyond hope.

The cries of the torn were of extreme misery, perfect despair Oh, they said. You are here in the land of the living.

But the House of God. How dreadful that must be.

Sweet Accord Lifting

Across the meadow voices rose in sweet accord lifting with them her injured heart. The Motorola on four wooden legs was a rather undemonic opiate. Who remembers their first dream?

Beyond blue eyes then, beyond the raised fist. The putter dated back to at least 1940. Days of yore were all there were.

A bag of donuts, spotted with grease. How's your love life? In late winter I practiced swinging in the basement.

Or else was the everpresent, albeit unvocalized, threat. The best strawberry jam I ever snuck was in that stairwell. Waking up to eat saltines in the dark, afraid she would follow me.

A downstairs is not misleading. When cold we wrapped ourselves in blankets, crouched by hissing radiators with books. Pheasants mewed past the side yard maple.

The green men were opposed to the blue men. Farewell notes were often found tucked beneath the mattress. In winter, snow crept through the windows and formed a narrow line at the foot of the bed.

I last saw her on Valentine's Day in fifth grade, made a mental note of the white star on her forehead. You fell, that's all.

Where the Sweet Spot Was

Light in the bedroom pale blue like milk before a storm or dawn. A crow, crows, a black jugular crown. When looking at snow how one thinks about the sea.

Which ones ever did not care after to remain in touch? Try this, try that but remain open. I did, I missed Gertrude Stein.

The envelope bled a few words as the dream itself grew a roseate blur. "Some of your sentences aren't." Sublimity he wrote was a but not the goal of found poetry.

A dead dog with its tail in the gutter. Vitamin debacle and a shovel blights movement. Keep your special deal, your flashing blue light special.

The game while high was name the three guys on the cover of Planet Waves. Some writers lose a windy stallion describing certain hills. The bibliography grew and grew until even backwards was it impressive.

Remember, a mirror must have a source of light in order to work. Pilgrims are simply individuals on their way to visit a location deemed holy by them and are found almost anywhere. He said to laughter how you were the straw that mixes the drink.

It was a lunatic mistake one has to blame on management. But you always knew where the sweet spot was.

Tyranny Of Pyrite

The plow rusted so we left it in the forest. Potatoes, always potatoes. And the blackened crust of roast beef was best, like salty leather.

To follow or linger, those are your options. There's a way in which creative minds can falter, let you down. I always took comfort in the closet, its bundled umbrellas and dark.

Kittens peered wildly from beneath the couch. "He's reading Friendly Fire." The drive to and from school was best, so long as whoever sat with me kept their mouth shut.

Squint and certain winter landscapes become lunar. A slope of hill that calls to mind the globe on which we are always spinning. Pumpkins symbolize wealth, pilgrims discipline.

In the second house we more or less forgot about the sea. Reading love letters while deer hunting. Green M & M's, a signet.

Hammer and nails, what would we do without them? The first time I saw her I was pissing at midnight and she was outside trailing her fingers up and down the willow tree my father had just planted. We honored a rich uncle for no other obvious reason.

Did it really happen or are we talking here about photographs? The tyranny of Pyrite yields up!

The Expense Of Desire

To cherish, to hold, to defeat in games of chance. Concordance was often achieved at the expense of desire. They were faithful, in the manner of dogs kicked over and over.

No buts, I just bought a new truck. Slick with wet snow, the driveway looked no better than the road. Her mind was on their first son who had died in the delivery room, a loss for which no pain wanted words.

A period of years, leaving scars and memories of surgery. You had your chance, don't whine about it now. He disappeared into the far field, after which her eyes hurt.

No soup is better than canned soup. He complained mostly on weekends and then only when his back hurt. The sixties and seventies I remember mostly in terms of laundry.

You never write, you never call. Have you considered a community with a strong arts and craft type of program. What was simple was never what was said, not ever and not there.

They looked awful laid out that way. There were fistfights after, bloody teeth bouncing over the gravel. Who could picture a future of white shirts and slain does?

There is no I where the circle won't stop. Sentence after informed sentence constructing a weary tale.

Lost Lumpen Nattie

Our lost lumpen Nattie will now sliver North its raw need. We fried our bagels in butter then smothered them with cheese and ate them standing up.

Tony snuck wine from the basement and after we smoked cigars where the river turned slowly in the balsamy summer night. Haircuts defined as a form of torture.

A desire for the sacred that was at times so secret it wasn't even accessible. Any piece of writing begins to gather around points of energy, accretions.

The dream of this or that always trumped the doing. Dungeons and dragons was perhaps the most perfect blend.

I orchestrated the firing of any musician who intimidated me. Bologna sandwiches drabbed with mustard stung the eyes.

I have no memory of diapers. David marched up the hill going home and my mother said I should get him but I preferred to let him go.

I thought knuckles were always scarred? Crossing Route 112 to Sam Hill Road was like stepping back in time to the nineteenth century.

You could enter the forest by two paths, one for hunting and one for picnics. Baseball was undoubtedly a metaphor in those days but for what.

He idolized the old farmers to detriment. One was always fighting a late hour.

Scales don't matter, it's the notes you play. Anything most certainly does not go.

Early As A Lifeline Of Sorts

Remembering goldenrod. Troubling events were put aside to make room for new ones. Life isn't a bowl of peaches and cream.

My best guess is you'll see a nuclear winter before age thirty. Rivers are the interstice of local history and time. He wrote early as a lifeline of sorts.

A bloody nose is a different color than sheep. It's called a breeching, son, and without it I'm stuck up here on this hill. The smell of apples marks a safe place, a happy place.

There was the night the warehouse burned and we all woke up to watch. So many pigeons coming from the old silo it was all I could do to keep walking. She looked sad on Harvey Road, less so in the school hallways.

Buddy on the farm, Buddy wins a prize! Iola slipped her arm through Joe's. Sucking a lollipop too long makes the insides of my mouth hurt.

Do you have a girlfriend? Blunderbuss was my favorite word. The mug's handle was cool and smooth in hand, a generous artificiality.

At times though it was like walking a gauntlet of invisible foes. My dreams became violent, more so.

Issues Around Desire

I confused "platypus" with "mole" and everybody laughed. Jeezum Crow indeed. The prism made clear that various avenues of escape in fact existed.

The detective held up in one's reading as a man in control, unafraid of unraveling even the most incestuous of webs. Six white horses fell in the mud. I looked forward to killing the capons, I really did.

We are no longer a family farm. A friend of my father's came over for spaghetti and left his copy of Bob Dylan's Planet Waves, I guess that was the first. At night you could hear the river like wind in the trees.

Traveling was okay, you were always between. Hansel and Gretel, understood at last as a cautionary tale for adults with issues around desire. A shower of gold leaves that continued even after the breeze stopped.

One should sit when removing their belt. I wondered at a world in which the broad mirror over my parent's dresser could also function as a door. We often shot but never cleaned our guns.

Lyn next door painted my sisters but not me which rankled for decades. Bon Scott had been dead a year when I started listening to him sing. He favored certain pronouns as who didn't.

Stories about sex were popular, no matter how unbelievable. He only cares about cowboys because of his Daddy does too.

In Terms Of Graves

What would eventually be understood in terms of graves was at that time not. The doe paused by the river and he froze on the ridge unable to think or lift his gun. Plans for a gallows were labored over just long enough to give one pause.

You don't have a brother, period. When will we be there, he wrote. Limiting Christmas carols to one season ought to be a crime.

There were never any good books in that house. There was a window through which nothing interesting was ever seen. For a few weeks everybody wanted to read what I wrote.

All the early poems included reference to a strange man with an agenda nobody bothered to identify. I have always been envious of soldiers and artists. Even before leaving was a real possibility it was important to claim little pieces of the place for one's own.

Calling Columbia House Record Club from the phone booth at the Town Hall. The first high is the best high. We drove to Framingham hung over and discouraged, bought flowers for our mothers.

Someone was always making excuses for me. Snapping those black wax discs while our boyfriends danced! The sun rose on a jack rabbit's corpse.

He spread the newspaper on the table so I could see how the war had ended. The human heart is comprised of muscle and cannot be broken.

That Kind Of Longing

The convergence hither and yon was all anybody talked about. In those days you could take fifteen minutes to eat an apple, seeds and all. The baby woke up on her lap faced with the sun.

Together we walked the field looking for pheasants talking about commas. Your headline is my nuance. The corner of the unlit room beckoned in the manner of obsession.

The formidable task had no name, but everybody had contemplated it at least once in their lives. A car, a hankering to get out and explore, an over-full picnic basket. It's getting better all the time buttercup.

Your salt is my fat content. He wrote, again, minimally punctuating. Have I told you yet about the pheasant I killed?

Scrimshaw as a hobby no, but saying the word over and over yes. He had no memory of that place - or rather, refused to let that place have any memory of him. There there's always more to come.

Expect both culling and blame. I find myself in the throes of an unexpected spiritual crisis. They butchered pigs all afternoon until at last she worked up the courage to announce her engagement.

Of all the voices, the one most missing. Demand vs. aggregate, that kind of longing.

One Fumbles

A field of frost, boot prints across it reflecting no goal. The tiniest blueberries were high on the bushes. Father's black and white pistol still haunts me worse than any ghost ever could.

Half a dress only, the rest a pale blur. Who knows the twists and turns of every dark road? The plastic wrapper unfolding disturbed everyone in the otherwise silent theater.

In new snow, a dream of new beginnings. One fumbles one. A pad of legal paper, smiley faces.

John Havlicek was one ideal. The snake was thick, the color and texture of a burning tire. A moon in which the inclination to mockery faded.

With apologies to those absent from this text, I hereby continue my neglect. One combs their hair before visiting the doctor, even with a head wound. Kiss albums were ferried through town on a star-spangled Huffy.

Holes where the toilets had once been. Those bruises can be explained and I will. Cement head melon burst.

Across the meadow voices rose in accord with an injured heart. Go baby driver.

Smooth And Artificial

One fumbles, doesn't one? Those bruises are easy to explain if you'll only let me do the talking. An emotional regimen ceases giving only when you don't. He assumed defensively a demeanor reminiscent of medieval peasants.

The mug handle was cool and smooth and artificial. Like rain the piano notes fell. October weather renders apple trees helpfully discursive, especially when viewed from the supine - the post-coital - position. Always ask if it happened or was it just a photograph.

The tyranny of Pyrite my brother. Currier & Ives were an early influence. Kittens peered out from beneath the couch terrified. We cobbled together a kitchen, made pie, peace.

Hansel and Gretel at last understood as a cautionary note for overly ambitious adults. At all times gold leaves could be seen fluttering independent of the wind. One sits when removing their belt, doesn't one. In accordance with the foregoing, a pause.

My hand was star-shaped in pale light from the half-open door. Lost lumpen Nattie, his sliver of raw need North. Then there was a window through which nothing interesting was ever seen. Oh those black wax discs!

Beggings

Borrowings and stealings which are not beggings are in need of a new name. In that particular graveyard one was given to dreams of palimpsest. So let all meaning in then.

This was a time after the defeat of the Moors and before the Inquisition. It did lead, once we had finished our juggling lessons, to a typology of current practices. But remember, the desire for fame and fortune marks a definite infirmity of the poetic inclination.

Within the Capitalist framework of ownership I simultaneously am. One way to think of geography would be as a form of history over a long period. Whose intentions are you calling fugitive, sir?

There are, at any given moment, myriad possibilities. In fact, a new form of astrology is due to be created at any moment! And we will, at that time, begin altering the meaning of a word here or there, not to mention muting the tenor of the piece as a whole.

The former handler of the dead letters has become silent in a bland penal colony. Crude cobblings, roughly smacked together. Love is outside of us, bumps now and again into a him or a her, and then takes off again.

He found at last the real America. Of a savage wilderness one can be easily redeemed by the study of native flora. Is it simply in the end a beautiful and elaborately-staged simulacra?

Ruins were all the rage. It is not a lack but rather a blindness to the decomposition inherent in our biology regardless of how "new" one feels in a given moment.

The Same Old Rib

Let us say that at the last moment we were all set to reveal ourselves. The car bumped down the road at night like a soda can rattling downhill. The first ghost I ever saw was lime green and played a fiddle out back near the willow tree.

I need to show you the left rear paw which was injured in an accident. The kidneys quit, a bad sign. Dried-out goldenrod in the distance reminded him of childhood in a good way.

The train conductor ordered a bagel with jam, and wondered for the thousandth time why God had created him with the capacity for second thoughts. Twelve pennies after a fire make more sense. It was late Fall, there was still time all around them.

Asleep on his back which indicated a severe fatigue. Not even the Sunday bells could be heard, so thick was the fog that day. Land-locked, she said, and the obvious sadness made his knees weak and brought thin tears to both his eyes.

I resent nothing the way I resent the processed nut industry. The town fathers gathered in an attic across town and discussed the possibility of new holidays. The weather in October is like just the right blanket at just the right time, is it not?

If that saw doesn't work, try another. He came home late, his fingers stained with ink, and told us we had lost despite all our efforts the day before. The stack of loose paper I called my novel was as tall as my son, a fact that never failed to excite him even as it made me wonder what to write next.

I heard you whispering in the backyard last night, your voice like a new blade being driven through its sheath. The roseate light was reminiscent of shoulders, the same old rib looking for home.

Who Lives And Writes

So liquescent, so deliver his heart. So long North, your ghost is my turtle. A lawyer and solicitous father who lives and writes in her book.

The children had to memorize poetry and the aforementioned family dog. As I would think of someone with whom I would. The thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

I think everybody's got different, uh, urges. Broadcasting ominous threats was big business in those days. He wrote, a gendered engagement with the world.

Trombone, unicycle, burrito. The poem was evocative of two birthdays at once. School books sold off now and computerized.

Telling to live the tale. To the chicken it was merely a road of two. Possibly recalling her poem at the last moment she was.

In convincing fashion with four songs it began. Gracing our state quarter today, thank God. It must be fought for, protected, and then handed on for - I mean to - them.

Will you be home soon I wonder? You rickety exponent of breath?

Her At Her Looms

Music without warning at the door of a neighbor. The grotesque proceeding, which took place at night, precluded lavender. Her shift and hairlace and no other clothing, her eyes ablaze like a red hot poker.

In February of course, made by the blacksmith out of worn-out scythe blades. "My Gramp had got a little beyond that," he said, and it took years to form an objection. Whittled out of staghorn shoemake how 'bout.

A foaming dish of eggnog. A fillip of the divided finger. The old habit of wetting apple seeds, sticking them to the cheek or forehead or cheek after assigning them a lover's name, and seeing which one fell of last while we chanted and sang and filled the room with song.

With his cheese under his arm, the wandering preacher took the floor. In time, all men grow mad and exert himself. In the guise of a tinker, against the devil.

Lest she cause a murrain to come upon cattle! Her back door was a tree full of red apples not a one of which ever rotted. And woe to anyone who hurried her at her looms.

Dreamed of ghost fishes slatted into empty barrels knocking in the hold. Rather than keep her at a dead loss they found an unsuspecting buyer. On board was a box belonging to a handhorn which nobody could open.

You with the lead, do you hear me crying? Following a trail, growing old in the dirt?

A Promise, Kind Of

The wind always sounds as if from a distance it's gaining. What is falling to the ground in a stream so constant or else. And: a long way is a promise, kind of.

But I am in this process, you are in that one. Time lies so shut it the hell up. The question is how much information will any sentence hold before passing off to the next one its burden, load.

One by one the toy blocks looked at themselves in the mirror, composed death songs, reorganized their coupons. First snow is a recipe for grace. If you can dig the hole by eight then I'll be there.

And he was as he said. The duration between was its own circus of lingering thus and thus. Yeah, I can't stop thinking about her white bonnet, the "springtime of death's year," so-called so well, either.

Marrow, narrowing. Melancholy belly dancers. Exactly - the moon is "nowhere," yes.

The way out, that dream. The fiction inherent in selection, in needing to get it so right that you have to lie. This to that, as any ratio would.

So many signals, so little time. Yet for you my dear, again, form.

Fake

An earlier conversation about what my writing needed. The work always shifts.

Regarding art vs. commerce while I don't think. A lot of time on trains.

A beautifully wrought vision of a post-apocalyptic world can be what. Well, some call it dual voice and others blended discourse.

The isolation is an ongoing concern. They weren't light in terms of heaviness or depth.

My grandfather passed away tonight and that is going to throw off the schedule. Let us tackle together this next bumpy patch.

Meanwhile, we're fine. I must say I envy the surplus of great pubs in your part of the world.

Family? I hope we'll get to spend time together again.

From this end in my opening preamble in my response. Habit doesn't really contribute to flow.

Back in the mail! I guess I'll just type up what I did on one day.

Based on fake travels to a fake city, I'm kind of intrigued. I'd be happy to read of.

Heavenly Or New

Silence is generally followed by a rapid countermarch, a sentence that appeared on page 42. A kingdom in rebellion, troubled by agricultural practices that skew towards the wealthy. While down below the children slept fitfully, the skin of their hands raw from scrubbing the foredecks.

One could say albeit in a peaceable way. In the course of - oh, five seconds - she was able to slash the binds and free them all. Along the river bed were numerous ruins from which colorful birds rose, like shards of rainbow retaking the sky.

A blistering effect subsequently discounted. One can be happy or else a little animal. The aerial ballet had a beginning, middle and end, but no audience.

A chest in which dozens of smiling faces were hidden. The windows were tall, dusty and draped with mahogany-colored curtains. Keep the letter "U" to yourself, would you?

Onward Christian soldiers, petrified masses await! Any man can be effectively scuttled, it's mainly a matter of timing. As absent a live pig, most monkeys will die of ennui.

Nothing was heavenly or new but we still ate cheeseburgers in the rain. A common device of pirates now used mainly as a literary technique to hold a reader's attention. A pair of iron girders fell, rattling the workers on lunch break, yet providing each of them a useful story for the dinner table later.

He forgot - or put aside, maybe write it that way - how much he disliked emotional scenes. From time to time echoes resounded in the hallway, reminding one of how complicated life could become.

Slipping Over The Years Into Earth

A brass spoon with a serrated rim. Paddles through dark water, layers of leaves, and gaping bass beneath which. Grendel's father, that spiky replicant, keening at dawn, "what have they done to my boy?"

The bass drum was as big as a wheel, looked like a donut, lugged up Main Street in the bright orange sun that only shone once. Candy-stripers with their silly smiles, how fast we age, like leeks in November. I remember long ago a moonlit night, a postage stamp of a beach, and voices that traveled like lost birds over lightly ruffled waves.

Warm shoulder being one definition. Your marriage resembles certain desirable farm implements of the nineteenth century. While the mouth kissing is the engine of the soul.

Form and content, ice cream and sugar cones, a wet dog and a lost leash. Yet another dialogue trails off in face of snow, the open palm. Mossy wood, home to newts, slipping over the years into earth.

Her shirt was pale blue, her features akin to a collection of wild birds. The Linden trees in bloom, still. They paved over the old trolley tracks despite protestations.

Why are you awake? The litany of the dead continued long into the night while rain pounded the leaky roof and desperate plans were made, none of which would be tried. For we do want to be deceived but not always and then only to a degree.

I'll fold myself into your petals, recline there, be alight there. So held by a gaze, so readied for the world to come.

Awful Stillness

There was no recess of the woods so dark. Any secret place so lovely might claim exemption. From those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance.

The cold and selfish policy of distant monarchs. A colt was seen gliding like a fallow deer. He had reached the vigor of his days.

Symptoms of decay weakened his manhood. The sun had already disappeared. Assuming a dusky hue.

Acts of vengeance or hostility were speedily drawing near. Deluded by the deceptive light, converted. The fragment of some fallen tree into human form.

The strong glare of the fire fell full upon his sturdy, weather-beaten countenance. Forest attire lending an air of romantic wildness. A necessary though more vulgar consideration of supper.

Faculties are not required for the greater purpose of existence. He listened to some distant and distrusted sounds. The principal edifice of the village.

My day has been too long. In the midst of the awful stillness.

Practice Courtesy Yourself

They must be removed or the problem is likely to continue. Practice courtesy yourself. Torpedo casting, and trolling sinkers, or weighted flies.

Childs, Coonamessett, Deerfield, Farmington. Capture the fish by enticing it to take the device into its mouth. Schools in submerged structure, especially brush piles or fallen trees.

Either sex in Fall season. In a conspicuous manner the deer must be taken. Pheasant and quail when raccoon and opossum.

May be trained at any time. When coyotes may be hunted with slugs. Aliens who want to hunt.

Muzzleloaders are exempt from this requirement. Face in ink and attached to the rear. No person shall build or maintain a fire.

Natural heritage. Road-killed moose may not be kept. Without regard to race, color, creed, sex.

Dragonflies and damselflies. Vascular plants, and a guide.

North Forever

People settled settled here so thickly among the rocks. Set upon a hill, an unusual hill. Drew the corpse from the corners to the tomb by hand.

Apple trees look gray and impenetrable. The hurricane and final deluge. The waste of woods that lay between them and the seat of authority.

Habitual contrariness. All journeys were performed over trails or paths marked by cut or girdled trees. Sores on his shoulders from which he died.

Depressed places by means of yoke or cattle. The people went out and did whatever we had to. We didn't know what the horse was going to do.

I never knew her to be ruffled or upset. Our paupers remain the same as last year. The old church until a short time before it was abandoned.

I could shed bitter tears over this unnecessary misfortune if it would do any good. He delighted in striking out. With unwearying faithfulness he walked up and down your hills.

A flurry of early snow obscures your face. Facing north forever.

So Liquescent

Appetite for dross or dross appetite, you decide. That woman understood both death and poetics. A hymnal hidden in the wall, discovered during razing.

Perish or cherish my chubby young Mephisto. He opened his wallet at the meeting's end and moths flew out! A dark luminescent green like the eyeshadow Peter Criss once wore.

Near the end I'd say, when everybody's dreaming of donuts or a winning raffle ticket. Speech impediments in penguins obsessed the latter half of her public life. They moved to a small town with a biblical name.

Yeast, Yeats, and sleep apnea. The bow broke while the water cooled for tea. Running over rubble he suggested for a title.

Your memoirs made me feel as if I'd bathed in hot taffy. The tennis ball wondered if they'd ever finally settle. The blitz, my bride, the blitz!

There are times when twenty is too little but of what. The former trapeze artist studied law and eventually became a wealthy respected patent attorney. Have you noticed how poorly trained most high horses are?

You once said you would melt me, and hold me inside you, indicating with your right hand a spot between your left lung and shoulder, where I would reside so liquescent, an expression of affection that terrified us. In the parking lot of a store that has long since ceased to exist.

Deliver Him, His Heart

The position of a person who is feeding on berries. A round for three or more unaccompanied voices. But I always thought Joan of Arc was born in Domremy.

An inevitable liability to disaster, that fatal quality. To become glassy, distant, to complicate internally. He laid out his plan beneath the village Holm Oak, it's hollylike leaves overhead.

In other words what. Jittery, hopped up, irritated, but not in that order. She donned a kimono while he scratched his belly and watched a cloud not quite cross the moon.

Out in the orchard, the last of the peaches finally rotted. A flexible body armor made of overlapping metal rings or loops of chain, that's what. A stinging remark that lingered through the years.

A pungent spice, liberally administered. Reciprocity, as a rule. He coveted her holiness, what he thought it could deliver him, his heart.

A teasel is a prickly plant. The minnows flashed, rain tiptoed over low-laying clouds, and their fingers touched in the near dark, defining for him forever the outer limits of physics. Come, let us go now to Ulyanovsk.

I dreamed of the woman I once dreamed of becoming. He was a lithe tree in his dreams, which upon waking left him feeling oddly outside of his body.

Emily Dickinson, So Long

Light fails, dark falls. Unintended consequence for which there is no remedy as yet. Your blue, your pink, in a Delphic siesta.

The continuity inherent in conformity, clarified like butter. Random arcs of a decidedly Christian tilt. Dust rose from the pages as voters embraced their inner Oedipus.

Time went backwards or at least boarded a train - it was how I knew you were gone. In her glee she was distracted. Recipes for apple pie handed out like garbanzo beans at a picnic.

A certain beggar-thy-neighbor insouciance, a certain je ne sais quoi. Also, vampires. A canary that swallowed itself, tail first.

It was a matter of pride, subversion, cheap sugar subsidies, and Jesus. It took a whale but we got there, bowl in hand. She asked if he was kidding, kneeling where he was in the glass factory parking lot.

Emily Dickinson, so long. A dream of moonlight unending and who cares about tides. Ya gotta rush because once they're sold out it's all a big cornfield.

Seriously, I can't, or won't, rather, keep putting you in the final two sentences like they're a monument. A flowering outward like ganglia.

North Your Ghost

A fine moonlit night is a parade of angels. Fifteen broken necks, twice as many broken hearts. Morning coffee, the twenty sentences, damn stagnation!

St. Jude is faceless, though my grandmother prayed to him often, supposedly on my behalf. Where are you now Joe DiMaggio but drowning in florist bills? The Sunday Times, what's not there today?

Ice on the window, pumpkins on the vine. Yes, a declaration of intent would clarify, thank you for suggesting it. Mock artificiality always gets me going.

Do what you want but keep your pennies. Me, I want change. Say what, again, the way you did back when.

Oh for a frost that doesn't forecast snow! A body found alive in a city called Las Vegas. A period of readjustment followed, with free bread and jerky for everyone.

For the first time in how long I write them myself! A motion here, a motion there. The great undead walking around thumbing the latest gadgets.

You're so rough and winsome - I like that in a hologram. When I travel North your ghost comes, too.

A Turtle Is Not

I found the quiet rip in a manner of speaking. Panic was not always as it had been described they decided. A survivor then and so are you.

The piling a conversation, death for twenty-six. I would not listen ever to those who warned me. Cross-bred ducks that nobody liked straggling over the lawn.

Over his head into the woods, a marriage proposition. One limb of the sassafras tree swung wildly, a prognosticator. It was seeing his arm holding the axe that way.

Forward is - in a kind of heavy leap. It was the blood we had spilled, there was no getting past it. "A turtle is not a Ferris wheel."

Define life. In the background noise I heard a whisper of him. My regards, my apologies, my future.

A prayer book penned by the time I'd had three good drinks. She put a stick over the grave as if. A heavy rain turned the right wheels of the car to night.

But listen, God will bless you anyway. Back in the hole, pile of bones, a painted tombstone.

Certain Important Respects

A hunting place for my father in his bad years that explained it. A Greek cross I left in the house. Also conversations and bits of gossip but no dates.

Fish and meats, usually with sherbets in between to "clear the palate." An only child, distorted nightmares of reality. Seldom to be trusted are people who supply too much detail for example.

A man named Albert moved through the room. If we can bargain right, maybe a thousand people? What we can do today you already did for us.

Drown the bad with the worse, I say! Characters in a second drawing room, waiting for the curtain to rise. A full house and by midnight.

A few months after the marriage over the body of a lover. A man behind us touched her shoulder. The priest near the poor box unwrapped my curlers and dank as always kissed me.

Trying to climb up ten fire escapes at once. Where at once lips took on the look of lips. The eagerness of strangers for strange places.

But I have very little memory of that winter . . . The house dictionary failed me in certain important respects.

The Names Of Each Lunar Stage

Not a woman. What I am is hardly clear. Laying out a blanket in a sunlit field.

Of grasping, lovingly anyway, their presence. Like gamblers sit in the dark waiting. Paragraphs in which the last sentence bears little resemblance.

Akin to a geographical. Suggestive of similars when in a matter of hours. Foot of a whirling stairwell.

It does not have to do with the moon. To menses is deliberate but also risky. A body in transition that is.

Between two poles. I specifically learned the names of each lunar stage. The relationship of smaller bodies to other.

Desire to be does enter into it. Never to return or be heard from again. A werewolf in particular enjoyed the sky.

Twice the late guitarist Randy Rhoads. A moonbeam can alight on a fallen knife.

At Last

Drifting through the sun-pillared hay loft, my best hiding place. A sense at least of the direction.

A cabin in some Northern woods. Dimly, in the manner of waking early without an alarm.

Something I was holding back, something I refused to put on the table. A story, a good one.

On the shore were family legends and the décor of our house was nautical. How ships separated by miles of dark ocean communicated with each other.

Like a coffin lid dropping, like a darkness that you couldn't keep at bay. The only one who ever came close enough to smell again.

This bright future where nobody wanted to hurt me. Simply dreaming of a day when someone – a boy like him, maybe – would take his hand.

A music winding its way through the forest towards us. A cruelty I recalled in the field.

Thoughtful, the way I imagined artists looked when they were trying. A secret and for the longest time.

Her eyes in a shaft of light from the half-closed door. That followed trembling in the dark waiting.

The floorboard sighing as we danced across them, slowly turning. Something to say, get down, and someone to send it to, at last.

All The Beggars and Thieves

The tedious sermonizing of a few dry old men. Fear and wonder, a powerful combination. Is this not why you are here?

"I'm required to kill so I kill." The wise, the all-knowing, closed us down. The noise afterwards rises like a storm.

A wooden sword is a symbol of your freedom. He touched me on the shoulder once. So we shall go to Rome together.

My daughter is carrying water from the river. For many years I will have to wait. Bring me fortune.

I didn't know men could build such things. All my desires are splitting my head to pieces. So you're afraid of the dark now?

Still, always, stay with me for dinner. Round up all the beggars and thieves. You can of course choose to crawl back down.

While a man's skull with one hand. We reach back all the way to hallowed antiquity.

Bearing The Same Excursion

The rose smoothly out of yellow plain is torrid. Greater portion of the gold-bearing rocks.

Roughened here and there. The whole faintly a sparse growth.

Flats and hollows, far apart, glossy orchards. The landscape general a paradise of bland.

Parched year are the region of forming. On the face of the globe they are everywhere.

Glens in endless richness, compelling beholder. A continuous belt, intervals of fifteen and twenty.

Occupied by bouncing which grey with foam. The lowlands, the sea, the onlooking forests.

Almost opposite and to right and left on the other valleys. But not an either in regard.

Sublimity architecture and their falling waters. Glaciers until October when the discovery measured movements..

Near the wide shadow black two. Summits of the group consists of the highest of a spur.

Axis of the chain the direction of western. A tributary the waters in a fine bearing the same excursion.

Albany At Last Again

A blind glass, hurt color, and an arrangement. What is extreme and very likely? Not resembling cover.

By doubling an empty length sooner. A clever song is in order. What coming complication a lamp is.

Any neglect of a certain time selected is assured. All this together and necessary. Guided restraint not spread even?

The stage and learning. Has the arrangement a suitable establishment? Anything complaining so will do.

Sluice, spate. Penumbral water bearing forward green. Thinning bone grinning says what?

Which enclosed the simpler line. Dogwood blossoms discern what pleases. Provided six blossoms my no was what agreement.

While he who hesitates. In Albany at last again.

Errors And Amends

In pale cirrus then less so as the weather ring widens. Nicks in my heart because I hate how sweet the pain is and always saying yes.

I cannot see imperfections on the moon. To Jesus, a motel always shines across the highway.

My history largely one of errors and amends poorly made. Or the grace of an elephant ready to die.

Stop loving late sunlight, damn it. In the distance, an open field with the deer behind them.

At last it rains. You ran like "an undertaker with word of exhumation."

The saint of gluttony swollen at their roots. Distance is no container.

Brandy on fire escapes, talking about the apocalypse. Sometimes bear or fox scat.

Remind me again of Charlie Chaplin getting drunk before a shoot? A black bear with a skull in his belly, a bottle in which my history sings.

The bridge that gave out last winter until you grew bitter. The earth moved and I kept going as close as possible.

This is my Jerusalem then. Down on the trail and keeps going.

Eternal And Immutable

The law of God, that eternal and immutable rule. That due time or appointed time which comes to whoever lived under the means of grace.

Hindered by no manner of difficulty. It is easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread.

Great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind. A spider's web would have to stop a falling rock.

A man is not on the very brink of eternity. I have done with his chariots like a whirlwind.

Laid out matters otherwise in my mind. And in that manner it came as a thief.

Earth would not bear you one moment, the world spew you out. The good state of your bodily constitution and the means you use for your own preservation.

Many are daily coming from the east. The earth does not willingly yield her increase.

Angels and men - both how excellent! When you look forward you shall see a long forever but no further.

A very feeble faint representation of it. Those things on which they depended for peace and safety.

Some loathsome insect over the fire abhors you. A slender thread - there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason.

Talismanic

Pine needles over both snow and preening chickadees. A lantern is not a horse although the two may play similar roles if one has a debilitating fear.

A chair might be described as siblings. Kindness does have talismanic value.

Dying of hunger to conclude. Mathematics plays a role.

Din can pass for family once. Subjected to the hash knife and now.

Consider how weather can impact feelings. Any traveler can discern the seeds of a new.

Lone is no journey. You can always revisit the search for a new site of worship.

At times described as thin or cold. The mouth can impair the capacity to speak.

Spend time with chickadees. Then its noun is that object.

Saying who says the weather rubs her wrong is inarguable. Religion does not utilize fetishized objects to pry.

The body's desire to fragment describes a map. One who never causes damage.