Rolling Up His Sleeves

He was rolling up his sleeves
While he did this, carefully
He raised his eyes to the sky

He was going in, out of duty
Or out of blindness
Clarity, or ignorance

There was a small cloud
Obscuring part of the moon
A tiny bird across it

Flitting and darting
Chasing anything, something
Through the night sky

He saw the bird
He rolled his sleeves up,
And stepped

Over the threshold.

In the Slaughterhouse (no good but draft i need up to work on)

I came into this slaughterhouse
To walk a narrow line, to speak the truth
And to utterly refuse
To shirk the opening of the heart

In this brutal killing ground
Men and women are broken daily
Scattered by the wind, broken
Ground into cowardice and into abandoning

What they know is right

But this I will never do

In this dark cave of foolish lies
Where a man will sell his brother for an extra day
Or for a profit, or for pussy
I was unwillingly deposited one day

44 years ago

So watch. I won't give in.
And I won't take the easy road.

Watch.

The World

Some say the world is merciful

They point to shaded patches of grass
Where we sit, beside flowing water
They point to the fruit trees, bearing gifts
They point to a breeze blowing across your lover's body

Some say the world is merciless

They point to men rotting in alleys
Ground under
They point to mothers grieving dead sons
Mutilated on the steppes, and to betrayal

But I say :

The mercilessness of the world
Can be merciful, like a cool cloth during fever

The mercy of the world
Can be merciless, like cold steel cutting a tumor

That's a bit of what they say
And a bit of what I say

What do you say?

To Women

We're supposed to want them
We're supposed to want them panting, cumming
We're supposed to want to buy them things
Build them homes
We're supposed to yearn for them
We're supposed to imagine them stretched before us
We're supposed to pledge to them
We're supposed to look at their exquisite bodies
We're supposed to share with them
We're supposed to dream of being with them, inside them
Tangle and turn them upside down
And make them scream, pull their hair

They are not the same as us
They are curved in the sunshine in a certain way
Their breasts, their hips, their asses are supposed
To tempt the abandonment of reason to
The animal

And their faces, eyes particularly
To tempt the superhuman

Left Lane

This is the speed of things
At 6:40 A.M. the bay is silvered
The ferry came across, seemingly
For me alone
While on the other shore
I had to drive, for hours

I was born into beauty
I was handed beauty

Cities become dreams over my shoulders
Tank trucks become duellists
Broken, grey buildings
Are spotted with sunlight

Born into beauty, but
Temporarily had to run,
And so began running.

Why? I don't know.

I really do not know why.

A Hole in the Sky

There is a hole in the sky

The sea washed the sand
Rhythmically and sensually
It will never cease that massage

I walked at the boundary
Of the land and sea
Beckoned forward

By the hole in the sky

My arms felt as though
Puppet strings called them
To throw, like a round ball

Everything into it
Particularly those things
Which grieve me

I suddenly came to know
That the hole in the sky
Was also calling for me

Someday I'll fly through it
Drawn upward on puppet strings

And be gone

Transition

I guess now, she will have those men
Those good-looking ones, with
Pressed pants, and clean cars
Seeing me, she will recall other things
But surely, she has returned
To good-looking ones now.

Trembling

Lying on his back, he sees
Branches arcing to the white blank sky

Leaves coming off sets of branches
Pterodactyl bones, x-rays
Of a fin, or a hand, or a wing

From the bones, come coin sized
Leaves in layers to the white blank sky
Shivering in deference to the breeze

This is a love poem

The heart of one who loves shivers
In the same way those leaves do

Trembling in a silhouette
Against nothing