To be singled out.
Like wearing the Star of David.
To be made Separate.

To accept indignity is to be made weak.
Scrapes your mana to the quick.
Scar tissue that never fades.

At first I thought you may never know
The meaning of this selection.
But no. The very next spring

You receive your own distinction.
Not a death, a marrying.
And you see the blood outside your door.

Luckily for us the brimming spirit
Sails on around about and mingling
With the dirt lies an empty shell.

A body and a univalve.
Alas neither known well.



(For Lee)


So you wonder what it's all about
21 and in Paris alone.
Being humped at by an elderly dwarf
outside a theatre playing
'Emanuelle'.
Eros Plus Massacre
only you didn't know it then.

You smile your Big Island slowing smile
and walk in wonder to Versailles
followed everywhere by dancing parasites
and desperate men.

And you travel on the barge of oblivion
with eyes the shape of 'Oh'
sighing out of a round mouth.

Peut etre it all began right there.
Human skin keeping you in.
Intense shyness impaling you to
a suitcase rack for four whole hours.

You return with your acrylic nails
and glittering jewels and lines of powder.
Mementoes to confuse all the natives
all the time in both continents.



Barn Bluff Apparition (a Grave adaptation)


On the flight path of monarch butterflies
High over Georgian mansions
They alight in the swampy month of August.

Em-eye-es-es-eye-es-es-eye-pee-pee-eye.

Barges of corn destined for Asia
Float past like cut-outs from a
Dog-eared picture book.

Smuggling a woman into
a cheap room in The
Quiet House seems like a good
Idea. Especially because she

Has sung for her supper.
-Dong-Fang-Hong...
in the giant Chinese restaurant.

Chairman Mao reaches deep into
The mid-West and everyone is
Smiling, captured by the handcuff of
Recognition.

In the morning, bewildered and hurt
They elope to climb the Bluff.
And are rescued once more. This time by an
Inquisitive bird who falls out of the sky

First landing on her chest, then his.

Ah! Truth.

As when the inquisitive bird fell out of the sky.
So let the ball and chained lovers
Attach their material bodies to the clouds
And soar, singing about our heads as they