Ten Cantos

I.

wave, O, harlequins

to the whores you precede

waiting and drinking

at the tables

before the cafe

II.

they are smoking

the carcass of a bull

who pitied the matador

and allowed him

to sink that blade

through a soft

segment of rib cage

III.

wave, gentlemen

to the women

you watch walking

while drinking coffee

and talking of business

IV.

O, pet this pack of dogs

separating at dusk

like homing missiles

and a few owners

eating dinner before the

television talking

of the work day

V.

tell a vision

or sing a song to the whore

that will collapse

the movement of her hips

for a moment

she is rocking the goddamned house

all over the place

while i'm trying to sketch

a nude portrait of her

with mother's ashes

VI.

O, if the threads

beneath your

anthill breasts

are wearing thin

then hate not

disappointment

and depression

for they are the 

only things that 

can be relied upon

VII.

O, lonely muse of mine

dance at the sensing of 

rattlesnakes in the cornfield

as a frantic marionette would

for you were thin

a skin skeleton

you helped me bring the horses in

each night

before we would sit and drink

at the dinner table

before we stood in the hot grass that day

looking at one another

before we parted

VIII.

sell me a beast

and i'll keep him

in the shed

so i can walk out there

in summer

to watch him

restrained and breathing

in the heat

IX.

O, woman lost

i swear to remember you

as always drunk

in the hotel room

finding your faith again

looking for the remote

forget not that the spine runs down the front, as well

the frantic gangly gait

of the giraffe

or the candle-wax-backed slave

at the sensing of

fleeing rattlesnakes

in a cornfield

before a storm

crows cry cover the corn before the storm

I.

I will remove my armor

II.

I will remove my armor

and set it beside the pond

beneath the swollen moon

radiant pumice,

scrape the embryos 

from the aluminum

of my bend sinister

III.

beneath

a sky black and screaming

with birds

a sleeping cowboy

IV.

tired old man

your spurs cut

your brown horse

tired old man

cut my throat

and polish your

chalky boots

with my warm blood

V.

my queen,

i come to you

when i have been

drinking 

for days

for day

i have been drinking

and i have not come

VI.

"there is something in your sighs

which tells me this will no longer work"

"i never thought you low enough

to criticize my weight"

VII.

jesus christ slept

as i left the hospital

dragging my IV line

the carriage met me 

moving in the fallen fog

VIII.

the mayor may or may not knot

his rabbit ears

of corn

his horns were there

when he returned from sea

two white vegetables

IX.

beneath high noon

beneath heat and gravity

which swim downward

onward and persistent

like magma archangels

i am working 

in the fields again

swinging my scythe

X.

beneath night

which circles the earth

as a lovely dark screen

like octopus ink

orbiting a blow fish

i am standing

in the trembling night

with the upright and silent cattle

and i am breathing again