Auctioneer Story

The auctioneer has begun
to speak in tongues,

in note-perfect Aramaic:
“I know this is a special car
but I would like
just for a moment
to stop for a drink of water”

but he speaks too quickly
for them to understand.

your grass telegram

You are in the wet heart of winter.

Burn these doubts in piles on tangled floorboards,
draw for me a map in the ash and trace
the fragile wires between us
with hot fingers through blue smoke.

Keep those warmths of our forests,
every shade of that stained blanket
of leaves a confidence. Keep those gallons of light,
spill them into mirrors.

This ground is still bare.

saintly downers’ puddle song

water on asphalt.
a crow considers his image
in the rippled black glass.

the saintly downers have
never leaned out from windows so high.
they look down upon hysterical animals
and drawn reflections -
reflections of god or themselves
or each other or of nothing at all -
pinned with beaks and teeth
to the bottoms of transient lakes.

IMPORTANT SONG

there isn’t a line on you i’d ever change.
perhaps i put you in a box.
perhaps i have wrought too much in your image,
perhaps each cast is warped with failure,
knit with idiot needlebone.
perhaps i have picked my own hands away in them
but there is not a line on you i would ever change.

pollen i am out in the neighbourhood and elsewhere

the breeze was so hairy this afternoon
i didnt see the truck until it was
too late to seem at all attentive.
then my face blew in from the bay.

your trash beats my golden egg.

we were trying to sleep and one of you
went and mentioned hooks at the window
and things and eventually
we haggled the conversation down to ring pops or
pork versus beef.

someone out there is a four year old
and that’s very funny. this neighbourhood
is full of dirtbikes
and it’s nice to have someone else around
who still looks very funny when he runs.

i was keeping pretty good pace,
maybe dragging my foot a little
on account of the hairline fracture
i probably got kicking in my own door.

i’m leafing through lifestyles and
obituaries looking for
typographical errors. nothing
ends up as neat as you’d like
and that’s something to keep
in mind until i go out like
shelley or kinski or the
forty thieves or whoever.

dew settled early
in wait for the notyetspring
on the panting glass,

outside snapped the light
and spite cast it wetly
through the dustcloud.

soon it spread,
hung on the stained lips
of the lastnight cups.

night rolled from
the damp ceilingcorners
to rest on my worn collar.

transit notes,having attempted to adjust a watch which after all was not there

whatever it was they called her,
  it meant she was crazy.
 summer youd see her like clockwork,
  dressed always just the same,
  packmule-pacing curling street
                  (all of it)
  and stopping every dozenorso lead
   steps,stomping her shitkickers,
  sad ox eyes tied up behind her as though
    someone was following,always
    a look on her drawn,
                    wan face of
     hope that it might be the case. 

today in the diamond dead of winter,
 tractor's jinglebell chains
   jolly up the blacktop,
     bonedry in the frostbit sun
   as it piles snow,
    proud as a redfaced child,
     precariously close to the
     jokes of walls that
     almost-enclose me
   and slides blind out
     into the street at whims
     to almost kiss the noses
       in the little toytruck
                        flock.

   like clockwork
     there she is scarved
     stomping her shitkickers
     to the centre of her street
     and wagging the trucks
     through with her empty hands
     like herding sheep,
     natural as anything.

dear moon diary,on three attempts to note an eclipse

1 now
  i am alone.no
  humors for my starward
  larking,no moon
  but the dim swell of its
  pregnant press against
  the grayglowing stomach
   of the sky. 

  i am out
   in the weather that keeps them
   from shooting down satellites.

2 now i am
  sure
  of the moon,
  some sharp little part of it
  glinting from beneath
  my own infinite shadow.

3 now sheathed
  in umbral sleep,
  the cut-dog moon
  shuts off again.

(observation one)

outside in the flashing snow silently a single ambulance drifts.

NO WRECKINGBALL MAN or:

HE CONFRONTS THE BRI-
  CK WALL AND EMERGES
 TRIUMPHANT BUT STILL
                BROKE
_____________________

daunted by the queue,
repulsed as if by the
  old mall magnetism,
i am led to two holes
,fistsized,in the red   5
 brick wall where the
 telephone wires once
    trickled through.       

 the payphone perches
   vanished,no cables   10
 even left to suggest
 a phonebook had ever
waited there,the wall
is now nearblank,just
directline taxi horns   15
and two square holes.

   i remember the cab
you told me about,the
one that followed you   20
    halfway home with
bated breath,nineteen
,twenty,or some scary
          number like
 that.don't ever come   25
      here,there's no
one worth talking to,
 only that cabdriver.

 i consider again the
  wall,its bricks now   30
nakedly thin as thou-
gh someone had lifted
  some great veil,the
mask of the secret of
its weakness,standing   35
now with only shiver-
 ing words,pleas that
i might not strike it
and it might not cru-
mble like its brother   40
       uproad,but i'm
 no wreckingball man;

i shame it instead by
staring it down,star-
ing through its holes   45
   into its dustblown
 guts,at the drywall&
  wheelbarrows&no men
about to tend them as
though the wall expe-   50
cts that at night the
materials might asse-
mble themselves,as if
by magic,into a rest-
aurant or dollarstore   55
  or travel agency or
whatever it is that a
brick wall dreams ab-
 out opening up into.

the wall,crushed&bat-   60
 hed in my irreverent
spit,&my tender knuc-
les spared,watches as
i splay my hungry wa-
 llet at the mouth of   65
the cash machine,wat-
     ches the cartoon
moths file out,watch-
   es my last dollars
dribble from the mac-   70
hine's cold lips,wat-
ches me chin-up anyw-
ay through the autom-
           atic door.