Tit, with Foreplay

I too would like the leisurely mind of men.
I would hold my mind in my own two hands and pet it.
If I could be anything it would be a composer.
The one who provides the soul.
Not the body, all modulated and linguistic.
Play, they call it. Play.
Or, not the mind of men. The leisurely mind of God.
Which reminds me of the mind of music.
Which reminds me of the mind of sex.
I would write an oratorio.
Me. Your lovely mate with one fickle surviving breast.
I predict a pause in this musical composition, a shift in the direction of time.
All along, I’ve meant to hold music in my hand and give it to you.

The Integrity of Matter

There’s blood on the page before this one. See?
The dark kicks up. Air torques. Rain tasers the skin.

What did Ginsberg say? That he wrote poems to tell
his version of things in a world that only tells versions

of power? How many days do we have, after all.
A tornado touches down in the next town north.

My heart iambs to some ancient classic—maybe Jackson
Browne, maybe Stylistics. I totter at the St. Vrain Creek

where it bursts from the Rockies. Cottonwoods catch me.
When the child who lives in this house is away his toys

grieve. Thomas the Train is speechless and the mottled
ball sits still. I forget the name of the film where a woman

walks into walls in hopes of entering the womb of an atom.
The child’s atoms are here, even as he climbs into the next

plane home. What a big open space I am. The way these
electrons come together, you’d think I was real.

The Integrity of Matter (A Footnote)

Whether it be your own body’s matter
or an unanimated body’s matter
(as in stone), the integrity of all matter
is related to the fact that matter,

animated or unanimated, does matter,
which jibes with the fact that all matter,
stone, flesh, or combo, will matter
infinitely—that is, without end (a matter

of speculation), although facts of matter
existing in bodies, even stones, matter
less than the actual end of matter,
which, to a stone’s integrity, will matter

less than to yours—for you, animated matter,
care greatly about whether (or not) you matter.

Psalm 2.0

Composed entirely with iPhone’s Suggestion Bar

Dear lord I don’t know what I was
just thinking about you but I’m still
in bed with my life and death and
destruction and a few years ago
I was just in my head and shoulders.
I love it when people say they will
not let you down. I have no clue
who you are. The fact is that I
have no clue who I am. I just have
a little more time with the stars
and I don’t think you should be
able to do that to me. I’m so tired
of being the only one who can
make a difference in the morning.
I have a lot more to do with my
life and death and destruction and
a few days to get my nails done.
I can see you at the end of this
month. The only way to the gym
today is with my new phone and
it will not let me go.

A Ripple in the God

A nothing-breath. A ripple in the god. A wind.
—Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus 3

It’s so quiet here, not a peep from the Walmart next door.
And you, following the mountains north and north.
Those Sangre de Cristos. A billion years old. Snowshod. Bloody.

Strange gods arrive from near and far and very far.
When light falls I see moon faces. (A reunion.)
What did you say—there’s nothing left to get you high?

I’ve already used the word tequila in a poem we drank years ago.
Now four and twenty blackbirds devour the pi(e).
Get here soon. The mountaintops are rippling. I can’t hold back the gods.

Immortal #9

Immortality doesn’t normally appeal to me, although magic squares seem innocent enough.

4     9     2
3     5     7
8     1     6

Of nine muses—Sally Field, Olive Oyl, the Sargasso Sea, the IRT, Stevie Wonder, Fibonacci, robots, teal, and Yoko—all but one have appeared to me in a poem uninvited.

The number nine is not a prime number, but I don’t hold that against it.

There are nine underground worlds (Aztec), nine circles of hell (Dante), and nine months of summer (Miami).

Nine o’s in the combined names of Yoko Ono Lennon and John Ono Lennon.

Ah! Böwakawa poussé, poussé. (9 syllables)

The Ennead (nine Egyptian deities) decided who could be born and who could pass on to the afterlife. See also: nine Supreme Court judges.

The Peacemaker, Enneagram Type 9, is the type of many famous people—e.g., Carl Jung, Whoopi Goldberg, Ringo.

Finally, the Norse god, Odin, hung himself on an ash tree for nine days to learn the runic alphabet and teach it to humanity. Who would care that much about language, I ask myself while singing so loud you can hear me all the way to the ninth (defunct) planet. It’s there that the peacemakers find me, there where they call my name.