Morning

Wake up at three p.m. Feel the departure of all sorts -- killers, waitresses, presidents and children. A grey-haired man with an earring makes eye contact as he leaves. They've all spent the night in there, hanging out, poking around. You want them to tell you that they approve, that you'd make a fine leader of men, that you won't be subject to any of their terrible inquisitions, but they leave without a word.

Moment or minute

'How can any particular compare,'

said a saint who had loved you

and moved on,

'to the great Everything? I close my eyes and I feel it.'

Once, at our old apartment, 

you hit me in the balls without explanation. 

We both cried privately, absurdly. 

Years later I've found you where you're living in Lancaster.

We take places on your bare,

altar-like mattress. I kneel over you, exalting

in the inevitable

Moon-blue glow from tiny nightlight, window's

shape sliding over your belly as car

passes, your burning

skin. Divisions

in the sum of all things.

A penguin alone looks over the ice shelf and thinks about going for a swim

A light glows. It begins to flash. Explosion-implosion. It slows exploding, and in the void, a rock grows trees. Three historical eras -- Blue, Yellow, and Red -- go by, green and orange in between. Six years pass, ten seconds. An alarm rings. You move a muscle on your cheek. Someone gets up to leave. Time wants to stop but can't. It whimpers, allows itself a whimper, knowing it's hopeless. All feel a moment of déjà vu before time is whipped again and staggers on and the sun is hoisted up the sky.

Nature poem

The Santa Mannabo wind
that slams the leafy sidewalk like a big invisible boot;
the airborne seeds of silvermoss;
the Cassian candelabra trees in the wintry park,
upswept, like the fine hairs of a love triangle;
the lark-a-doo,
coming to rest outside my window;
the scarlet fritillary that shivers in the San Bonobo wind;
the lazy turtleduck;
the slizzgrass and autobush and upsoil;
the California reefer bug
strolling with the Hackensack rockworm --
folding coasts;
the still-green blubberfruit, slam-dancing in the iridescent light
of March;
the electro-leaf;
the racktard stophopper;
the Saint Bonerowner wind
tripping accidentally over a stump;
the underwear beetle waking from a nap;
the wrinklerat shaking his head slowly;
the swamp-man
and his four beautiful children;
Mother Nature humping a hill like a pillow;
the clown-faced ant baby;
Eutamias minimus biting the head off of Allocricetulus curtatus --
watching this through an X-ray machine;
the partybird and skeeptile;
the smug-ass loggers
flung into space by Stove Bonecus the Wind.