Mi casa es su casa  


Cheat the devil of plains and blizzards and you’ll sleep
a million years in a gray house a peach farmer built.
Once I did a dial-up to Hell to find out
who was calling--I walked down page after page with a pen
like the men who write-out mortgages between trips
to the shelter of newly built homes scattered like snow
in the great white suburbs. I live in a home the bank owns--

steam rises from the sink in the kichen, collects
on the walls of cabinets where it’s like sweat--
I’m swearing the house is alive. Even in winter
the windows crack with ice hanging at the corner
of each like a blue coronice from upstairs--
every nail and board the old farmer left behind laughs.

 Wither  

If you count the days beyond recall,
notice first how my voice has changed--
the range is all fucked up, disjointed by time,
solid enough but somewhat an echo
of an earlier rhyme. You’ve got to figure
my body’s passed, too. The skin, by now
shelved by scars, will not admit it once
held stars against the tightest thighs--

this lover and that has slimmed by
on haste. Nothing to deliver, nothing
to conceive. So now I count the planets
swimming in the sky like lost birds,
I count each time I bend heavenward
like a fool without a mission, trying to make

the last transmission of the seed, this utter
and unholy need diffused by blackness
unrequited and unknown. In my threadbare
speech the need to know I have regained,
and only the solitude of your undressing
keeps me here, above the fray
like some unspeakable and worthy cloud
that calls me to account, that simple
moment of lust when all is equal

and you, supple on the couch, extend
the life of your moment into each corner
of my eyes: what its like to die for you,
for once, inside your arms, how the hollow
of your back still arches in response
to different constellations, all this time.

 Crocodile, Dinero

For all the monks who have ceased to be
in this unordinary life, I count
the funky, the solicitious generals
of commerce who make their cash upon
the trash of others--out here where the wind
comes crashing in gales, in tornadoes
when spring cracks open, these men
who want my cash will only cry when crisis

bends back their ribs to find burnt hearts
clashing with the saints--that money taints
the life of others is no joke. They poke
and poke the empty masses who are cajoled
only when they can imagine themselves
healthy at the bank, wiping their fingers dry.

The New Money

--for Darren Chew

The offers come like starlit tribes of fancy
denominations meant to please the eye.
So when truth winds down a note or two
you find your self counting: the busy
days, when without much left to do you list
successes by the amounts of pain you’ve caused
some poor fellow to endure--he’s no match
for the pitiless guile that glues you to your desk.

In some space other than your own the sleet
is thick as webs and coats the streets, no answer
for the demand you’ve made today. Still
as a thousand ghosts basking in the Son’s
eternal kiss, your life has become all of this--
a crock, you spend your days on a sunless coast, alone.