READER I’ve made you my reader. You Haven’t said you wanted the job Or even that you would read Flickering snake-tongues in my eyes, The mess of guts spilling over The neat formica counter top. You are so neat. Would you offer A paper towel to sop The gore? So fastidious With women, grown out of wetting The bed, a man. Would You deliberately turn  In a fine feeling meaning Around? I can’t believe you So crass. That’s why I’ve made you my reader ,seeing You flicker nervously at words As if they were glittering Reptiles wound in the farmer’s Basket and up to no good. It takes a poet to recognize An asp, my friend	EPIGRAM I wanted you to read a love Poem which is nasty, short, brutish. ElegantPsyche may be made Up later, but love is sluttish.
AUGUST HEAT The August heat breeds unseemly Thoughts, images like crickets mating In the sun, drawn by sense, vibrating, Crowding in the throat and belly. What a nuisance is this lust Lying like an assassin in the dark,  Silent, intent, and the park A sudden wilderness thick with musk. The threat of falling to the knife Beats in my heart as I slowly walk This afternoon, this heat, till stalks Of love grown over the bush and drive Me to the open empty page. The impulse of summer is pure Cascading water, endures Crashing against roof or fence or cage,  Falls as a flood as though to wash Away foundatios, force Casements down and with hoarse Guttural voice our lives unleash. A catbird creaks from a hidden leaf. Exhausted, irridescent Dragon-flies blur, descend. We look for cover, lover and theif.	SUMMER BUGS On a blue morning the golden bugs zip Like metal wires to the sun; their dance Approaching, zagging, meeting, antennae tipped For the search, a secret quiver, lance. I watched them in the open hollow Between house and woods plunge into air. Katydids clinging in the tulips trees blow And rasp. I am bitten in my lair By bugs; see long-legged spider daddies Wobble like old men to the table. Pale green sandflies hop in bed, half-tease, Half-jaws, clipping summer flesh. Sable Furred mites burrow in yellow stems; Colonies of white flies have massed on The drooping palm. Every hour the sleazy hum Of munching, sucking, mating. I am gone. To sleep, sick as a potted plant chewed By golden bugs hurtling in my blood.
AT THE POOL The polar air rolled in last night; We pulled tattered blankets from their store. How sticky hot all last week was, and bright With long summer’s langorous desires. By noon the children had jumped into the pool. Blue faces drifted under water Like swamps of lotus or as school of fools Drowned in their images and lit by fires From the shifting glass, eyes glazed By the self-undulation of the wave. Heat and water will turn docile babies crazed, And in the mobile element upheld Scores swooped, boogied, somersaulted, flew. I felt my thickening body brave Beside their agile senses; that I could view The rapt child-sensuous play and not be sad!	EVENINGS Other evenings have been this lenghty and lowering into the night, a narrow coffin let down into is clayey ground, or blight scarring slowly. The blue sky whittens in a fist closed tight. Other evenings have been hard when I could not love myself or live alone. I filled hours to sleep when all lovers’ doors shut with tales, pitting heart of its stone and core. Other evenings have bruised to this purple dark under reflection of light slipped by just barely over the pathetic horizon: the outermost ripple shadowed where a stone’s been thrown. Other evenings will bring to doubt the mourning doves circling here by the road’s grit edge. Dust raised by wings feathering in clear dusty ripples signals a drop where a stone’s plunged sheer. The still face of a weedy pond, the evening floats past us, black, unmirroring, questions gone unasked, while constellation flake their spiced stars on doves and lovers  lying by a stone’s crack.
SCIENCE- FICTION   I dreamed a science-fiction movie: A giant thing, half-bird, half-octopus, With beak to tear and flapping wings Gauzy as tissue drifting in the air That lifted its monstrous weight rapidly. It was a mother screeching for its babe, Loathsome, propelled by love and loss; The baby, caught by human curiousity. The natural process of the mind, Studying, saw the ofttspring wrinkle, shrink, Black as a scrap of chicken skin To its damaged foetus. And as The mother-creature burst into the dream We ran, I the most fearful, The first to crawl beneath a space, Then, chased out to the open a breathless time, Woke, out of breath, remembering my sins.	BIRTH Lizard ran. Her path sped, packed, Hot in mother sun's eye. It ran stony, strong as her back. Running slithery slide she ate Purple-winged air. Lizard's mind Flickered on her tongue, flash Of dark mouth and light, wing Warm in tummy, swallowing. Lizard hummed her mother's song: The black water is blood, black Air is vision. Red stones compel, white stones grow. Mother, crack the shell!
THE BUSINESS OF MACHINES The woman: It moves. I don't want to. She would not look into his eyes. It was business they Were there on together. The stranger: Part your legs. Relax. It could have been a stone, A splinter curled. The shock Of her nature, almost forgotten, Showed still pacing, able to kill. The story: It could have been funny. Or wicked. His machine took back The stone, the splinter, the mess On the floor. She was part Of a process of numbers. The women napped on white cots In long silent rows.	ON HEARING A WOMAN POET READ She wears her face plainly on her face, Reading her words for all to see. Skin tugged over jaw, over space Taut as a drum and scraped raw on cheek; Not fine translucence but spotted, Blotched by feeling or pain. We gaze Into eyes opaque, clotted By vision, and read in her irises Certain texts we may have written also. On thorny legs she reads. Poetry is Is woman's plant, stellar Brilliance, body opening in kiss Of welcome. Are you our sister whose words Awaken in rooms of strangers to know Yourself? A long4egged bird Startled by sound, you clear air, show Flight, before falling again To the close of your poem, to your pain.
I LOOK FOR WOMEN Mid4ife stalled, I look for women. Where are they, my mothers and sisters? I listen for their voices in poems. Help me, I've fallen asleep, fallen With sleepers. These women have murdered Themselves, violent, wrenched from home. Grandmother was barren. She died, Tubes in nose and green shanky arm, Hair yellow, a dirty dye, patches Like fungus on a stricken pine. I read terrible stories -Hate, rage, futilities of will -And look for women, the small Sufficient swans, showers of stars.	FAMILY ALBUM The boy stood cocky on his mother's knee: Opaque image distilled in silver eye. He knew as none did what it was to be. Poised in elegance of infancy,  In folds of cloth and flesh, and gazing high,  The boy stood cocky on his mother's knee. Worlds of chairs and sofas were his to see: Warmth, motion, light, all mastered by his cry: He knew as none did what it was to be. What was his mother? Her vague history  Hardly recalled in sorrow, ravished by  Boy standing cocky on his mother's knee, She knew the guarded yards outside, crazy Dogs and hearts, mind locked behind sigh. He knew as none did what it was to be. Unlikely met, the lonely figure, she  Turns her half-face, bliss, suspicious eye,  While boy stood cocky on his mother's knee,  Knowing as none did what it was to be.
MIDDLE AGE: CHANGE AND ORDER Nothing is outrageous, the old man cried; Not colt with foal or mare alone Striding, nose to the wind, and borne On air. Only the young observe and lie, Believing in seasons when they also shall Create dynastic order and disdain What from the stormy centre breaks, rebels. Old women know how the old remain. Ignorance of outcome, the old man cried, Is innocence in the dangerous garden Rife with shards tossed by long-ago tenants, Ripping soles of children tripping bare by The berried bushes. Only eager Boys and girls discovering slain Paradise for the first time linger there. Old women know how the old remain. The game of chess is closed, the old man cried: No new sun rises from the board but knights And bishops still can ride and queens delight In ancient conflicts. When the king died, We cast the pieces offl Only the young Can live life new, leave off the grained Worn snap-shots, keening death songs. Old women know how the old remain.	PORTRAIT OF A MAN How perfectly boring to spend your life perfecting the man - your polished accent and breadth of fact Latinate weighted or boyish spring sprung unawares. Such pains and time on writing signs, metabolized to air, and here you are, willing (like Barkis) to be read; studious, willing to be studied. Yet there is something innocent in your bright surface which throws back only the light that shines on it - a guileless mirror or text long dead, the lack of life's mire your crystalline naivete. Unkindest are those who, hurrying past, don't stop to check their reflection in your giass.
THE MARRIED  In broad daylight they walk abroad, Apart, not twining hand in hand. Between them the indifferent sword, Before them each their single stand. The woman quick on tiptoe going, Sensing the cresting surf on shore And swirling air; he, bestowing His careful pace through housed door: Not nature holds them fast together, Nor wind blows them again apart; Only the firmness of his tether, The forgetful measures of her heart. Night will not gather them, not life Nor time will find them at their rest. Yet still in broad daylight the wife With him must struggle unoppressed. And he, the grander of the two, Astutely grim, resounding fair, Stands measuring out what he should woo, Unburdened, irresolutely there.	WOMAN AND VASE Wind blows the curtains, here, there. Vase in the corner rounds In the lightening air. Blue contours gleam, a grey morning To be filled with flowers. A woman saunters through the room Of day, touches the air around The table, arranglng the objects Of her thoughts. Her form irradiates The faihig of flowers. Breath streams through the woman's mouth. Its silence intones in the empty House as a gong vibrating In a high wind, striking the vase, Shattering the flowers.
A DREAM OF DUTY Nothing can be seen till we acknowledge the subtle woman's dream. In fact, there is duty: a clean house with shaken rugs, oiled picture frames. The woman moves among glossy plants and tiles, child and husband dusted free of strange desires. Here is my life, she says. Behind the brightening lamps evening falls outside and the visitor must let herself out.	THE BOOK OF FEVERS 4 a.m. mist: green, coughing in the sheets, the hard quartz caught in the throat. who will save? He feels for the time. It won't ring till morning. Feels for the squeeze on the heart. Under the arms water breaks out. This is the way the brave man goes, wrung wet as a fish falling through air thick with dew, threads of sense tautening. A sound of his life whirs, faster than stream or quick nicking prey. Then, line cut, gleams, blue, savage.
STAYING UP ALL NIGHT AFTER WATCHING A HORROR MOVIE   Nurses who live so close to death, have seen yeflow babies chifled like cheese or old women, folded wrappings for stories, cramp into wood, do they hold their breath when red tears from a torn eye on the screen or puzzle meanings in a flashing knife? To turn over and over obsessions of our life, the hurt in hurts, rough and smooth of obscene fears: do good doctors shrink from scenes of mayhem, think all night on bloodbaths, killings, who live so close to blood, esophagus, liver, kidneys, stomach, entrails, gore? Gangrene of mind, images corrupt like living earth. [fear and hate my love of fear. The huntress prowls outside in the black moony strand of trees. But she is only my old familiar death.	EPITAPH I killed myself, in little doses, to immunize That grand poison which no one can pass up, For, even as I pleaded to take away the cup, I sipped and sipped in secret drunkeness, with secret
WORKING WOMAN (for Chidiock Tichborne) The t.v. flickers, hums, in a darkened room. The child's locked up by eight, finally quiet. She flips the page, enjoying fiction's gloom. Outdoors the cosmos rockets, meteors zoom. She counts her greying hair, decides to dye it. The t£v. flickers, hums in her darkened room. Day may never come, but mornings always loom as she finds tomorrow's hose, swears to diet, and flips the page, enjoying fiction's gloom. Memory tickles - the suave mustachioed groom, jumble of tongues, slap-dash criminals, riots -the ty. flickers, hums, in the darkened room. Littered crumbs and coloured mags, the hearth broom forgotten underbed for a stove she won't work at: she flips the page, enjoying fiction's gloom. This solid hour for herself between womb and doom, jangling 7 a.m. and unsensing quiet, t.v. flickering, humming, in the darkened room, she flips the page, enjoying fiction's gloom.	Striving and Anarchy   Each woman dreams, looking over another's shoulder as she weaves at the embroidery of her vanity. The fine and coarse threads slip. The story is a frieze to be interpreted and re-interpreted, addressed to you who looks over my shoulder. Two closer than sisters, I stand at my work and watch how your life shifts as mine does; gorge in the starless dark having seen your appetite sharpen: nrirror-twin whom l  kill each night and wake to find waiting. Anarchy is my dream of undoing, unpicking all I spend my life doing. Antidote to the smoker puffing at her death: the convict in street clothes running for her life. Anarchy has real bones, is coloufless gas seeping into taped root'ns. Nowhere is life fresher than before it is made into things.
YOUTH AND AGE  Lost I rushed for ropes to hang myself on, pulleys of labour, nets to hold shoals fleeting into time and endless abundant water. Yes, I have succeeded. Yet I miss my lostness: child once certain with hunger wandering for the wide net that gathers the world. Dangling in the theatre of my choosing I dance, kick my limbs to applause. Who moves me but myself in the brilliant aura of western lights?	THE TRADE   She feared the iambic rictus mechanical twitching of a chopper gone mad unceasing adverse to nothing a rotten twitter among the branches of night flitter of a lunatic crazed with meanings.' In jilaCe of reason therefore rhyme, strict bars to hold in place feelings not undeserving freedom, such quicklime to strip without decay a corpse in time. And among the tools for chopping, form. Precise instrument, stanzas slice to the bone, section harm from harm. As butchers, surgeons, dancers, the trade is blood, nerve, and craftiness.
Lines The more is brought to light, the darker the breeding ground Proverb is the twitch of atrophy Poets bless the muse of insomnia at all times of the day. Write it. Bolt it down with steel. The paralytic style: never say a plain word when a rare one will do; never say a rare word when a plain one will do; never say a particular when another particular will do.	IN MEMORIAM The smell of death was everywhere. The skunk squashed flat, hair And bloodied head on the highway, Trailing the wheels as you swing Round the bend cursing. Or the yellow corpse Of your best friend washed out With embalming fluid. You bend to kiss, Feel death in your nose, a blunt Blow by a cold body. A family of moths, white bugs In a July night, Fly through the bedroom window. You bash them with a newspaper, Dead news and fa~en wings. The smell of death, smouldering At day's end, hangs musky. I roll over, belly up -Jonah in the corrupting corpse Among murdered skunks and moths.
SPEAKERS "I'm finished," said the mirror. "Don't speak so," the litfle bird whispered. "What do you know?" rang the brazen bell. "You know, you know," the empty house echoed. "You won't find it here," lamented the garden. "Try me, try me," tinkled the piano. "I'm bigger and better," the river raved. "In you is my end," murmured the ocean. "Yet stay with me!" cried the swimmer. "She can't leave me," the shadow answered. "I'm going now," the world turned around. "Are you ready?" asked the small green hill. And the one star in the expanding dark Stared on and said nothing at all.	BIRTH, SEX, DEATH The three awesomes all down the road somewhere; or, past encountering, past imagining. The signal boredom of the thing - boom, she says, and boom, boom, boom. Each boom, now grown, hurrying elsewhere. No time to listen to old complaints. Oh, sex, she says, nothing to it' Can't "''en recall the look of it. Not modern like you The malice as she takes in nylons, bras, panties - such lovely things (but not for her) - matted in noon rain like pelts, dead animals. She ~s pink, lavender satin. Lucky Looks sharp at him. Rich, rich, at more can a woman want? she, so sad, had never got it.
MY FATHER'S SADNESS My father's sadness appears in my dreams. His young body is dying of responsibility. So many men and women march out of his mouth each time he opens his heart for fullness, he is shot down; so many men and women like dragons' teeth rising in the instance of his lifetime. He is an oriental. He claims paternity. But in his dreams he is a young body with only his life before him.   My father's sadness masks my face. It is hard to see through his tears, his desires drum in my chest. I tense like a young man with a full moon and no woman in sight. My father broke with each child, finer and finer, the clay of his body crumbling to a drizzle of silicone in the hour-glass. How hard it is to be a father, a bull under the axle, the mangrove netted by lianas, the host perishing of its lavishness.	INVENTING MOTHERS I bite the fluffy tissue. Roses flurry from my mouth in June, and wildlife memories of other children's mothers spring too: their scurrying fussy ways, pecking rice~birds busy in the drying fields, intent on harvest. Child, I peeked at them buried in hearts of houses, flapping, like hearts that will not fail, spare, efficient hands at pots and foreheads, at thread and lots of mending, heaps of broken nrornises from the world, shattered 'dna cups, and fathers' thrashings. were not brusque like brothers like old aunts. They 'acre breakfasts, washed, swept, and stayed Till next morning. A little friend's tyerful mother was gaunt bone, mean. didn't matter. She blanched ceks, trained waist and hair, made ends where nothing else would. She flerself before misery so saved the children. Bruising lipS, I make tissues of roses, ifinging seedtime for my son, coins, kites, parings, extravagences of mothering, while the lies of childhood, puckering, rise and rise.