Last Bender

winter reveals
what spring buries in green
drought undresses
the creek bed and shore
exposes the root
the sun
lies shattered on ice
rain peels the paint
wind strips the clapboard clean
intoxicated ants
mill over roadkill deer
ravens divide
who feeds on the ants and wasps
what chews on the dust
who bathes in the ashes
among the many things
i find it hard to remain
2.
the responsibility
and fascination
with brocade
pearls and [...]

Fingering the wrinkles
of your leather jacket
November wind
clinging to the skin
the cold zipper big
by a basket full of
sweet potatoes
in the bronze
reflection of the sun.
Inching down the front
clumsy at the belt
I search the pockets.
Brass keys flecked with
gold tobacco flakes
a parking ticket
folded on a kleenex.
Against the collar
soft bunches of your
unbrushed hair have hung.
I taste you when I touch
the [...]

At night they disappear
between the stars, swallowed up
by abysses lit with street lights
in the dim orange fog of skies
into flag draped coffins or meteor
showers of voices washing over
the republic. The laughter goes on,
prolonged for hours.
By day they reappear
the others fade to grey submerged
in the brightness or stretched
like an old, overused cloth
a band of dirty horizon.
Emergence [...]

Oily flames flicker through the iron fence
between the green gauze of ornate lamps
buried in trees, a few ragged stars of pink
caught in the branches. Make way
for the pain of extenuation
in a Bowery bar with bright lights
and no pool table, where faces bloom
in vacuum tubes of steins and snifters.
The heat is large and diesel and we [...]

The stopped voices go on speaking
The breezes had lost meadows
and found truck tires
blasting smoke at the sky
Flesh drifting seaward
a scarf of purple and orange
dissolving on the tongue and eye
A ruined taste in the mouth
of old bricks and dead plaster
the ash of burnt clothes and posters
Limestone lintel on the ground
the lion stretched above the head
hieratic and [...]