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by Rich Ives

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I’m on my way to rebellion                             and I’m there to learn

bandaged in cargo                                           to smudge my intentions

drinking spinal pleasures                                 I span the hour

 

   waiting for paperbacks with several hours inside

 

clouds in the pond’s ceiling                             pale palaver of washed light and still

overwrought pigs slap the mud                       lever the fence to a bend that releases

ungainly flung                                                 their dangling trotters up and over

 

  which I greet with my orchard and tiny golden claws

 

at the silence in the sentimentality                    chuckling down the light like a room

with branches its body                        slicks the principles of organization

held by the principles in the organization        and sometimes I fever

 

my love letters with a pinch of obsession

 

blossom in my election                                    which can’t process the night transparently

though the idea dresses                                   and in this way goes out to them

down blind alleys of innocent resolve and by placing a tender of rest

 

empty in 3 A.M. in the way of a dancing

 

I was high school dusty and evasive               only one trouble

but big and I’d been                                        already named that

in the season of the rebels                               which captured their anger

 

   like a misplaced empire of ants

 

the pulse of what was                                      breathing in my wings

one glass lawn and                                          some teabags withdrawn

from the moans                                               a solar behavior occasioned by the dew

 

     frozen in last winter’s lips kissing a statue

 

I questioned the nervous                                 creature who lived there my

words like fish and                                          tender collections

it was a camp for that wonder                         with premises vacated yes

 

anything had happened and happened

 

and slept there                                                 where I constructed aftertaste

beforehand                                                      and four of me seemed to know

three of me                                                      better than I did

 

    I had an olive in my pocket where my lack of money used to be

 

in two bright canals winging north                  across the possibility of approach

it’s a dark weightless night floating out           from might have been

two bright lunar reflections                             clumsier than college

 

 I locked my cylinders into my hand

 

and I hit on barreling ahead of myself where I had been so often before

reflecting upon the moon’s involvement         with one sliver of possible

away and one lecture refusing                         conclusions

 

  the pleasures blemished onto the crutch and sway

 

actually choosing my foot                               from the stable

the patient impossible held                              the impossible patient

while I became my cold                                   self as one

 

   which had entirely too much

 

body and was out of humor                            needed to get some air

the two factions of any lover                           confuse the uniform

uniforms and old weapons                              no one has seen before

 

   if I splay my little finger singing in the mirror

 

I mean left or right                                           and which way do I

turn to get back to                                            slant and fold

the great lift and applause of bone                   breaking over

 

   the second joint stunning the jaw into silence

 

and a crackle of                                               splintered attention I’ve been

wearing this decision                                       of interest since Tuesday

quite funny                                                      how I drive my distraction

 

    into the wrong lake and

 

still carry the picnic off                                    with memories of worry-rice

frozen in mother’s father                                 a trail leading maybe

into a tenderness that knew                             where the old cliffs wanted feeding

 

rain spread out over weeks and days

 

calling thousands of the tiny                            wet staircases

the still whispered                                           into the hyacinths and

the bleeding hearts                                           there was no abundance

 

 not in the stone and without proof of low wall content

 

without a few rungs of interference                 many daytime

scaffolds would be left                                    hangings to offset the climbing

choruses of resentment                                    held in the cups of flowery pergolas

 

 but you stretch the harbor to what you can almost see

 

inspect yourself                                               proof of territorial regard

don’t consider me or anyone else                    with restraint and don’t walk

in the naming of things                                    lilt but don’t not walk to things

 

             as I said to the radical brick I’ve already thrown me