ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

sequence #
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20

  keyword(s) in poems:

Sequence: 1

NIGHT FEAR
you said fire...


BLUE TWEED WITH FLECKS
Help in unlikely places...


TWELVE USES OF AN ABANDONED SPIDERWEB
it can be removed with a gesture...


FOUR CHAMBERS
links the heart...


LOCUSTS, ETC.
they do eat after all, for the oak...


untitled
came to you...


BIG KILL IN THE SUBURBS
lawns smooth as mint icing...


ADOPTION
"Do you know Carlos?____ What is your relationship to him?"...


MUSING
your red sneakers get bigger...


HOW IS IT
let it be night on the Muscatatuck...


APRIL
empty play...


POLITICAL POEM
The landlord of the opposing house...


WALKING
grasshopper flight...


MEN
The sale barn: sweat, cigars,...


IMPERFECT POEM
I have nothing to say to you now...


!
You poets of the on/off guard...


OFFER
Guy in a blue shirt...


SIDE WALK
Between the streetlamps there are regions of dark. You can't...


WHY WE SAY
good...


STUDY
we took the measure...


LANDSCAPE: WEATHER BECOMING DOLPHY
evidence of high wind...


FROM THE TRAIN
Tom, when the red light blinking...


THE STRANGER
Him, the stranger walking toward you, he's the one you take...


INSTEAD OF EATING
I could take a walk I could...


THEFT OF A LINE FROM ORR
I am older...


PROPHECY
They shall be raised...


AT A FRIEND'S HOUSE
the sirens, the steps on the sidewalk,...


PORTRAIT
He comes up the street,...


MY BIRTHDAY
in the belly of night...


8/27/89
my notebook is heavy...


SHOPPING
It is important to tie your...


I HAVE NOT LOVED ENOUGH
I am so intimate...


REPLY
. . . the kind of woman who lets her ...


MY GIFT
the struggle to maintain...


HE SITS DOWN
M the cripple feels his legs unhinge,...


CLOSE CALL
Uniformed and well-armed bullies...


M THE MURDERER
That man locked in an argument with his wife, the young girl...


EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE AFRAID
The junkie looks in a window...


MY HOUSE
The bushes are growing up around my house,...


NEW TUBES
plugging in the 1955 Gibson amp...


THEFT OF A LINE FROM MONTALE
The obstinate news, the turbulence...


NAKED AGAIN
It's night and I'm naked again...


FOR SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
I wear my pants...


IN MY ILLNESS
my thirst my fever...


BACK WAY HOME
blackness in the center of my eye...


POEM POEM
my words from black...


untitled
her head turned to one side...


THE VISITORS
they come to us mostly...


MY SON
my son never born...


EARLY WINTER
first snow fall...


SLEEPY
the fat snow...


DOWN THE HALL, TURN LEFT
my room with the standing lights...


10/5/89
Here...


WISH
my feet cold in thin shoes...


COMPARED TO WHICH
Truth is an apple...


TELEPHONE
out of the length of your hair...


REQUEST
let me borrow blindness...


SUNDAY
the big stones, the little stones...


POEM OF WATER
I want to be a different kind of water...


THE AFFLICTED
That man has ears but he does not hear...


LOOKING
between two mirrors...

WILDNESS COMES BACK


The wild in America is contained, pushed back, owned by the people
as a public treasure for all time. Thus it is separated from us
and our settlements so that America can possess its wildness and be
free from it, well-ordered. But the wildness comes back. In the
abandoned pastures and on the rock ledges made by highway cuts,
cedar saplings appear and then come up in crowds. Along the old
fencerows and in carelessly-tended alleys trash trees--sumac, tree
of heaven--spring out. Scavenger animals multiply, certain birds
find the suburbs and cities to their liking, cracks in the asphalt
or cement breed greenery suppressed elsewhere, the dumps draw
colorful vermin to their feast. And the wildness takes over new
types of habitat, as when the vines cover abandoned shacks and
trailers, and the rodents shelter there. It takes on new forms
that we don't at first recognize as the wild asserting itself:
toxins and meth labs, birth anomalies and addictions, unchecked
wealth confronted by ever-larger desires--these are wild, these
are crawling over and under our safe buildings. We are crazy for
guns, we have an insatiable desire for power, control, security.
The law devours wildly, contempt for losers is a wild passion,
money is the wildest thing of all. We make the largest explosions
the world has ever known because the wildness is in us. We vote
for it, we consume it, it eats away at us, it is the terror our
eyes see everywhere, and we can't stop our hearts beating too fast,
our breath coming out in shouts. We have a wild, violent desire
to get a peace so endless it seems natural to do anything we can
think of to obtain it.