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...

NOSTALGIA 


the rain is an empty city 
each drop a building evacuated 
its stairways uninhabitted by echoes its doors and windows 
useless for keeping anything out or in 

each as it falls standing in relation to other drops nearby 
each one composed as if it were thought of only by itself 
or perhaps designed with just its near neighbors in mind 
but the many drops crowded together form a gigantic pattern 
as though this pattern as a whole was foreseen and enacted 
but each drop knows only those near it 
and nothing lives in any of them 

the rooms are empty the roofs are empty the streets and squares 
hold no one and there is no one in a hurry or with time on his 
     hands 
there are no glances no quiet agreements to slip away together 
no first disturbing signs of an illness no firm deals made 
no great bargains or agreements to buy later 
no betrayals or bitter arguments between old friends 
no one is there to love or to lean against when one is tired of 
     all the activity of the day 

in fact one is not there oneself one has been emptied as the city 
     has been emptied 
as if one had never existed as if no as if that included the 
     hypothetical possibility of one's imagined existence or 
     extinction had ever been uttered 
as if the one certainty left is a zero in place of an I 

and in such a city whose citizens have reached such a peak of 
     non-existence 
the streets broaden a little new buildings are not constructed 
     old ones fall 
through the wider spaces between what still stands a fresh wind 
     is blowing 
it parts the buildings or we should be honest the raindrops further 

the sun comes down these channels like an ancient triumph 
the onlookers crowd closer to see the chained slaves and elephants 
the sun is filling all the space now 
one can only feel nostalgia for the stark uninhabitation one has 
     lost 

standing there thinking of it crowded by the sun and all those 
who go by never having even heard of the empty city