listen to the counsel
of your neck

hairs at full salute
chill rolling up from the shoulders

how it twists
stiffens

it says
mortality is a sense

centered in the line
between head and body

which comes alive
at moments of great need (such as this one

when he speaks of love —
listen to the counsel of your neck)

I think there’s a problem
in my walls: clicking, voices,
the flavor of flowers.
I hear Italian radio, dubbed popular
songs in the other room.

The violet walls shake like a speaker membrane.
The clicking of tuning knobs, switches, antennas
scraping the studs.  It sounds like
cursing and goes on all the time.  The house
broadcasts bad memories.

I think there’s a problem in me, too, now.
I hear myself speaking with an accent,
call the pain in my ankles
“my grandmother’s
disease,” can’t keep my hands

off switches and knobs.
Turn them
incessantly.  Try to communicate
with others.  Try to keep
from crawling in there with them.

To try and break the spell, I’ll go outside
undressed, nude as a buttonmaker protesting
the trend toward zippers and elastic waistbands.
It will be dramatic.
It will be seen as having a subtext by some,

but I’m just trying to find a place
where I can’t hear whatever’s in the walls.
I’m not that crazy.  I’ll leave my clothes behind
because I don’t dare open the closet,
and haven’t done so in weeks.

Once out here, I’m relieved to find
that out here the only voices are in plain English
and I understand them at once.  That clicking
out here is clearly just handcuffs.
That pain in my ankles is because the cop tripped me

to make me go down.  I don’t care, and I’m only crying
because things are making sense again,
and I didn’t even need a radio to tell me that.
Between my sobs I’m making up a song.  It’s for the cops —
the refrain:  “Don’t go in there, and block your ears if you do.”

Do me a solid —
flip me
what used to be a word
we all knew.

Then let’s dig that word,
that daddy-o word,
that makes it all copasetic
when we hear it.

Dig that right-on word
that grooved in and delivered
back in the day, that Kilroy word
that was everywhere once;

caught the vibe and held it,
nifty and neat and tight,
like a wicked cool spell
making it all happen.

I’m going with the radical
word, used to be the word
we said was Word, boss word
holding court, groovy word;

word sharp as scissors, cut slack with it,
slang it like David’s stone against
old Goliath rules, then didn’t bother to pick it up
because something smoother came along.

Gotta love the word, the far out word,
old word sure but it’s still all aces.
Sometimes reaching back gives you
all the solid you need to make it new.

A river,
a bridge.
A hard faced hawk
over the water
as I passed.

A mountain-stone in Georgia.
Peregrines on updrafts
hovered six hundred feet above
the ground, ten feet off
the edge of the cliff
where I was standing.

Were those eagles, there
above me on a Portland street?
Were those buzzards above the field
down the road?

Do they ever touch down?
I only see them in trees and on
the wing.  Once, one carrying a snake
let it trail across my car’s hood
but if it came to ground I did not see.

And now the cries of this mated pair in the backyard —

will they come down?

Go ahead and impersonate
kings and queens. 
Assume air
bends for you. 
Claim blood
you only have ever scented from afar.
This is not a country
for unbalanced assumptions.
This place is as much
the Wobblies
as it is the Carnegies,
as much the Underground Railroad
as it is the Border Patrol,
and when you primp and stir
and expect so much, you
should stop and recall that nature
always restores balance.

What moments my face etches within itself
are not those of my choosing:
what lands upon me and inscribes itself
is not often recognized when it comes.

If the air were as acidic as these impressions suggest,
I’d have been liquid long ago
and would long ago have soaked invisibly away
into the earth, most likely leaving no trace.

Only a mirror away is an understanding
of this erosion and resculpting, yet rarely do I look
at one.  I keep myself rigid and blind,
stare ahead thinking of how much I’d love to melt away.

He’s
an interstitial zone.

He’s the littoral.
Either
in between dark and dawn
or
between day and dark.

How strong is your grasp?

He’s slick.
If he gets loose
he’ll not be
easy.  Might catch him
but might not know
we have. 
That’s the same
as failing to.

He’s fine this way, though.
Never thought of
incompleteness or
lack of definition
as his fate. 

Our failure to catch
is not problematic for him.
Our distress isn’t,
either. 

We wither
and, as stated,
he’s fine.
Fine enough
to slip between closed fingers.
Fine singing
“I Walk On Gilded Splinters”
to us.  Fine

watching, ow, ooh,
how we step wrong toward him
and contrive a blessing there.

Even using the word “him”
is our
contrivance.