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Prayer for my Father (August 6th, 2006)

Prayer for my Father
August 6th, 2006


God, this is a prayer for my father

on his birthday, among the lights rising out of the lake

backdrafting this little house. The water runs off.

This prayer is for the water running off the roof and eaves.

The water on my mother and father, a box of water.

This is a prayer for his good eye.

For a pattern of clouds.

For the eggs of my father.

For the milk and cheese of my father.

For the birds of my father's complaining:

awww & awwww among the mud buoys,

the birds fishing at dawn, at dusk the figures

moving in and out a lantern. Dimming day:

this memory of my father on a hammock at dusk.


****


This is a prayer for my father's snow.

Snow among us in this basket going up, up.

This picture of us against a clouds’ pattern:

mountain of peace, his face burning with snow.

This is a prayer fifteen below and he is running us into the trees.

He is running us down the mountain to sleep.

He is getting us up and running us down the mountain.

My father, my wheel, my crank

I'm praying, I'm praying in the silence of snow,

in years of drifts against a little house. We are all full.


****


My father is slicing tomatoes and eating tomatoes.

This is a dream. He is eating mulberries and biscuits.

He is rowing a boat. He is swimming inside fort gordon.

It is bright blue moving all over the glass walls.

It smells like wet silk. And during the long drive home,

his sailboat sinks. During the long drive home we become born

on my father's back, born inside his ears,

we are a cargo of stupid birds, singing out and crying

on the long drive back, riding with him on

the long drive, riding my father's prayer

of silence, his prayer of peace, his boat asleep

on the lake, the sound of the moon.


****


I am praying for my father's peaceful expression,

on a white hammock a dusk.

I am making a prayer that is white like his legs,

that is long and scratched. I am asking that this prayer be

floating like my father and rowing like my father,

like my father and mother, like their daughters and sons.

This is a prayer for his children

asleep on the skylights, his children in the back seat asleep,

his children sleeping fast on cots, on chairs

pushed together, inside of drawers, on the backs of boats

they are sleeping, they are sleeping under the bed

and on top of the stairs his children are swimming in sleep, soaking.

I am praying for Morgan.

I am praying for Whit.

I am praying for Laine.

I am praying for Reagan.

I am praying for Katie.

I am praying for my father, my father Lord.

My nimbus father, my hairy father.

My father's arms straight, knees bent.


****


The voice of my father underneath a scarf.

The voice of my father inside a lake.

The voice of my father on the phone.

The voice of my father farther and farther out,

casting his voice off, the shadows of time throwing flowers

on the water, his eyes in the water, the silver clouds

on the silver hooks, the iron bell, the blackest bell,

the grill smelling fading upon the wet stars, his voice

on the other side of time. Oh God be with my father

in the black shoe of the day. Today is today oh God.

It’s my father’s birthday. So we can sing it’s my father’s birthday,

it’s my father’s birthday. I pray to you

on this oblique shape, a flame, a piece of light sliding off

the boat, across the grey lake, the grey sound.

Bright noon, I am tired.

I am tired of your light upon the garagey floor. Bits and bits of hay and dust, this dreamy thing in sideways. I want your bike to ride out with, some kind of anniversary, a buffet. Dearest it is the first day of the year and we can not speak anymore. We're like Dolittle and Lawrence in the dark with our own outlines and broken branches. The trace of the first day in every day, in these juniper trees on the side of the road. Go out on the veranda at dusk. You'll see what I'm saying in heaps of wet trees, in loops of time, at dusk.

Short Prayer for the Butcher

I am pushing toward some bright resolve, Lord.
My hands in the cupboard, the fourth up cupboard,
it is the middle of the morning and I am on top of this box.

Prayer for the lost and holy

Dear God save my love, save the trees of
my love save his face
abated w/ leaves & folliage
& trees that trasport all of his feelings
of love, regret - transported
on a burning carriage - a burning sky
looking at the grounds, the ducks, the majesty
they make of love on the shore

Two boats! Tow boats! breaking
on the rocks of my love.
Save my love from thoughts of fate on these rocks.

The rocks are wheels, Lord.
The rocks are surrogate.

Green trees that shake in July,
the whole life of July
life in which
what happens, Lord? falling

kin to water.
kin to stone.

dear God, dear God

**


God, note my prayer.
I have put this in. I have presented a
boat on the shore in green
and violent grace, the leaves and the ashes
about. Save me my love
from the raining happening.

It's an incomplete prayer.
A prayer for time.
I have a horse here.
I am riding way out with him
and setting him at the trees.
My love is moving through
a prayer time, a motion.

A prayer for time to be done.
A prayer up us
to be grown and stiff and inconsolable.

To be in a dark room
with a square light, taking
us up to the face of the Lord,
the rows up to, up to at us,
this face stitched with light, buff light,
smooth face.

Lord let time take away its stone
that my heart is set. That stone in your
hands that is almost nothing,
that is so small and tidy in your hands.

Dear God let me pray out.
What in your white hands?
what is light to me, oh God
lay him on top of his thoughts/
the storm and storm, the hand of God

Of coarse
and inconsistent
sonnets, of sonnets
of sleep on the bay

Lord let him be of the bay,
yea that he go down
and eat the bay like soup,
the cormorants and vulcher eggs,
every word in the mouth
of God, the bay of God

Every word on the stoop
of forgiveness,
God that he has a dog
and God dog forge into the bay,
into soft land and soft water
rock and mud

the dog on the brink of eating catfish,
eating the flowers the flowers that dot
the banks, eating the horsehair
and eating butter, eating the fruit
that has been set out by god
to eat
to eat
to be done

Lord let him make tunnels
inside books, inside the brace
of books, inside
the history of writing
everything down.

Lord he is sure to be
a piss ant -
how tremulous he
how portraiture

To be an axe.
Be in the sleeve of language.
How himself of night.

AND WHEN HE COMES DOWN
AND WHEN HE COMES DOWN

The parlor is filled
with bats - they are swell.
They are bums.
They are a bridge of friends.
They are a glassy bridge.
They sway and break,
we duck and swoon
they sway and delve
we swell and swell
we cover them
we will see

When it is over -
When it is all either marked out
or put in -

The sound of you Lord in my knees,
in my sleep on my knees,
the long and dizzy spots on my knees
pink and blue and beautiful
Is it this unbearable
at the center of time?

What is the center of time,
the middle of earth
the center of red wood
in the center of space?

Lord let
me lie on
the floor
of my
suffering
the suffering
that is my
carpet
of time
that is
made up
in the carpet
the dust
of suffering
everything
everything

Am I now 26 now 27 or 28 or 29?
Are the bugs only this beginning of time?

This time I am on my knees asking of you
the scope of my love, what I am to do,
when my mother and father will die

On my knees with the bugs -
in the dark and purple fur,
the ringing of the lamb
walks on my heart
he has this bell

I am bound to lie
I am bound to be embarrassed alone
of this floor, in the evening of everything
I ask that you put him where
he should be.

Put him in the hair of the Lord.
Thread of langauge, hair of the Lord. We so sing
in the hair of the Lord. He brings it out of the bay,
mud and grass hair of the Lord, the bees in the wood
and the hair of the Lord Hair of the salt and mud, the broken bottles
the tasks of hair, the cuts, the plush push of night onward! the hair
of the Lord, the house of hair
at night singing ah you, ah you

I WILL PUT IT UPON
THE WALL

I WILL MAKE A PLATE
TO PUT IT ON

The hair of the Lord is at dusk, it is rained
on anceint hair of the Lord, it is stacked and flanked,
a full head - clouds
of white and blue and green,
the hair on his chest and legs, the hair on his arms and back,
the hair on his face, most righteous face of the hair of the Lord.

We put ourselves out of the hair
in order
in the beginning
in line

righteous hair
Engine

Dear God

I am a duck
I am a raccoon
I am heaps of mud on the floor
I am trying not to get in
I am an asking bird
in the dark garage
I lie on the bridge of early regret
of every regret
and cough
I push into the light of the morning,
light that would show up.

Will my father die?
Will it be inside this?
& what with?
what with?

Having accumulated the freight and put the years through
a hole, the pearl of the hole shining-- Oh Anna!

Anna does the truth seek you out, behind time?
in relation? with regard to,

they strike and they strike
thru the fillings. They strike at the center
of an image. As if theirs were the chandelier
and it were fallen from a thread,
laid like loose rain on the gloss.

The tiling across Bleeker street.
The self apart from the ampersand.

Could I have been any more humane?
In the tonnage. In the heat of June?

To be on the spout of a mighty love.
To be bathing in the love of time itself.
In the white hairs of time.
On the white wall. Lined.
In accordance this self, be it. Be it.
Be it in the name, lame and unfit.
A simper in the grass.

Mighty I was love. At night I was.
My self was glossy with love.
Of time and rain or in the morning
my love at my feet in the letters
of a chandelier

I love the deer

I love the deer and the desert.
I love the first part of Medea, the sea.
I love calling a poem "the porpoise".
I love eating good salad, both idea and activity, and thinking about it as in I'm describing to someone this salad.
I love the perfect shape, paralellagram,
because it is the only true shape that swivels.
I love porch swings.
I love thinking like my mind is the voice in The Royal Tennanbaums.
I love Misty.
I love coming to love my apartment, throw-away bathroom wipes, white-washing, bedside work areas, this conservative knitted hoodie my mother bought me, etc.
I love putting forward questions I have not considered answering for myself.
I love my grandma's blue fan.
I love my new seashell flowers.
I love picking out colors.
Pettia. Pece. Puff Piece.
I love Eva Hesse's studies.
I love built-in book shelves.
I love rooms opening out into balconies, gardens, poolsides, and porches.
I love looking at eggs.
I love that part where it is just the hand.
I love certain kinds of accents, creases, pushing open the door of the Menil, hydrolics.
I love blue doors on white houses.
I love thread.
I love the first moments of consciousness in the morning, before everything, I am so happy.
I love the idea that I am a clutz.
I love the way Tenney wrote IF YOU CAN READ THIS YOU CAN GET AN MFA.
I love being in the car when it's raining.
I love missing the point for a time, then getting it in a rush of understanding.
I love my boyfriend.
I love living next door to Gail and Francis, across the street from Bonnie, and a few blocks away from Jimmy.
I love Ronald Johnson's relationship to walking around.
I love thinking of the greenhouses at night, and how they inside me now like a lozenge.
I love Sufjan Steven's Seven Swans and Willie Nelson, Emmilou Harris and Gillian Welch.
I love very fragile books.

The ones waiting for the water to go away from the boat, oh yeah

The ones I am knowing,
the ones asleep in my knowledge of them,
that sleep in the dunes, on their backs,
against an agressive coastline,
the born ones that were not to be
in the door of my life, the ones in plaid shirts,
shirts with snaps, the ones picking through
bins, the ones I wear clothes to be,
would I slip underneath their clothes,
becoming in parts, my friends, on the surface of their mouths,
ye readers at the table, I am getting sick to know you,
know harder and more securely, to know the mechanism
of the night against which you are pedalling.
God that I would accidently leave my bags in the car.

_____ is the field, plural white
and gold sky sky



Hi mouse.

I don't deny you, nor do you fit into my thinking about things right now. This is the real world. Your name was Tenney. I did not tend to you as I should have. It was night and I threw you into the garbage behind my house. I know I should have buried you. In a basket adorned with bread and flowers, then raised you and laid your white body down. It is confusing. My friends rarely visit anymore. My remembering sees you and your little white body. I think of you as some sort of facet of my life, a doornob or a little white vase holding the flowers of your death. It is dark at night and things move around me.

I am angry because I am tired of being suprised. Tired of the noises next to me and the vents, the tiny kitchen, the bathroom renovation remarks, my mother and father rasping at one another up and down the stairs, I'm tired of loving my boyfriend in a precarious position and sitting here watching it recede from me, the cigarettes becoming something entirely different to me now. I'm tired of being this boat, that is, a house boat with dirty amenities and a small shower water is running out of. I'm tired of my co-working and how I'm always thinking about money now, how I wish I had more money or more friends. That way I could live somewhere. I wish I could read a book but I just can't. I want to feel calm but it's always rising up and itching in my mouth. There's coughnig intermittedly next to me and it's driving me mad.

Tender is the One

1.

We are doing the pointing and looking
after it, protecting its back as we go
over the trace that is light, ferrying it
against the sound of our following

It is light like after, like fumes or dull
like the pulp of oranges and lemons and white

We get it in us as it is going, obliquely,
the corners of our eyes and our lips

Tender is the one to see it softly thru,
and the one putting a coat over us, our shoulders
when we are flashing and we can't drive
inside the shaking,

we can't drive through the things running
it through the trees,
it makes the sound on us and on mailboxes
on the one her face her soft face in her hand
her hair in her hands and she's talking


-

it is to the new place the cabin and hard floors
walking around with the new sound
of muffling

to write this poem for someone

it is full of things that you like and it is a pleasure to write and to read it to someone and the person you have written about betrays you and it was a slow betrayal, as if receiving many letters and not throwing any out until there is this box you look around in the morning which is white and to think that the betrayal has been happening and in the whiteness of the morning is done, it is obvious and calm, because it is stacked, the things that you think this person are blown through and your thoughts are open and empty like that and there is no

Short Story

The man I felt piffling in Virginia, some miles out from sea, but nonetheless piffling with his shirt tucked in, his arms flopping, and the face working into his face.

His eyes were often too close together, perhaps they were on some bird or perhaps a bird's body crashing into the window just above his bath.

A man like that taking to the firmament, the little white houses around, ocean you shall not swim in.

The kids are always peppering the fence so now look. A broken gypsy fence in the middle of second-hand shoes, towels, the white shirts of everyone in passing.

No there is no insider. There is this wide and angling remark about how things are.

Gull droppings, the lost ball and dead crabs, shadows slipping like fish down the deck and again against the auburn set. Him with the offal all about, outlined like a criminal.

Should I have talked to him now. That the time is.

Where the mothers of the sea would see and come down and drop their soft breasts on the bay. Touching the sweat on his face to say we are mothers of the fish, the seahorse, the jesus bug the mothers pushing the edge of sand in.

Sewing that we are popping like sparrows out a bush and rolling about the lawn on quite the tiny toes.

God be with everyone

"God be with everyone trying to escape this madness"

a swath of insects fall away from the lamps
the park's off they fall into the smell
of grass & paper  on the bank that reeks
the algae

falling on frogs & others sleeping
so light is the dusk they fall into

the bloated cigarettes & brim the tadpoles
Jesus bugs fall through the white

pond like a hand "on the purse of the pond"
stars fall on the white ducks wobbling
into the dark  they slim down  to dive  

circa Edna breathing beneath mosquito
netting  she looks so thin & grey

---



the cops do rounds
they shift in place


we pepper the fence our arms spread

"God be drumming fingers on the dash"

"I'm open"


they fall their cilium glimmering the wings that rust
& on wires braided white on the pond


the tinsel that cinches the water
the bank and the bay, they are allotted
the gnats & things, figures we are so far


their glimmering circa the bullfrogs and others
sleeping again against the bank the gnats & blooms
of algae the fish float

we kneel beside the black
water with our hands in

***


Edna has only removed her gloves
in the white dusk.

"God be with everyone trying to escape this madness"

the cops do rounds in the beginning
they shift  in place the trees stain the sight
of dusk

God be in numbers of

we pepper the fence
with our arms spread white

you don't say

the light cataracting off  

Oriental Rugs || Antiques & New

Don't try
I am sleeping
inside with______looters
a big dog,_______will be
an ugly woman,___shot
two shotguns
and a claw hammer

TO BE ASCETIC (1-4)

the orchard (1)

Go on with the shadow
of one underneath
a canopy / between rows of oranges
upon rows of mulberries
of white fig and / unripe persimmons.



Who are these people
anointing each other w/ plums
and halved grapes / pineapples
pears and lemon wedges
/ loquats?

And beetles eating and ants
who wield their white eggs
to and fore, a long time,

wrens that come to
regard each other / by the way


the pigeon (2)

Go on out and eat
something in the night.

Black garage of night, go on

with the shadow of remainders
and sour blossoms, the flesh shaken
out of an orange / some beetles
in the hairs of a little
nest that falls

a trap door (3)

The way something shaved feels
like a dog or the back
of a boy’s head / a piece of light
slides down the fence
and away


the mountains & the evening
that has fallen on

a persimmon (4)

before it goes white& flinty
and is lettering the daffodils
and is / drawn on

Bur-chervil & Dogbane thinning
and falling to dusk

Go on with the shadows that run
it through the trees and up the trees
by way of some system, and (out of) asking
look, there

the persimmon tips the edges of

a hand of leaves /
and small white bells

then plumbed from

Putting on a path btw houses / go
on with the shadows that skim shifts
of grass, the grass in heaps, and mists’ rising
crown clearing at newly dark

the hand (5)

on the back of a spider bolting,
on cicadas or locusts or the backs
of moths glimmering, a scoop of gnats
in the shower at dusk , a separation of feet
from the sound they make on the roof:

the May beetle, June beetle

The hand the foliage had
in sneakings out.

Which ever way we met
in the green lawn
on the soft of our backs
and lay there

itching awn and spikelets
, making out of the grass
some stars

a mountain(6)

With this face to us, like a blunt cusp
in the yellow grass. Pale and hard at night.
In the angled grass, the night,
spitting in your hair.

That is this yellow field, the wolves to the moths
that are this / field of the face
in each darkness, of the sky in a crevice

that is cracked wheat, and jutting-up
roots, an orange on the back
arching over /