Gentle Poem

It was gentle, but not easy. 

A journal written in long careful strokes 

A pair of twins in zippered jackets and rainboots

A pair of toy sheep

A red fountain emitting a cool kind of water

An unbuttoned shirt.

Powerful images, to still hearts.

A terrible idea

About the end of the world 

We spoke respectfully 

Knowing as we did

That the end would bring nothing

To celebrate. We resolved to be

Not cruel but tolerant 

Evidence of among other things

The sudden death of beauty 

In modernity I did not kiss you

I did not walk slowly over the hill

With two arms on my body

Which was not "wretched" but used

For making the bed.

Why couldn't life be the thing

We shared. Why always wait

For death. I am not afraid 

To be against something 

Knowing that I hear you knowing

I am listening knowing 

How to be quiet.

To live was our obligation 

To die was natural and never normal

Never a little like pleasure 

In my kingdom

Where I loved you

At the beginning of the world, 

Here is what I saw: a man with a birthday

And a girl with long hair in a purple shirt

Three vegetables embracing

Not humanly, but vegetablely

The drain of the shower stuffed with hair 

Then snow 

In the driveway

My beautiful mother there

I loved every diary

I understood agony 

I would not participate 

In a sense of global ____

When the day came

When we were all pregnant 

At once every baby 

With the same birthday 

Brought up in the new world 

Where we were all mothers.

This did not make us good

But brave in the face of the horrible sound

A leaf blower

The decline of everything.

Prophecy was just the information that I’d feared to know but had known 

For all my life 

There was me 

There was my knit cap so twisted

A pair of dark and shiny pants 

Like when you would visit and we would fall asleep

To fall asleep 

To sleep and sleep 

In your yellow shirt at night 

In the day your blue scarf pulled over the head

The dog Martha got to prepare

For babies the dog I got 

To prepare for babies I hiked

"Indifference Mountain"

That was the real name of that place

In truth the low trees moving there

The path so gentle and challenging to climb 

And so I got quiet. 

Not one dream on that night 

Not this winter 

In my countryside

My grey feeling

All the people alive

The End of Writing

It would be so intimate to show you my house

No, it would be just hospitable.

They do not know I am beautiful now

Globe fatter and flakier 

Winter pea: I am upset                                        I could not be with your child 

You get new to me

You get new-me to name every line

 On the topmost hill a brush of rabbits

 No, of lenient grey leaves...

Amid a depression of grasses

Winged angels

The waves abrupt with gems

Against the cliff our first picture

I can see in it among other things my virginity 

The table looks a ship this way at night  

I do know what "feminist writing" is 

The administrator of it knows, too

His soft hairs assemble about

The side effects of the poem.

Only there did I see you 

And you were well documented 

Privately, and I think you are pretty

I hoard stems and petals the night makes faces at us

I write a complex code 

You say it flaunts my infection though also my brain

This is how I know I have failed

In Heaven, understanding is synonymous with faith

Faith is so gay these days

As is the beach 

Tumbling lagoon stones for sport

No, "sport" I mean as Plato would say 

The ugly virtue of human systemization

The thinnest snow has started now I stay sick with nausea

The little flowers and I think of you

I think of you near and like I think a gull 

Nearer even now, little ringlets aside your ears

Knowledge

Knowing we could have had anything

Knowing we could have had a large field characterized by the presence of
Flowers and grasses

Knowing we could have lived 

Knowing I could have been as I was up through the night piercing something
Imitating something

Like you       knowing we could have addressed our fears moving toward

The absence of fear 
Your tweed coat what was that buttoned up all the way 

Knowing my affection was displaced at first by philosophy and then 

By this unending desire 
To do them again

The dishes

To do the dishes again and again
To do them again unable to sleep on time     unable to rest or to dream except 

For that same dream you not me had had already I was like

This certain imitation...

Buckets of lead at the base of the church steps 
Your hair so tucked back behind the pale spot on your head 
I had seen it before 

What had I seen before all this happening 

In a light sweater with no arms a vest posing as a sweater so appropriate for 

This weather coming down then going up again

It was political again
The way it hurt to touch my ear never to not
The imitation of touch not hurting

I didn't know pain.

I didn't know I could fear rape more
Though also less 

I knew my vicious poem on the subject of this violence 

Where it was welcome and wasn't  

Don't interfere

Isabel dreaming of an orca who had thwacked her in the face
All her teeth coming out

Hannah dreaming of a baby in live birth guided out of her so expertly
By a trusty and local student

The orchids coming up around the fresh lake and the whales 

After a great pain... et cetera cetera 

Formality was nothing
I hadn't heard of before 

I wanted to be like a really principled and simple form used often for generations 

I dreamt in your style of this eternal life which was impossible

Not eternity but life as I knew it possible 
Without pain that couldn't be true 

It was all I wanted 

I was a coward in my buttoned-up suit 

I was ignorant to many ways of walking of talking 
In the absence of sudden alarm 
There wasn't me there couldn't be

I was where the alarm was hearing it so routinely like a saint had never the sound
Called to me... 

It was a warning

I had to obey this call each day I heard it I worked toughly on my obedience 

I tried the complex 
In the dark corner

I tried your sister and your mother I was looking for you
They hadn't seen you 

We had this common feature.

The song was familiar

Your addiction to the internet was familiar as was classical music 
The song moving there in the style of the alarm 

Moving us so toward the background 

The language of literature in the foreground 
This dangerous reality in the background

I was a fundamentally romantic person when faced with the question
Of indecision in itchy shirts

A quiet kind of conversation no discourse everyone dressed up today 

And were you? Had you outfitted yourself
Appropriately? In the weather belonging to

Who missed you 

Sweaters with no sleeves and moths departing and coming back again

The summer out there

A big storm being fair  plagiarizing me 

Knowing what I'd written and by extension
What I'd thought
About falling asleep 

The field opening and then closing 
Ignorant to the alarm 
Inventing any world it wasn't ours though we tried it 

In the psychic sense and my eyes closed 

And the routine of knowledge

And the dishes being 

And the ascension of the form 
Where it came from going back 

Again another wrought and gorgeous word
For the stem of a lamp

Another night waking and waking again 

What was worth it 

To work with history

Like my fears which were principles 
They curtained the mind 

And this female form
I called it "agony"