He begins with cryptic commentaries;perfunctory shorthand withinthe margins of a leather-bound text. Which color is Death? Light flashes from passing vehicles.Dash studies the dense text with noteshe views as lineage transmissions. Achievement of the real is not impossible. He endures those endless car ridesAs currents inner realizationsguide surges; crackling insight. Why is the sky so…

Dionysus sits under the neon sign flashingO-P-E-N in a multicolored rainbow the night smells like Busch or Millerit’s cheap and too salty but it keeps flowing like a pee colored river down his throatuntil his eyes are bulging from their sockets some smeared lipstick daydream with her facepressed against her palm, thoughtful, almost pensive he…

It couldn’t come cheap, of course.Then they’d say, “Well, you get what you pay for”and “I bet it’s no good.”We’d package itsleek and clean,not too much of it,always, almost enough.We’d need a slogan too-nothing too clever:Good. It’s for you!And of course a celebrity spokesperson,though that may be harder to come by.But by gum it’s worked…

It’s bloodcurdling to careWounds with the deepest scars Given too much to peopleWithout one reciprocating bone in their body Don’t let anxiety devour youWhen all signs point to noCraft a detour The alternative route never traveled You are the exception. Worlds wish on a thousand starsFor one of youSo, grip tight and let go Embrace…

First, cover what’s a must;dark circlesand red spots,and then, pores should be diminishedto the smallest acres of skin flecks, and then—then, skin should glow and be pink— some fake health on the surface of the surface.Spread foundation even and equal everywhere—regardless of high and low, cheek or chin. Forehead must come closeto a pure whiteness…

— For Archibald MacLeish again the voices of yesterdaygrant permission to our young MacLeish heard them all the way hometrekking through blinding snowto tell Ada things would be differenthe would not accept the partnership a man of letters and certain deedsanyway enough with poetic attorneys did she embrace her lover of words a lone gargoyle…

during the warmy papaw saw visions said the ground openedlike a mouth to eat him fire and brimstoneletters to Helen lost in the flux of bodiesin foxholes scribbled eighteenon the listing order to fight in the battle of troywith Achilles he won a purple heartpulled a man off the frontlines and the war went onand…

You’ve got to imagine Her skin is lavalike when you were a boyof six and you jumpedfrom bed to bed to avoid the searing floor You’ve got to pretend she’s a human – sometimes she has a tummy achesometimes she speaks underwatersometimes she gives moneyto the man outside the drug store in a wheelchairand sometimes…

I hide in a paper housein spaces where I need not speak.I take up pencil, notebook,write myself a rowdy place–hundred-story bunk beds; mermaids in the fish tank, dragons in the yard. Other books nourish mine–lend me their rhythms, their characters,teach me silent conversation, sprint with me through enchanted forests. I bloom purple, tape my binding,put…