ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

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  keyword(s) in poems:

Sequence: 3

BE DIGITAL
and believe what falls between your fingers...


DAYLIGHT FARM SUPPLY
wet lawns along the river...


ASKING FOR HELP
the one I want...


BYE BYE
to be commanded to sit down...


HEAVEN AND HELL
Understand me: I was the boy...


MY FACE IN THE MIRROR
what have you done...


MESSAGE
there is a line...


ALERT
televangelists and...


ANNOUNCEMENT
the modern boat is sinking!...


NO MISTAKES
understand me: I am the musician...


FINDING
my eyes if I should lose them...


LOVE POEM
sh! the poet is sleeping...


AFTER
the crowd without its beggar...


AGAINST IMMORTALITY
I don't want to live forever...


ADJUST
At last the flow of water has changed:...


PROTESTANT MEMORY
to keep myself from crying...


DOWNPOUR
the cats come in...


RELIGIOUS SCENE
on the wall of the steakhouse...


ON MY CARPET
he calls it his...


APPEAL
your honors...


SONG OF CONFESSION
my heart a poisoned well...


DRIVING
the black femur...


INTERSECTION
the corner of lost memory...


FIRST COLD DAY
in the back yard...


THEFT OF A LINE FROM SIMIC
dark night...


EXAMINATION
reading the heart's...


ABSURD
to say...


NEVER COMPLETE
bowing like a long-necked bird...


AS HE SHIFTS THEM
In the back pew of...


untitled
this poetry...


END OF THE EIGHTIES
the story takes...


12/31/91
outside in...


IN A CAR
we're in California...


MORNING INCIDENT
Getting up to let the cat in I felt myself growing weak,...


untitled
you wiped out...


4/3/92
a dream...


FAILING TO RECOGNIZE
even as it occurred...


ROCK PAINTING
the dance I did...


REFUSING TO UNDERSTAND
what comes from the dog's mouth...


NIGHTWORK
the secret government...


ODE TO THE FRIENDS OF POETRY
the friends of poetry...


LOCATION
rights and privileges...


SENSE OF AN ENDING
the last breath I...

OUR COURTHOUSE IS BEAUTIFUL


from the southwest corner on a clear April day
the stone steps rising between two old redbuds
their heads bushy with flowers and behind and above them
the blocky white courthouse itself backed by blue sky
the lawn is green daffodils surge the larger trees bud out
the monument to all the soldiers and wars is solid
even if some of the lettering is dissolving and the words go

but my favorite monument is on this side screened by shrubs
a tall square pillar with dried up faucets at its base
"drink and be grateful" "thirsty and ye gave me drink"
put up by the WCTU many decades ago in pure idealism
and desire for new laws--did it have a statue on top?
I can look this up--because we are a people of ideals and laws

we will break our heads or others' on history if it won't
give way to our banging we have sought a prosperity
to end all prosperity and it never ends the empire
of winners and losers the frontier of it is moving outward
leaving us behind searching the strip malls
for a measure of our limitations

how harsh to love a place that seeks ideal laws
and is always moving away from you
I think it is in a desert now building fires
and spreading ideals our heads have forgotten so sore
from the banging but that's OK I can spin in circles
till I stumble like a drunk in front of the WCTU monument
I can watch the republic dissolve in the distance
into empire and be thankful I'm still here
and lost and ready to fall like a city of millions but really
I'm just a dizzy smalltown provincial who loves April
and stone steps and thinks our courthouse is beautiful