ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

sequence #
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20

  keyword(s) in poems:

Sequence: 1

NIGHT FEAR
you said fire...


BLUE TWEED WITH FLECKS
Help in unlikely places...


TWELVE USES OF AN ABANDONED SPIDERWEB
it can be removed with a gesture...


FOUR CHAMBERS
links the heart...


LOCUSTS, ETC.
they do eat after all, for the oak...


untitled
came to you...


BIG KILL IN THE SUBURBS
lawns smooth as mint icing...


ADOPTION
"Do you know Carlos?____ What is your relationship to him?"...


MUSING
your red sneakers get bigger...


HOW IS IT
let it be night on the Muscatatuck...


APRIL
empty play...


POLITICAL POEM
The landlord of the opposing house...


WALKING
grasshopper flight...


MEN
The sale barn: sweat, cigars,...


IMPERFECT POEM
I have nothing to say to you now...


!
You poets of the on/off guard...


OFFER
Guy in a blue shirt...


SIDE WALK
Between the streetlamps there are regions of dark. You can't...


WHY WE SAY
good...


STUDY
we took the measure...


LANDSCAPE: WEATHER BECOMING DOLPHY
evidence of high wind...


FROM THE TRAIN
Tom, when the red light blinking...


THE STRANGER
Him, the stranger walking toward you, he's the one you take...


INSTEAD OF EATING
I could take a walk I could...


THEFT OF A LINE FROM ORR
I am older...


PROPHECY
They shall be raised...


AT A FRIEND'S HOUSE
the sirens, the steps on the sidewalk,...


PORTRAIT
He comes up the street,...


MY BIRTHDAY
in the belly of night...


8/27/89
my notebook is heavy...


SHOPPING
It is important to tie your...


I HAVE NOT LOVED ENOUGH
I am so intimate...


REPLY
. . . the kind of woman who lets her ...


MY GIFT
the struggle to maintain...


HE SITS DOWN
M the cripple feels his legs unhinge,...


CLOSE CALL
Uniformed and well-armed bullies...


M THE MURDERER
That man locked in an argument with his wife, the young girl...


EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE AFRAID
The junkie looks in a window...


MY HOUSE
The bushes are growing up around my house,...


NEW TUBES
plugging in the 1955 Gibson amp...


THEFT OF A LINE FROM MONTALE
The obstinate news, the turbulence...


NAKED AGAIN
It's night and I'm naked again...


FOR SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
I wear my pants...


IN MY ILLNESS
my thirst my fever...


BACK WAY HOME
blackness in the center of my eye...


POEM POEM
my words from black...


untitled
her head turned to one side...


THE VISITORS
they come to us mostly...


MY SON
my son never born...


EARLY WINTER
first snow fall...


SLEEPY
the fat snow...


DOWN THE HALL, TURN LEFT
my room with the standing lights...


10/5/89
Here...


WISH
my feet cold in thin shoes...


COMPARED TO WHICH
Truth is an apple...


TELEPHONE
out of the length of your hair...


REQUEST
let me borrow blindness...


SUNDAY
the big stones, the little stones...


POEM OF WATER
I want to be a different kind of water...


THE AFFLICTED
That man has ears but he does not hear...


LOOKING
between two mirrors...

THE TASK


There is a god or goddess for first light and last light, for each
star, each motion of stars, and even for stars not visible. A deity
for remembering and for forgetting, for fire and for water. Farm
animals and wild animals, houses, mountains, storms, and hours have
each his own divinity. And at birth there comes to the birthing room
an individual and obscure god, just for that one child. At death,
the god of decomposition.

We must overthrow them all, each must be proved not to exist, the
evidence questioned until it gives out. And this must be done sud-
denly, not over a period of time, with energy and conviction. The
thousand, the ten thousand, the more-than-countable must be overthrown
and the new explanation given: whether of the one true God, or of
science, or of a trick of language. And see, already, how they begin
to multiply again, and we argue over which has the primacy, thus dis-
tracted from and forgetting our main task: the overthrow, the ar-
guing into dust, the ceaseless and sorrowful effort we give to erasing
the gods we have named.