I began by loving women & the love turned to bitterness. My mother, the bitter, whose bitter lesson–

In Autumn, as in Spring, the sap flows, the sap wishes to race against heartbeats

Unable to bear the uncertainty of the future, we consulted seers, mediums, stock market gurus,

Mute marriages: the ten-ton block of ice obstructing the throat, the heart, the red filter of the liver, the clogged life.

People wish to be settled. Onl… —Thoreau My life has been the instrument for a mouth

With his head full of Shakespeare… and old notions of poetic justice, he was ready with his elegies the day the ocean sailed into the… ‘The sea,’ he wrote, 'is a forgivi…

Spring, rainbows, ordinary miracles about which nothing new can be said. The stars on a clear night

I sit in the black leather chair meditating on the plume of smoke that rises in the air, riffling the pages of my life

Now, moving in, cartons on the flo… the radio playing to bare walls, picture hooks left stranded in the unsoiled squares where pain… and something reminding us

The cover of the book is astral violet, & within it are poems, most of them

Narrowing life because of the fear… narrowing it between the dust mote… narrowing the pink baby between the green-limbed monsters, & the drooling idiots,

When the devil brings him, like a Christmas puppy, examine his downy fur & smell his small paws for the scent of sulphur.

On line at the supermarket waiting for the tally, the blue numerals tattooed on the white skins

What happens when the juice of the… drenches you with its lemony tang, its tart swe… & your whole body stings with… so that your toes sing to your mou…