from CALLS

Lady, did you see my fugue?
It ran this way,
it said it was finished and I believed it,

it took advantage of my credulity
and ran away, this way,
its nature to flee and mine to follow,

did you, Lady, hear my fugue?
It favors underbrush deep ravines,
hilltops, ruins, crowded streets,

it knows more names than it can touch,
it tries to wrap you in its changes

from CALLS

For there is anger in the human world
and hymn tunes don’t help
need a bolder potion,

ah, I have made a mousetrap for the moon,
now I am him but who cares,
a new slant on every story

but nobody cares,
that leaves me free
for alternate alchemies galore

next year I’ll catch the sun
and pin her to the door —
why not, it’s the house that speaks, not me

from CALLS

Escape the consequences.  Born big
or born small, it is your genius
building you out and out and out

from the thought you are.  I, Paul,
a citizen of Rome,
tell you this, do not conform

to the system, but renew instead
your first mind.
The mind that makes you

from CALLS

...It seems lunacy to me
to spend your days
going up and down the staircase of yourself,

gymnastic delirium.  And to do it,
Valéry cautioned, armed to the teeth,
lunacy.  Better be hollow.

Hollow Earth theory should really mean
there is nothing inside the body,
just a central sun peopling vast emptiness.

from CALLS

how precious the sky is,
it keeps us safe,
the trolls inside me can’t handle light,

only in the parking lot understand
the meaning of the place you’ve been,
mall, market, club, cathedral,

all the cars roasting in the moonlight
for all you know having the same dream.
Be different.  Look up and dissent.

Nothing lasts up there,
the words dissolve in mind
and we are meek water again —

from CALLS

You never know the distances
love must travel
those who dare to speak of love

as if we all know what it means
yet must be told
over and over again

by voices plodding through time
soft as marimbas
in a beastless jungle

from CALLS

No punctuation darling
it’s so overdetermined,
nothing lost between the words

let them breathe themselves.
As in a chapel
no gap between the building and the cup,

you drink the architecture too,