Count your grey hairs
Count your chigger bites
Count your pills
Count the times the phone rings
Count your T cells
Count your mosquito bites
Count the days since your last menses
Count the chickens you’ve eaten
Count your cankers
Count the storm candles
Count your stitches
Count your broken bones
Count the flies you killed before noon ‚
Mack trapped a spider
Kept in a pepper jar
He named her Iris
Caught roaches to feed her
He loved Iris
When Iris died
He wrote her a letter ‚
Black is the Color
Of that big old ugly hole
Of 77% of the inmates in Angola
Of your true love’s hair
Of 66% of the inmates in St. Gabriel
Of the executioner’s corduroy hood
hung on an ice hook
in the tool shed
away from the kids ‚
Dear Child of God,
If you will allow me time. To make a dove. I will spend it
well. A half success is more than can be hoped for. And
turning on the hope machine is dangerous to contemplate First.
I have to find a solid bottom. Where the scum gets hard and
the scutwork starts. One requires ideal tools: a huge suitcase
of love a set of de-iced wings the ghost of a flea
Music intermittent or ongoing. Here. One exits the forest
of men and women. Here. One re-dreams the big blown dream
of socialism. Deep in the suckhole. Where Lou Vindie kept
her hammer. Under her pillow. Like a wedge of wedding cake.
Working from my best memory. Of a bird I first saw nesting.
