What Matters Is Weaving

what if the dozen homes I owned

now lie abandoned, ruins overrun

first by nameless faceless homeless

fruitatarians, later by termites & vines

eagles & scorpions, rattlers & bats

picture the splinters, cracks, the mold

the odor, mounds of feces & bones

gardens wild, asphalt guttered

fences sprung & toppled — end of

end of hegemonic gains

here in the thirteenth home I own

a rubbled ruin when I came, now safer

warmer, it’s I who abide, further

travel, spending, aims abandoned

energy overrun by footprints & age

yet every day I spring from my bed

listen & look around, brew my favorite

tea, explore inside, wander outside

listen & look, conjugate, mutate

interweave what’s here, what waits

Chatting with Allen Ginsberg

ag: I place my hand before my beard with awe

cp: finger my chin hairs, curly, soft, blond

ag: and stare through open-uncurtained window

cp: watch the cat step across the sill

ag: rooftop rose-blue sky thru

cp: fractaled lichened trees

ag: which small dawn clouds ride

cp: radiant blue sky

ag: rattle against the pane

cp: gravel rubbled across the lawn

ag: lying on a thick carpet matted floor

cp: castings of the late night snow plow

ag: at last in repose on pillows my knees

cp: disappear in warmth, the snow

ag: bent beneath brown himalayan blanket, soft —

cp: parade of boot- & footprints melting —

ag: fingers atremble to pen, cramp

cp: hands agrip on garden rake, light

ag: pressure diddling the page white

cp: touch coaxing the stones loose

ag: San Francisco notebook —

cp: Vermont false spring

Meeting

they say Emily doesn’t read Walt

Holland tells her he’s disgraceful

does that stop her?

I will go to the bank by the wood & become undisguised & naked.

Emily doesn’t speak in that register

A few light kisses . . . a few embraces . . . a reaching round of arms.

does she suspect 

he is her lone contemporary

& might dilute her?

Always a knit of identity . . . Who need be afraid of the merge?

Walt plays the social game

Emily has no such innocence

enslaved by patriarchy, by gender

she invents her freedom

Between My Country — and the Others —

There is a Sea —

But Flowers — negotiate between us — 

As Ministry.

Pollak claims Walt never heard of Emily

why should we believe that?

You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Walt imagines her lusting after his twenty-eight young men

he doesn’t know of Austin, of Susan

Dropped — my fate — a timid Pebble —

In thy bolder Sea —

Prove — me — Sweet — if I regret it —

Prove Myself — of Thee —

no one unmasks Emily’s longings

Afraid! Of whom am I afraid?

Not Death — for who is He? . . .

Of Life? Twere odd I fear a thing

That comprehendeth me

Walt boasts, so much I this & I that

Emily’s humility sings