River inside the river: three lyric sequences

To Speak

To See

To Write

To Name

The Parade

To Noun

To Verb

Eve

To Do

To Feel

To Long

To No/To Know

To Say

To Choose

To Smell

To Fuck

To Come

To Embrace

To Go

To Stray

To Leave

To Squint

Departure

To Weep

To Notice

To Journey

Still

To Hope

When

Close

To Love

To Understand

To Say/To Save

Sometimes

Now

To Build

The City of Poetry

It would have erased everything human

Some say Adam and Eve

Bored in grade school

I killed my younger brother

Eighteen and a volunteer

Who needs plaques

A thousand roads lead to it ... Until I heard Neruda read

Tang of salt in the walls

You're invited to visit

From the outside, these row houses

So many brought here by water

There's only one river

Love overwhelms us

It's not all spun sugar and gossamer

Consider Francois Villon

Coleridge was only a little stoned

From a distance

Not everyone in the city

In the middle of my life

Sometimes, the river

White flag

"0, thou opening 0 ... "

Some as ephemeral

Whenever its enemies besiege it ... Neglected for decades Sometimes, entering

That poem I call

I sat on the bank of a pond

The life I live

As I say aloud the opening line

River Inside the River

As an anthologist might gather

The Book said we were mortal

Knowing life grinds us

Like fireflies hovering

Each of us standing at a particular

Yearning for permanence, and who wouldn't?

Bald, high-domed Taoist sage

Most poems

"Why not a brief respite?"

Note to self: remember

Not to lead us away

Cat curled asleep

That surplus

100

No tome so obscure

Today a letter arrived

So many to choose from

I know now the beloved

Memorize those lines you love

When the coffin closed at last

Set beside the world's

Hardening the heart

Sorrow is good

First, there was shatter

That song on the jukebox

Intimacy not yet

The beloved came

Lucky poets us

Lead of the heart

He was hidden, then

Dancing to her song

The old philosopher, dying

Doesn't the world demand

If you believe Shakespeare's

Sun-drenched, late

Time is a wound that can't

River inside the river