I am listening to Stevie
Wonder. Red is the hue
par excellence. I plan to
do some landscaping

around it. It’s a comic that
I need to see made into a
poster. The subject? Life
as a tree, death as a flower.

Cruelty and fertility live on opposite sides of the world—
but it is a tiny world no more than four feet in circumference.
Uncertain men ripen in the shallows of secret glass
like eolithic stars. They stare at women out walking alone
in a buttercup tangle, who collectively find a pond obscured in
pinwheel moonlight, and dance, killing fish with their fingertips,
while the men return to working crossword puzzles in the dark.

un-

unalone unaloof unaloft undone

(that day I bought waxed linen at a craft shop I raveled
together a string for you which seems the right word
because un-
ravel is to un-make or un-do
and I tied it on your arm so we wouldn’t)

as in: not without, as in (you)

Blood on the cypress
and the wild dogs
have broken through the gate.

The rest being simplification, a pruning
of the citronnier branches, crusts
from bread left for pigeons, thread
and needle unattached. Men in the street
smile to each other; coins, sad faces of,
making music in their pockets.

in the USA, the prayer rugs
are kneeling, are
bleeding.​

Bible verses whispering
amongst themselves.

Wandering out there among the bosons
and fermions, kicking back while others stretched out
before us, seeking to amuse us, to show us
the errors of our ways. Particulations
devoutly to be wished.

Witness a hopeful face when the cancer
has been located. Surrounded, cancer appears

in a window of every other house.
The only victory is to deprive it of a body.

Think of ash trees in a front yard,
budding before their last leaves drop.

Likewise, there is no body, no thought
missing from a chain of thoughts.

A beginning ends what an end begins.

He holds the camera-phone at arm’s length to take the selfie.
A breeze kicks up, the leaves turn, and the air is crystal clear.
He holds the self at arm’s length and the distance grows.
A new breeze twirls a leaf around the self, a leaf around the air.