So long I said my friends when next you hound me


like a man in love

missing fingers

I will raise my gloves


a man who beat the schadenfreude out of the storm before the storm beat me


my friends like a hook

like a verse

my friends like a chorus stay with me


if I say it was like beating the dust from a rug with a rolling pin will you hound me




a voice like      first you must pass


a voice like Charlie sang it


first you must pass a woman


like Charlie sang it must pass


a woman her eyes like the eyes


must have sang it a woman


her eyes like the eyes of a dog


must pass Charlie sang it a voice


like the eyes of a dog when it cries


must have sang it a voice


when it cries to be let out of doors


was it the chorus a voice like


first you must pass a woman


Charlie was it the verse


her eyes like the eyes of a dog


when it cries Charlie a voice


when it cries to be let out of doors


was it mine you must pass


a woman her eyes like the eyes of a dog when it cries to be let out of doors




And Camus has been dead


who wrote


this very heart of mine which will forever remain indefinable to me


two years dead


wrote Ted Berrigan in the winter of nineteen sixty-two to his wife


Already my friends I can taste


the flour on her fingers already


I feel the sun will not debut


You make my blunders Ted you say love so often the word is a slipknot you thrash

          inside it the knot clenches


that I loved you before my life


that I loved you in Pat and Anne and in Dick


And Alex back home in the city his hands at his eyelids like two broken dials should I

          take them apart


he wonders and start


cutting wires




or I am the trees in Brueghel

do you know the trees


everything I have to say about working my way to your heart I say with my branches


or I am the crow in Brueghel

do you know the crow


it is good the lord will die soon I say to my friends and they fly from the breaking wheel


or I am the bride in Brueghel

have you seen the bride


put on your poor shoes and rip off the door have you seen my paper crown it is beautiful


or I am the hounds in Brueghel

do you know the hounds


here is the single fox I have killed will you wear it around your shoulders are you ashamed


or I am the beggar in Brueghel

do you know the beggar


gladly I will wash my face in the dirt to inscribe my name in this stone so long as you rule it


or I am the cow in Brueghel

do you know the cow


my eyes are black and isinglass I trample in this sentence one hoof further into madness


or I am the child in Brueghel

do you know the child


this bag over my head I reach to touch among the screaming another who will wear this bag





my friends like a hook my hounds like the voice of Charlie Feathers stay with me


like a man in love


how will I tell you tonight

tonight the years below me the fire turned the city a bed of coals we began our ascent


and a man on his one good hand


did not wish the fire fiction


my friends like a verse like the flour already I can taste it on her fingers stay with me


like a man in love


how will I tell her today

today my life before me the fire turned your city a bed of coals I begin my descent


and a man on his one good hand


wishes the fire stay with me





past the motherless one the tyrant the one who put fear in the hounds


past the ambushed one the fortunate one the only words she knew I will


past the slated one is she bathing her boys in the false dawn is she thirsty


past the gaptooth one stuck forever in a theater in a blackout in winter


past the disappeared the stalked one wringing spoiled wine from a lung


past the shatterproof one in her breast the stakes of how many settlers


past the looted one the ransacked one her mouth like a sucked-out rind


past the singed one reading fiction so long as it ended with ships sunk


past the fatherless one she burned off her clothes the body was soldered


past the weathered one like a hand into camphor she passed through life


past the firebrand the cussed one knocking out teeth while she bucked


past the one bred of colts her emptiest face evicted a bird from the aerie


past the childless one she said in the suite my womb it is ash it smolders


past the breeched one her allegiance to nothing unless you count nothing


past the perdition the bitten one the one who fed hounds from her hand


past the one in refusal of death I will die a face burned into your tongue


past the mother in sackcloth the one unbidden her only lesson a blunder


          singing first you must pass




like a man in love


I gut the night I am answerless I flail in my redness toward you like a nerve


son of no man who cancels himself to hazard himself through me


son of no woman who strikes herself from a sentence no man can write


I write on god’s face while he sleeps I write canceled I box his ears and I wake him


lord of nothing my tie see is houndstooth the knot see is windsor I gut the night toward

          my love like a run in her stockings


daughter of no man worth only his silence to what he can’t speak


daughter of no woman who boxed up her bones and forgot them like toothpicks


like a man in love


do not forget me if I stand at your door and occur and end and occur


do not forget me I’m the storm in Brueghel do you know the storm I break toward you


my friends will you howl if the sun does not debut


my friends will you hound me like a hook in my mouth stay with me


do not forget me say he ate one crumb of this woman’s name and was king


do not forget me say and then my friend he outlawed kings


like a man in love


fugitive when you call me fugitive


say so to say flight


say so to say we have fled our gasoline towns


say so to say fugitive our flight presses as far as you can throw a stone


and fugitive the earth is everywhere stones


like a man in love


is everywhere a heart indefinable to me and a fire that isn’t fiction


is everywhere my friends their hands dismantling themselves like matryoshkas


is everywhere Charlie sang it convincing myself your face exists where it isn’t


is everywhere do not say love do not pull the word like a hair from your tongue


like a man in love


they will hound you fugitive they will say where is your band of white silver


fugitive where is his name you took like a punch


to which like a woman in love will you say I am wearing it see my ring is a ring of flour

          already he can taste it on my finger


like a man in love


in the myth I break like your voice when you sing like a hook stay with me


in my life I died a man no man could answer I gutted the night


like a man in love


I gutted the night I sewed your name through it to stay its insides from falling