COGITO, ERGO ABSUM

he is the exile-king of undefined
space. undisputed sovereign of the pith,
he abdicates the fruit and spurns the rind,
this fact-shy felon, master of the myth.

WHEN I CONSIDER

the clarity he woke to spans the west,
a low midmorning cloud obscures the bay
uncommonly, and threatens to ingest
his light. he sees he'll labour through this day.

THOUGHTHAWK

[for claire]

she's learned the winds in order to betray
the winds. today she drifts less frugally,
this unknoxed, disencalvined, no-god's-prey
whose spirals widen centrifugally...

AND SO BEGAN

and so began the rest of his life. here was the coffee-shop table, wristwatch, two measured spoons of sugar and-a-bit-for-the-spirits, broadsheet crossword with the old unsolved seventeen blank blocks: the appurtenances of an older man... breakfast in observatory. four-seater, void of finger-wagging gods, un-get-thee-hence-boyed, small beneath my sight, and a slice of urban roadway which you know begins dead and ends dead and entertains angels between with the old the ancient threats and the uncommon blessings and so began the next of his life observing angels and no angels and the shit of observatory dogs softly softly moleculing away down black sidewalks westward blackriverwards under april showers sooted black to the looned river the full-mooned the ultimate dumb bay drubbed guguletu-sooty-black… newly-coated saint-patron of the peri-urban slice through which pass but once the no-good do-good any-good-therefore-that-i-can-do prophets of prosperity and indolence, the negligéed and the negligent, weird bearded queer seared holed-soled scrabblers for the colonel's secret wingspan's radius the sacred ulna the four-leafed unbroken breastbone of the groundbound trill-streeted orthogonal each-man-in-the-cell-of-himself free range fowl among eagles wheezing stealth-machines through blistered stratospheres… get thee hence, boy, and snag thou eagles for thy trophy-room. snare thou eagles and angels and fairies and tooth-winged mice for thy specimen-cabinet and all manner of wingèd thing and every any beautiful beast hovering sootily over the dark hearth of this your day. be thou. be thou the air about them. be thou, cloaked in its smoggy lining's stealth, the hound of these heavens, sound thou the horn of the heavens' beasts' hound, the leavened breast's unbroken groundbound horn's sound… and so was a beginning, newly-cloaked in the forbidden alternative, newly-armed... in your left hand a neither, in your right the nor… don thou the eagle's harness, boy, and feather your fingers into the tree-rat's sign. resist, new-plumed, the cigaretting of the sun and the winestaining sea.

TOO LATE

and will he buy her urbane optimisms
while the street sells uncut uncouth hope?
has he not traversed the real schisms:
breast and bottle, crow and phalarope?...

ii

one garden for strong men
or two pretty thursdays free
to be remote...

i

civil days,
unfurnished or not:
long july entertainment
from kitchen to bachelor bed