Radio 2: Become as Before, He Says

Become as before.
Poor prisoner
of his own war.

Unsteady companion
to my winter-again
hands and feet.

It flashes clear
in the jeering
fogged light

This "later."
That Yemeni dictator,
this Ohio weather

Like estranged boyfriends
who keep on promising
(dismissing) change

_

Aim

These are fresh green fires
that burn so badly
that loop--black

Then their furious circlings
are ideas: the this or that
no this / or this

Mornings, I conduct
baroque curlicues.
I fuck it all at night.

_

Balance

Turned in final grades for a course. (Wincing at the number of students who failed.)

Wrote and then rewrote a CASA report. (Recommending the exact opposite of what I had recommended 12 hours earlier--before the domestic violence happened.)

Endured faculty observation of my class. (Cringing when a student asked me when the grades--so horribly delayed-- would be available.)

I'm so relieved I got all of these done in the last 16 hours. (Knowing I really need to be doing so much more.)

_

Circle

Not one but two.
Not two alone--
two pairs.

Eyes, cheeks, hands,
handfuls
of my hair.

Arms-full of this flesh
this food I've fed,
the meaty

sweet
parasites
of blood and tissue

indiscriminate delight
wreckless rapture
more than multiple

no reason, rhyme
nor small symmetry.
Not even the artifice of sanity.

_

An Opening

These things are always sad.
Plans are urban objects.
I direct the day;
It plays its own way.

Childhood could
take another paragraph.
Right now is any other country,
where you are not the world.

_

Prayer

   Love will save me
             Will love save me
  I will love to save me


   Rise to release
          Ripen to fall, all
  Begin, beguile

                                                     Repeat.

_

Outsider

To be as space
to visit home
glorious globe
this home

to be moving
closer smaller
Country state
county street

to becoming bigger
looming larger
too big to swallow
to love

Too, our kind calls
to the slow heaven
of every
where

_