Status Updates From The Selected Levis

Heaven was neither the light nor was it the air, & if it took a physical form
It was splintered lumber no one could build anything with.

We'd better be getting on our way soon, sweet Nothing.

The leaves were becoming only what they had to be—

That was the day I decided I would never work.
It felt like a conversion. Play was sacred.

"Don't you come near me motherfucker"

These inquiries because you are not there, have become simply, you, white paper
Desiring the darkening effects of ink until, late at night, it is black trees,
White snow.

I swear I'd give the whole thing up for you.

I stood there looking at it a long time.
A man whose only politics was rage.

At sea I woke in chills, I shivered in the wake of your pleasure.

... but the world is one short,
An odd numger,

Out of respect for someone missing,
I have to say

This isn't the whole story
The fact is, I was still in love.
My father died, & I was still in love.
~ "In the City of Light"

Then go one step further,
And say a name is a home,
As remote & as intimate.

There are times, hiking with my wife past
Abandoned orchards of freckled apples & patches of sunlight
In New Hampshire, or holding her closely against me at night
Untile she sleeps, when nothing else matters,

And then I gave those eyes
Everything they asked,
Which was nothing.

She stands out on the sidewalk and lets the heat
Pour through her, and lets the muscles of her heart
Learn what the sun can do.

The men who killed poetry
Hated silence ... Now they have plenty.>

But in the long journey away from my father,
I took only his silences, his indifference
To misfortune, rain, stones, music, and grief.
Now, I can sleep beside this road
If I have to,