"These are my Strangers," said Merle Haggard
to the crowd. The trip meant west.
But somehow when things got bad,
they left and I stayed. There were big plans
that came to nothing but more plans. I quit
and I stayed anyway, buttonholing the past
as if someone would ask me to the party
with people that I said I despised
because their hair was too perfect
or they were hippies too late or something.

Thinking more clearly or more discipline
might help: a project. But doing something
with your memory is disgusting, sexual brick,
memory fucking like money, which circle,
which guise of the love boat is this?
I like noise, but it makes me feel guilty:
any patter of dots could be made
to mean something. I don't want
the whole history. I want mercy.

I play second violin
in the South Orange Community Choir.
Music doesn't need me to be
any better than I am: I play as well
as I have to. The border is a circle,
already the farthest away is inside.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A Lover's Question

1

How will I get you into this or me
out? I have the motive; I have the
opportunity; who'll whisper me a
method? I lost the wind: becalmed, limp
canvas under the railroad bridge, next to the gas
tanks, scraping a strange memory—a smell of
chemicals mixed with salt marsh along the
Hackensack River; deformed minnows skipping
in yellow mud; a despair we have already
made the wrong choice—a memory that rose
in my heart so despite planning for
different contingencies everything hurt
and I knew I could never move ahead
or get my old life back again. In my heart
I knew I had done so much wrong claiming love,
that if there was a hell I would go there and
perhaps my sentence was already carried
out so that my body walked this world
while my soul burned or froze in the
next. I feel ice and guilty fever already:
nerves blaze and a strange coldness
covers me so that all I touch seems far away
and I caught inside my body with thoughts and
thoughts and thoughts and thoughts.

2
 

My thoughts twist like rope stairs in the wind as
I seek forgiveness without giving anything up. God
sees our hearts. I can face tenderness even
less easily than I can be tender. The longer I miss
someone the more real they are to me until the memory
is practically human and so am I. By the time
I see the light, the star is gone. Do you believe
that? Do you believe that  if we see it, it is
already gone? Is my love that far away? How
can I be said to be a lover if I have no
heart? Answer me that. Dream crusts the shore. Hisss
ssss. Queasy dayglo hides color in sunlight. Towers
fall in sleet while the fool smiling steps into a dry
well. Such stupidity, risking all, falling into a pit of
silverfish, questing in the cellar. Like the lyricist
Yip Harburg, I fear Kansas. I dream in black and
white, and colorize, and find corn frightening instead
of tears or being ravished by a touch. A declaration of
love can take my breath away once and then the
memory of it stays and what, have I read that story?

3

How can I stop these lies? I have told so many
there is a answer where my heart used to be. I
have filled my eyes until I could burst and yet
I want no consequences and so am free
without a single belief, playing a stripped
down, guitar-based music which says I am
proud, alone, American, as I see myself in a
small cement box lit by an off white glare with
a suggestion of green, my cell not exactly
what I thought losing it would be, not dreams
walking in the cafeteria or acid flashbacks, but
just me. I left here years ago, I thought.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Some Woodpeckers
 

Dumping coffee grounds in backyard compost pile   I stare
upside down at a noise in a dead tree   woodpecker hairy or
downy   hard to tell upside down   sunny day   abandoned
house behind mine against flat blue sky   after freak April
cold and wind froze the daffodils     a new story
grid of streets and plywood on windows are
one sentence   upside down woodpecker in dead tree another
woodpecker and plywood still another   why tell you about
it?    as if I weren't a fraud    a table rapper    with
accomplice in the next room instead of the next world
of course I had someone in mind    you made it work for me
I could have called you from anywhere   except since
you were actually were at the party  I didn't have to
I guess I found you as I needed you   and as I might
want you   and I guess you called me also since we both
were from the world if not exactly this one   or exactly
this one   my voice from the void   you heard it
and there you were   the most important thing
that couldn't be left out of the landscape once
you gave me a way to make it all make sense   and if
it didn't have to be you then the world disappears into
the world we know and the details with which we cope
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Northwest Passage
 

A rooster   a cardinal's red arrow   a migration
of geese or spotted salamanders   (the geese
may be misleading in a warm winter   may never
have gone anywhere)  the invisible minute things
began again this year   this very second this very minute
this very hour   that is as large or long as I can imagine
things beginning    it makes sense to begin in spring
not when things start to freeze   to begin at dawn
so that there is enough light   and to give thanks
whether to anything or anyone or not   just so
to believe that it might happen tomorrow
as unlikely as it seems in fading light and bare trees
that you are never sure of until they bloom or the city
takes them down and grinds them into wood chips

I got tired of hearing it   but the thing about Mao
and the single step and the journey of a thousand
miles is that we know he did get somewhere   
that he did escape      but which direction?
and when do you start counting?  Do you
figure cars in minutes instead of distance?

I enter imagining the city on a slant
time on the diagonal     limp circle deflated
some indirect edge of street and brick
the back of that factory at a rail side
the green light hanging from a cross
of wires   afraid it may fall in the wind
it dances   the street has only one side
left    it goes up    opaque stores
someone sleeping there   the movie
theater is now city hall   or is it a bank?

brick   bay doors closed   the rails hardly
rusty   dried weeds just about the ties
a train must have come here last year
green and brown glass shine in the
slag of the old roadbed   I feel faintly
ill   shaky   the ground starts to roll
out from the car if I don't pay
attention   if I concentrate I'm fine
concentrate    concentrate   is it safe
around here?  I wonder as I drive
under a highway bridge   over another
bridge over the old railroad yard
now I'm in the city    I guess
as soon as I cross the bridge

the city I want to see is in pieces   or I can
only see the city in pieces   is that because
of the way I am?   the way things are?   or
that I am the way things are?   a flower that
might be carved or maybe it was moulded
a guitar or drummer hiding in an apartment
a garden between tenements   a Syrian
fraternal lodge upstairs in south Paterson
anyone could pass in or out and never understand
or not understand   what I called from memory
to complete the memorial   that doesn't help
anyone   is there a reverse setting   not to see
the future but to imagine one filled with
enough stuff to really be the future    would
that help?   stop remembering the old market
someone only told you what to remember anyway

the parking garage at the hospital is too
small so that I drive down spirals in
squares    wet light weighted with not
enough light and too much ceiling   it drips
it smells   you think about the smell
on the way to the elevator   the door
the stairs scare you somehow   so narrow
more than being closed in or locked out
it is getting through a door    opening the door
to the stairs    hand on the door and there
the stairs and some sort of light are   that's
scary   the elevator    you stand back    and
a door opens   it's the other end of the trip
that's frightening in the elevator   anyway
you walk inside with evil thoughts   shame
wishing to be better   and imagining the worst
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Saturday
 

                                1
here in the back of my throat
a nervous taste does not seem right
I am uneasy   someone is out there
I was warned to look out for   a figure
like a film smeared on glass   near
and distant   I watched   a boy raised
now grown   limned adult
alone   where others strode green
as money   voiced   uncoded   I was dumb
wished to be wise   invisible   proud
and so began
 

                               2
money is every mirror   measures effort
I started with food   went to breakfast
on the way to work   a diner   threaded
a traffic circle there   Saturday mill workers
BENDIX blinked a sign   DINER!   a neon chicken
whirred cooked into a basket   I knew how much
I could get   how long I could stay there
I had an omelet   a  cup of coffee   counted
the truck drivers   two   shirts green
waitresses   one then two   uniforms
white   light tubes in groups of four and
three   purple   other things you would know
patterns gathered   I'm sure   but desire
made me smart a second   forgot them
studied the waitress reflected   her legs
her breasts in a polished refrigerator   I was
embarrassed   "never mind"   I trilled
to someone I knew from work   "they'll win
next year"   the door handle broke off my car
when I grabbed it   now was not the time
for a poem   I was not prepared to remove myself
the car would not start   it was already ten
 

                                    3
the historical verb?   huh?   describe what goes?
tell each one else who does this job
some noise reaches me   a flaw in my argument
in any argument   is what I seek   I will follow that
humble trance   duty   pain   soap   drugs   I argue
beyond work   who am I among these?   a jerk
late   a friend punched me in   a room   oblong   polite
open   light washed pale walls   lots of plants
wires hung like snakes or vines   men summer suits
scrolled through words on blue screens   checked spelling
words of what was on and what was off   I was lucky
hundreds just like me applied   I was chosen
erased   rephrased constantly   of course the doors
flew open   screens flickered   machines broke down
files were lost   numbers stolen   games played
on company time until caught   some new system installed
I waited for lunch   two breaks a day
 

                                       4
the faster they make me go the more I fall
in love   the few minutes between dinner
and sleep   no one need discover again the
violet street   car cheating stop sign   orange
falling bowl to linoleum   poisoned slumber   did I
leave the car lights on again?   too homely
too often seen   wish to be beautiful   apart   noticed
am refused   highway will be clogged again Monday
some on holiday   not me   I'll have to go in or lose money
ride with you   neither of us made clear by the other
but what I know is you   I love   linked by work
by words   we live   and now I sleep
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Paterson Photograph
 
 

"In 1791 Alexander Hamilton founded the Society for Useful Manufactures,
selecting the Great Falls of [the] Passaic River as the site for the industrial city Paterson."
-New Jersey: A Guide to Its Past & Present,  Federal Writers Project

Me silly in tweed coat and baseball cap
against the railing and wire mesh
of the walkway. The river is yellow-brown
before the drop over a broken jaw of rock,
the air strangely white, as the river rises back on itself.

The camera cropped the aluminum-sided
two-floor frames and three deckers
on Wayne and Maple Avenues, power plant,
parking lot off of McBride. Missing also
is the poison smell, growl and hiss,
shout of pressure, water pulled in a pivot.

What Hamilton saw, I don't need to.
My apartment is cold, but my clothes warm.
But who can just look? Hamilton, Williams—
Paterson sleeping—John Reed, Wobblies
in Madison  Sq. Garden, Barnert Synagogue bake sale,
mills closed—burned, cut to lofts or condos. Thinking
about thinking—maybe for a fraction we watched,
ignoring silk or cotton, while what we wore
hung on us, forgotten like a second skin.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

NJ Historical Society

                                1

Desire the echo of need lags behind
how far? Can desire breed the substance
of need, the shape growing fainter
in each reflecting wave? Or is it
a threadbare suit that will not cover,
disguise, reveal or protect --  just hang
in some parody of meaning, some half of fashion?

The future here is real estate -- a parcel
of bricks, pieces of mortar, chain link fence
surrounding nothing. How long can we live
like this, making adjustments in ourselves
to fit what we recall. How long will imagination
keep us, fill in the missing spaces as our order recedes?

                                     2

Junkies sit on the stoops of this half-burned street --
destroyed in everyday disturbance -- or stand still
like herons in a pool. They watch, talk slowly,
laugh slowly, watch. This moment is a picture of human nature,
always with us, etc., but if that's so, why do the junkies
drain themselves, exchange blood for junk, to match
the slowing tock of the great clockworks, the tick
of this city? How could it be easier to remake ourselves
than our created world?

                                     3

The door was locked at the Historical Society,
so we knocked. A guard came to the door, looked out
from a dark hall. "You here to see the museum,"
he asked. We said yes. "Just stand there a minute
while I turn on the lights." We could hear him moving
from room to room, see the lights come on one
after another. There were four rooms downstairs.
One was walls of paper mache relief maps.
Another was just old chairs. The third had two empty cases
and a jukebox that played wax cylinders for a nickel.
The main room was nearly dark with a concession stand
and a carpet running to a flight of stairs. We went
through each room: felt the maps, played the cylinders,
bought an ashtray, didn't sit in the chairs.
Then we climbed the carpet, came to a room
with a librarian like a guardian at an Egyptian tomb
where everything the departed will need is provided.
She looked surprised to see us among her books, each book
a sigh. "Sign the register," she said. "Then we can get
some money." We got depressed, worried about the car,
went to check it. It was still there. We drove to Belleville
for pizza, knowing we were there, the car was there
and what we wanted to find out was there, but we
were not together.