(1984)

Not every conversation is worth having. The last generation will believe the heart

                                    made for a regressive species. I imagine you already,

                        incapable of grieving. Grief doesn't come

            as easy as losing things. Thing will be

                                                            the most accurate word in our vocabulary.

                                    Accuracy is not the same as being exact, nor is it precise

            in judgement. I flirted quite carelessly with meaning. Now when I breathe,

I feel trapped by old song. In that, you are lucky. No shine. All husks & parched

prongs. Silence will lie for me. Hiss it were a great horse & walks

            beside her. & how the days & I'd talk to ourselves

in each other. O, brotherly guardian of the fields.

            & my beasts, my broken seals. & some we cursed invasive.

Now I believe bitter herbs are best eaten by the spoonful.

            No more stealing

                        soup under cover. No sleeping crows in lovers. No engine to brothel,

                        no stool pigeons left inside a floor. No linoleum glow on foam radio.

                        Nowhere to go. I carry you in me like ramshackle emergency warning.

                        No more genteel hitmen, no more revelation. Language will be a solitary

                                    pursuit when trying for truth only. Our mouths never stop ringing.

                        Only dirt. & dirt before the egg & the chicken

            while elegies must’ve come before odes,

though both reveal the teeth & bones of what made a thing

            a thing. Flossing regularly felt as lavish as sowing dead fields

& getting to the bottom of things never gets to what’s really eating you.

There were men with foolish attachments to fixed gears & many fancies

            like this one, only we didn't know

                        the moment everything caught fire

                                    had happened long before

the one conversation that mattered most.

No lucky bone here, the things we loved

& despised & belittled & held too cheaply.

How our bleating could not wrap around

crackling asphalt that had to put itself out.

Ears & more lies fused to ground. & now

                                    so much light with the days running out.

                        Listen. Eggs won’t ever expire if you could boil them long enough.

                        Head-banging was the best way to kill a headache. Hair metal since

                        you might die in my arms tonight when once I shared with strangers

                        because I'd get full quickly. Was still a sort of giving. A spoonful is not

                        as good as peeling thin skin & mucking up the hands. What I'd give

                        to save the pits & plant them. Still a sort of grieving. Because dirt

                        before the chicken & the eggs, & what really led to this was not

                        a misunderstanding. There was awareness of which I am suspicious,

                        of those who unpieced & damned & thinged your equus into elegy.

                                                                        & you too will have to fight them

                                                off alone & it will not be a matter of accuracy.

                        There will be light. & dirt. & you,

suspicious of too much gaving it'd take to grieve.

You'd want to bury them in all the things

                        they took from you

& me. Watch them blight & go

to seed. Let them heal

by becoming

nothing. Repeat. Repeat,

the bitter horses

best eaten for eternity.

& the turn this has taken—

                                                             No.

Not everything is a conversation.