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city lies grey and sopping like a dead rat
    under the slow oily rain.
    Between the lower east side tenements
    the sky is a snotty handkerchief.
    The garbage of poor living slimes the streets.
    You lie on your bed and think
    soon it will be hot and violent,
    then it will be cold and mean.
    You say you feel as empty
    as a popbottle in the street.
    You say you feel full of cold water
    standing like an old horse trough.
    The clock ticks, somewhat wrong,
    the walls crack their dry knuckles.
    Work is only other rooms where people cough,
    only the typewriter clucking like a wrong clock.
    Nobody will turn the soiled water into wine,
    nobody will shout cold Lazarus alive
    but you. You are your own magician.
    Stretch out your hand,
    stretch out your hand and look:
    each finger is a snake of energy,
    a gaggle of craning necks.
    Each electric finger conducts the world.
    Each finger is a bud’s eye opening.
    Each finger is a vulnerable weapon.
    The sun is floating in your belly like a fish.
    Light creaks in your bones.
    You are sleeping with your tail in your mouth.
    Unclench your hands and look.
    Nothing is given us but each other.
    We have nothing to give
    but ourselves.
    We have nothing to take but the time
    that drips, drips anyhow
    leaving a brown stain.
    Open your eyes and your belly.
    Let the sun rise into your chest and burn your throat,
    stretch out your hands and tear the gauzy rain
    that your world can be born from you
    screaming and red.

Bronchitis on the 14th floor
    The air swarms with piranhas
    disguised as snow.
    In the red chair my cat
    licks her buttery paw.
    The pear of my fever has ripened.
    My clogged lungs percolate
    as I simmer in sweet fat
    above the flickering city.
    The shocked limb of Broadway
    jerks spasmodically below.
    Knives flutter into ribs;
    cars collapse into accordions.
    My lungs shine, two lanterns.
    I love the men who stand
    at the foot of my bed,
    whose voices tumble like bears
    over the ceiling, whose hands
    smell of tangerines and medicine.
    Through nights of fire and grit
    streaked with falling claws
    they draw me golden with fever
    borne safely, swiftly forward
    on the galloping sleigh of my bed.

The death of the small commune
    The death of the small commune
    is almost accomplished.
    I find it hard now to believe
    in connection beyond the couple,
    hard as broken bone.
    Time for withdrawal and healing.
    Time for lonely work
    spun out of the torn gut.
    Time for touching turned up earth,
    for trickling seed from the palm,
    thinning the shoots of green herb.
    What we wanted to build
    was a way station for journeying
    to a new world,
    but we could not agree long enough
    to build the second wall,
    could not love long enough
    to move the heavy stone on stone,
    not listen with patience
    to make a good plan,
    we could not agree.
    Nothing remains but a shallow hole,
    nothing remains
    but a hole
    in everything.

The track of the master builder
    Pyramids of flesh sweated pyramids of stone
    as slaves chiseled their stolen lives in rock
    over the gilded chrysalis of dead royal grub.
    The Romans built roads for marching armies
    hacked like swords straight to the horizon.
    Gothic cathedrals: a heaven of winter clouds
    crystallizing as they rained into stone caves,
    choirs of polyphonic light striking chilly slabs
    where nobles with swords on and skinny saints
    lay under the floor.
                                Fortresses, dungeons, keeps,
    moats and bulwarks. Palaces with mirrored halls;
    rooms whose views unfold into each other
    like formal gardens, offer vistas and symmetry.
    Skyscrapers where nobody lives filled with paper.
    Where do the people live and what have they made themselves
    splendid as these towers of glass, these groves of stone?
    The impulse that in 1910 cast banks as temples,
    where now does it build its numinous artifact?
    The ziggurat, the acropolis, the palace of our dream
    whose shape rings in the blood’s cave like belladonna,
    take form in the eagle’s