Read Circles on the Water for Free Online Page B

turning green as Swiss hats.
    I asked your advice and worse, took it.
    I was always hauling out the dollar watch of my pride.
    Time after time you toted me home in a wheelbarrow drunk
    with words sudsing, dress rumpled and randomly amorous
    teasing you like an uncle made of poles to hold clotheslines up.
    With my father you constantly wished I had been born
    a boy or a rowboat or a nice wooden chest of drawers.
    In the morning you delivered clanking chronicles of my faults.
    Now you are respectable in Poughkeepsie.
    Every couple of years I call you up
    and your voice thickens with resentment and shame.
    It is all done, it is quiet and still,
    a piece of old cheese too hard to chew.
    I list my own faults now ledger upon ledger
    yet it’s you I cannot forgive who have given me up.
    Are you comfortable in Poughkeepsie with Vassar and IBM?
    Do you stoke up your memory on cold mornings?
    My rector, I make no more apologies,
    I say my dirt and chaos are more loving
    than your cleanliness and I exile no one,
    this smelly hunting dog you sent to the vet’s
    to be put away, baby, put to sleep with all her fleas.
    You murdered me out of your life.
    I do not forgive, I hate it, I am not resigned.
    I will howl at every hydrant for thirty years.

Sojourners
    The rabbit who used to belong to Matthew
    of the Parks Department now lives with Joanne,
    She keeps him in an orange crate
    for shitting raisins in shoes,
    on bathmats, under pianos and in beds.
    He is white, fat and runs like a faucet;
    freed, would scuffle in closetbottoms
    and with a rug for footing
    do jigs, his red idiot eyes flashing.
    In the crate he sulks.
    His sinewy bent legs are stiff.
    I am sorry for animals who scrounge their living from people
    whether scavenging among ashcans and busted tenths
    or tricksy and warm in kitchens:
    it is hard enough for people to stand people
    hard and sharp as the teeth of a saw
    and at least we fuck each other.

Under the grind
    Responsibilities roost on our fingers and toes
    clucking and blinking.
    Yes, they shall get their daily corn
    the minutes of our lives scattered.
    The love which I bear to you
    must be scrubbed and washed and beaten on the rocks.
    We will clean it
    until it smells like yellow soap.
    We will scrub it
    until it is thin and scratchy as an old man’s beard.
    You are turning yourself into the Sensible Machine.
    The beads of old problems rattle in your spine.
    You are congealing your anger
    into a hard green stone you suck and suck,
    beautiful as a tiger’s eye and poisonous.
    You are becoming gnarled.
    You are twisting like an old root inside yourself.
    You will embrace nothing but paper and spines.
    If you open to me, you are afraid
    all your anxieties will burst free
    like crows flying out of a broken safe.
    Where would they fly? on whose head perch?
    How would you catch them again?
    No, I must keep still and mind business.
    I must turn into a clock on a stick.
    Look, my arms are already rough with bark.

Somehow
    We need a private bush
    to sprout in the clash of traffic
    and deep in its thicket
    we will root together.
    There is a jacket on the wall.
    We will leap into the pocket.
    In that fuzzy hollow
    our hairs will knot.
    Behold the pencil sharpener
    on the filing cabinet.
    We will crawl through the hole,
    we will bed upon shavings.
    Zeus came to Danaë
    in a golden shower.
    I shall very carefully
    wash my legs and ears.
    In the form of a memorandum
    you will get through.
    All we need is a closet.
    All we need is a big box.
    All we need is a purse-
    sized bed.

Never-never
    Missing is a pain
    in everyplace
    making a toothache
    out of a day.
    But to miss something
    that never was:
    the longest guilt
    the regret that comes down
    like a fine ash
    year after year
    is the shadow of what
    we did not dare.
    All the days that go out
    like neglected cigarettes,
    the days that dribble away.
    How often does love strike?
    We turn into ghosts
    loitering outside doorways
    we imagined entering.
    In the lovers’ room
    the