MINE REJECTED POEM, BY ME REJECTED

JUNE A DAY OF MY WRACKING BREATH                                                             

1

The morning dove a remnant

bone-kindred light. He broached the subject with

a shovel in his baffled hands. It  was his duty,

his loading zone. Cornets rang their golden shells.

The giant fell, they

2

dragged him in and kicked. 

3

Cold hands, cold feet, cold in other places sweet.

You  are my cloistered cure, my slutty purse, my alibi.

Open your delicate blouse, lift your linen skirt.

Upend your tongue, unlatch your gated thighs,

release me from my squandered pen 
where beasts go slovenly forgiven. 

4

  

The day its lurk and tremble. The day its lowly creek. 

Everywhere its tongue fitted out with high-toned

brake and halted scrub, a calendar of weed atop a post.

Strangled root, loam-full mouth, hands dug down,

and man that hurried animal clapping at an awn.

It raises our woolly sleeping selves. It goes, it gone.

5

The cold bed is the old bed is the sold bed.

Come find the unmoored Bohemian Cemetery,

a quiescent slurring iron gate near Summit Street

and Prairie Road by drunk-lit Hilltop Lounge.

The beauty of the stone 
that is there at rest and linden 
peace where birds go to feast.

Blackberries and wild 
rose cling there fast.

A MANDATORY SENTENCE

Poetry 
is one 
mistake
madly 
fucking 
another 
into a 
brilliant 
garden 
overrun 
by 
weeds.