epigram

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronn
tonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohooho
ordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early
in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy.

James Joyce, Finnegan's Wake (1939).

letter to a murderer

Drifting is difficult because

directly into the face of winds which feel polar,

coming at me from out of the north

where blood is a rare compass.

Driving country roads I pull

onto the gravel shoulders the better to admire barns,

but it is the fallen barns that present themselves
most powerfully to me.

Some quality they possess

in their disintegrating marrow.

Perhaps they conduct themselves out of love. Or lack of love.
Where seas go forth

we know intermittently. As light is in that plasma

of unborder where night ends

and day blah blah blahs.
Crossing these off my list

an actual list scrawled in
the last blank page of some cheap novel

or elsewhere

in the mind existing in the form of a sub-cellular map.
You mean almost nothing to me

in that way that nightmares
about my mouth filling suddenly with broken teeth do.
Here is your palm of cinder.