OK, a couple more of these, then I'll get back to the ghazals.
This is-- well this is a little poem called "Awake."
It was written during a period where
I was centered in by a lot of free floating anxiety.
I was sitting against the couch though, one day,
very much injured after getting out of the hospital,
and the thermostat blew off the wall.
But I was in this sense where I couldn't plug--
well, this is like hygienic psychology,
something like Anne Sexton puts out.
But I was afraid to plug in lights, and so on.
So this is called "Awake."
Everything I was afraid of at the time.
Sort of a mimetic poem hoping to get rid of your fears
by writing them down.
Limp with night fears--
hellborne, wolfbane, Marlowe is daggered,
fire, volts, African vipers, the grizzly
the horses sensed, the rattlesnake by the mailbox--
how he struck at our thrown rocks,
black water, framed by the police, wanton wife.
I'm a bad poet broke and broken at thirty-two,
a renter, shot by mistake, airplanes and trains,
half-mast hardons, a poisoned earth, sun will go out,
car break down in a blizzard, my animals die,
fistfights, alcohol, caskets, the hammerhead shark gliding
under the boat near Loggerhead Key, my soul, my heart,
my brain, my life so interminably struck with an ax
as wet wood splits bluntly, mauled into section
for burning.