I'm going to read three more poems, two medium length ones
and one slightly longer one.
"What Is Called Thinking."
"When I surprised the deer, the wind was against me.
So I was given a length of naive time, green time,
free to be the sole witness.
Her blinking in and out of the one ray of light sorting tufts.
Me in the Walkman were the self-reflexive strings
of the 18th century do not die down.
I stood there fast, wanted the arabesques of string,
the nervousness to brand themselves
hard onto her intangible pelt, watch the skin ripple to rid
itself of flies, and the ray lacerate the broad soft back
to its infinite pleasure.
And her take a short step through.
Up in the air, in the transparent, unmoving frenzy,
the mind, oars beat softly in time.
A head sank into a gutter.
Blood started out.
The strings interpreted.
The wind stayed against me.
Mother bent to light the candles, flight
of a blue jay like a struck match.
Then twenty abreast, click.
Then twenty abreast marching through the city.
And all along, the strings, the strings, body
winged, trying to make sure it's a story after all.
Barehanded, they grip the oars.
The lower limb of the aspen shakes.
She looks up.
It is a she.
And there is the angel sitting on the limb now.
There is the angel laughing, sharpening blades.
There is the angel.
Its robes, the mistakes, slapping the taller grasses.
It's sharpening the good ideas forwards,
forwards, forwards, forwards.
She goes back to feeding.
The angel is on her.
He is grinning and slicing the air all around him.
He is testing the blade.
The air is blue.
When I look again, it's an AK-47, then it's a saber.
Look, it's a spinning wheel, a printing press.
No, it's a run of celluloid in his right hand.
He's waving it.
It's 78 frames of some story, then
it's the simple blade again.
How can the deer let him ride her?
The click is my tape going into reverse play.
The oboe, the thinking it's for something, that sadness,
sluffing over the God, tree deer blade.
Is it going to braid them up right this time?
The good elegy for being so sorry.
If I could whip her with the strings,
if I could stab her with the rising sound of violins,
but the oars continue above us.
We are so small.
And the angel is floating above.
And the angel is knifing itself to make the laughter flow.
Although it's breeze-rustle in the honeyed aspen,
over and over, the long blade going into the windy robes,
sometimes crossing through, sometimes
staying inside a while.
Sometimes, straight through the throat, then up the nose.
His folate woundedness laughing, lacerating the stillness
with the silent laughter.
As the breeze picks up down to the left,
and she looks up peering out.
And the wind begins to change her way.
The angel wild now on the grasses.
The tree above her wholly hung with knives, hundreds clacking.
Until I want them all to fall on her at once, dozens
into the lowered neck, the saddle,
the wind changing round altogether now.
Until he gives it to me, the good angel, since I
thought of it.
And she turns to me here now.
And all the blades fall suddenly into all parts of me,
giving me my human shape.
History.
A dress rustles on the spiral staircase.
I lay my forehead into the silver hands."
[APPLAUSE]