The summer everyone left for the moon
even those yet to be born. And the dead
who can’t vacation here but met us all there
by the veil between worlds. The number one song
in America was “In the Year 2525”
because who has ever…

We pull off
to a road shack
in Massachusetts
to watch men walk
on the moon. We did   
the same thing
for three two one
blast off, and now
we watch the same men   
bounce in and out
of craters. I want
a Coke and a hamburger.
Because the men
are walking on…

What did he do except lie
under a pear tree, wrapped in
a great cloak, and meditate
on the heavenly bodies?
Venerable, the good people of Baltimore
whispered, shocked and more than
a little afraid. After all it was said
he took to strong drink.
Why else would…

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin … in the dust, in the cool tombs.
And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes ……

The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,
And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy;
For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects’ faith doth ebb,
Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom…

It only takes one night with the wind on its knees
to imagine Carl Sandburg unfolding
a map of Chicago, puzzled, then walking the wrong way.
The lines on his face are hard to read. I alternate
between the tv, where a plastic surgeon…

I
honey people murder mercy U.S.A.   
the milkland turn to monsters teach   
to kill to violate pull down destroy   
the weakly freedom growing fruit   
from being born
America
tomorrow yesterday rip rape   
exacerbate despoil disfigure   
crazy running threat the   
deadly thrall
appall belief dispel
the wildlife burn the breast   
the onward tongue
the outward…

Do nothing and everything will be done,   
that’s what Mr. Lao Tzu said, who walked   
around talking 2,500 years ago and   
now his books practically grow on trees   
they’re so popular and if he were   
alive today beautiful women would
rush up to…

Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all,
That which is gendered in the wilderness
From lonely prairies and God’s tenderness.
Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream,
Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream,
Whose spirit hoof-beats…

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The labor of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid   
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of…

Seven dog-days we let pass
Naming Queens in Glenmacnass,
All the rare and royal names
Wormy sheepskin yet retains,
Etain, Helen, Maeve, and Fand,
Golden Deirdre’s tender hand,
Bert, the big-foot, sung by Villon,
Cassandra, Ronsard found in Lyon.
Queens…

Our general was elsewhere, but we drowned.
While he rested, he shipped us home
with the bulk of  his spoils
that had weighed his army down.
The thrashing storm
that caught us cracked the hulls
and made us offerings to the sea floor — 
a rain of statues,…

Facing the wind of the avenues
one spring evening in New York,
I wore under my thin jacket
a sweater given me by the wife
of a genial Manchurian.
The warmth in that sweater changed
the indifferent city block by block.
The buildings were mountains
that fled as…

              Anger is the other person inside
                            mi garganta, my throat.
                     …