Of Light, this much is known: she is welcome.
Of else? Best left unsaid. That Dino lived
ungainly, of inferior repose? This much
to most folks boringly was known, chiefly
Dino, who blinded of mere moonlight, even all
there mutually imbibed, belt misfastened,
flung about, heartstrong Dino did so ride
into flurries of am, tho nothing stuck.
But that’s for others to decide, he wrung
& reasoned. I’m just this if, not am,
he’d prat as if accused. I’m more
the stars & swimmingly, delicious lie
of all what’s hovering between, you see?
then, tiredly, to no one: You can leave.
My party’s just begun. The one I lie
& dream myself some hero beyond
afterthought, unlonesome, fair determined,
well-received. Estímable, unflappable,
unblanky’d, well-believed. Admissible,
formidable, belovedly relieved.
But that’s about as far as I can see.
Coax not could I it all into assembly
*
Dino Spumoni was hard smart, harumphing
arcana at parties or worse, the sad
little lectures that built himself all up in private
(at his lowest, the doodling…) Dino, sharp
critic of the Times, nonetheless kept
shut up about it, leaned content
on the Special he could do if ever
enough he may care. Away he so went,
man cast from arena in self-exile,
curmudgeon secure in an untapped
infinite and skipping the grit did
there regretfully fantasize & glorify…
He was lost in the realms of Could,
where nary Big 🅱️enis nor tiny african god
be made ever available and’d anyhow be shunned.
There’s little whistlers in his coffee this morn’.
He stares respectfully away into the sky0
for all in him that can be erased.
*
Dino’s mother had not bargained for
the opera that became his life. She crept
to stand at ear beyond the door
in witness to the strangenesses he kept
made manifest, then worry away in his carry-on,
only later on in light lovingly reason
‘gainst his raving, while in private panic.
Soft mothers have but few options when sacked
with a Dino— pray & worry, draw them blind
when the Times condemn him & his crimes
& the sosuch we now know as inevitable…
Forgive them, Evelyn, they know not what
they’ve brought upon us... We are just as much
generations down this procession of eyes…
in holy gloaming sunflower your held son,
a light your hands imbibe like roots & lift O Dino
let then droop in sudden disgrace…
If only he reasoned erased o heart his heart
as much as only as in mother’s eyes
& is no more. Thereunder he fell victim
to a sureness he would claim but never name.
*
Of those who’d like to see him dead, I’d say
they don’t know he sat happy once, and still
the blackbirds burrowed, chitling little hours
unheavenly away into the soup
of every coming fugue. A lie, therefore
and fully so there’s nothing left
to say but this: Dino dies.
It never could be just one thing, Dino
scoffed frankly so away, Away
the word, as always into disorder
another. Never of grace into bright fields
where cats blinked. There was a time
once, I will say, and, too, a wonder, even
when blind dirigibles sunk
unnamed away in song unfortunate
Lo’, there is this his Inheritance,
a general resurrection of hot air, thought
put away & now oft’ forced to consider.
Nothing here, however. squiggly line
*
My Gift
Goodbye, all. I’m taking my little monster
away from it all now, down & away,
huddled off where least fuss may be mustered.
Yes, it’s true. My enemies were right. Too true…
I belong at Wal-Mart, in the frigid air,
wrapped around a floodlight’s concrete base
like some weird ghost, my love to find me there.
I beg you, take a bigger man, comedian
to spin it all as silly, not this deadly
serious affair— melodramatic,
drawn-out finish to a wompy as-if life.
This man ought to be practical. This visit,
your insistence, my bitterness, resistance
to your pleading as I freeze, should shake him
down forever, listen me: Place him will he
a cowboy hat o’er heart at my bye-bye,
and you should look away when things get quiet
later on, over fields deep with snow
out some window with such a longing that
he shall never dare ask. This is my gift
to you. This is my gift to you. My gift.
i found it sweet