from “Soft Targets”

Don’t blame the wisteria for setting off a feeling like freedom a feeling like joy.

We watched the people walking in the open square—

one of them was a specialist in killing, fear was the way of others.

I’ve seen the most extraordinary thing about people, their faces.

Remember the trees in springtime, we ate candy beneath them,

shouts from the playground, static of yellowjackets, your fresh new haircut.

Here’s a tweeted canto, some words for the end of the world—

for when I am forever nothing, and you are.

We’ll lose to gravity dark and pure—

beyond what can be replenished beyond

what can be beyond, a plot of nerves gone under.

But we were lustrous from time to time,

in a garden in a city in a wood melodious with pine.

Blur of speech in the gullet, gale of want in the throat.

O you who want to slaughter us, we’ll be dead soon enough what’s the rush

and this our only world.

Woke up warm tomorrow in a spot of sun.

A flesh. A wild alive all only.

Now bring me a souvenir from the desecrated city,

something tender, something that might bloom.