wet lyric 



Thinking of you 

and your specific name 

a little sphere— 

your glass eye in tall grasses 

acres of shepherding 

instructive pain, continuous 

afternoons of don’t know 

what’s come over me, points 

of light lost on the car 

rhyme-center of a shell 

desiccate or something easier 

animal home for a few days 

inclusive—wobbles 

and threatens to fall from my hand. 


And your name on the grey garden wall 

overwintered, bloody 

volunteer hands scrape back 

your ivy to expose your 

splintering light.

Time makes this one 

harsher, more definite. 

Thinking of you 

and our short lives clinging 

to the grey garden wall 

our time, before 

the lower jaws of 

hungry tourists 

negate us. 

Thinking of you means 

analyzing your structure 

for vulnerabilities. A certain 

attitude toward 

abstraction. A reasonable definition of 

core human concerns. 

And the long rows of 

rare flowering bushes 

survived wintertime 

not like us. And the graves 

in the wall, gathering evidence for 

our model nature left untended 

in dangerous and skating love

in the water. The realm 

Of pure abstraction underlying 

practice. I see it now! The 

reduction of friction to pure 

friction. Early explosions, 

entertainment for children. 

Later, more serious, in-

vading form. I see it 

sometimes, in the hard points 

of light on your face, the 

disappointing human term, 

the rocks on the beach 

Westinghouse. Legionella. 


Thinking of you 

and the points of light 

and the graves in the walls 

and where the water isn’t 

in airless ugly rooms. 

Begin again, this time worse. 

Practice human relations 

the escalator churn.

No possible training for love. 

Only to somehow get under 

your rain-darkened walls 

and hope without breathing and

kiss together the wet grass 

on our odd days off