Her body, first found dead, teeming with pills,
was quite alive actually.
Left to itself, it made gurgling commands

 Like God, I get up early, walk out in the cool of the day
to see my handiwork. Oh, Nathaniel, thou hast not done well!
I'll post a sign: Henry Thoreau, poet and pencil-maker,

Through the toxic atmosphere,
   beneath the neon light of a pistachio moon,
         I see my lover's perfect, unkempt
hair, which ends in shapely scalpels

That's true. Often the only amusing thing in a graveyard
                will be the Jewish names.

There they are, in the full sight of everyone, winking from

Among the things that we don't know
about their civilization is the name by which

they called a clay plate such as this, that is

Like antelope bounding across
the wide lawns of Africa
are these flames that leap

So this is why we broke both of his hands:
his Jesus stole from us the face of God.
We saw only the back he had turned to us

Bottom line, it doesn't have one;
or if it does, it's for the souvenir value,
a knickknack marketed under ghastly light

To enter the field without speaking
Of the bad years is to trust what is

Buried, or at least sleeps. All I bring to dirt
Will rise again through green, what survives

Concoct the stories of your own life.
The masks and costumes assumed from infancy.
Make up the true things as well as the lies.