disaster hammers
choice
diving into memory’s wreck
reveals god an addict
produce and improve
think and civil war
come you groundbreaker
annual depending flashes of green tumble
the fruiting lift of its time
prisms individual residents
hole up at the corymb mall
the follow-up between younger pews
saint george slays
a spray of arboreal math
saint matt jolts his subjects
this isn’t the god damned lottery
A cruel word at eventide and night zips up like a spider's retreat. Go back to your febrile needlework. We shall not be chasing lightning bugs in the tall grass tonight. Put the whiskey on the shelf and let us speak calmly of money.
Source: Kleinzahler, August. Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club: Poems : 1975-1990. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Print. Page 34.
What I’ve learned about long walks of course
Was taught by the whiskers of a reservation man
Lashing a horse
Sterile tracts of pale kentucky blue grey shale
Don’t take them
Or take them seldom by mail
Stretching out like a dying dog
between
The pickets and Queen Anne
For a loss
They can’t
Be beat
The beat
Across the lawn
The lawn along the limb
Where does nightfall end
And daybreak crown its gin?