The barn is warm, come inside, lie down,
sleep. Here, no sheep ever fails

If you cannot make a living from your art,
double the art, double any part

(but not the whole)

Hunkered, totally

spaced, in the half-open door of the fridge
with my trifocals fogging, scanning the five

The Lord wants me to go to Florida.
I shall cross the border with the mercury thieves,
as foretold in the faxes and prophecies,

Each swallow scalds his throat, the lesions
on his larynx burn. There's nothing
to eat or drink but air. Skin

The varnished, waxed, mahogany veneer of the table-top
Where he sat, unable to write truthfully of what truth was,
Shone back at him, uninvitingly showing only his own

I do not make phone calls, talk to anyone,
      let alone write. Even this letter
is mailed reluctantly. I move without cause,

The traveler struggles through a wood. He is lost.
The traveler is at home. He never left.
He seeks his way on the conflicting trails,

Eugene would say, "Someone died . Time to redecorate."
Everything we owned was secondhand.
We needed to move. We were running out of space.

Winter was the ravaging in the scarified
Ghost garden, a freak of letters crossing down a rare

Path bleak with poplars. The yew were a crewel