It means stand still. It means
stay just as sweet as you are
and where you are and don’t do

A man decides to wear a baby instead of a hat.
Sometimes the baby pisses and shits on his head,

You don’t have to worry.
Your secrets are safe with me.
Your secret of how you construct a beautiful necklace from rainwater.

You realize, even as you start this
that it won’t end up as a sonnet—
and by “sonnet” I don’t mean just a poem

He wakes up dreaming of college girls—
wasting another bogus life. 

The new sun rises in the year’s elevation,
over the low roofs’ perspective.
It reveals the roughness of winter skin

As for that other thing
which comes when the eyelid is glazed
and the wax gleam

Marley was rocking on the transport’s stereo
and the beauty was humming the choruses quietly.
I could see where the lights on the planes of her cheek

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,
in that grey vault. The sea

lumbering           logging           lonesome

             lugging

                                                            muggy weather

numbs my brain