Head Down

I lay nude next to
My pregnant wife
With you inside her
With your head down

You hiccup and she
Guides my hand down
To your head and to her
Hair

There, I find the subtle
Movements of your head
Bobbing against her
Bladder and there

I feel you, my son
Months before you are
Born, and like always
Your mother is between us.

Van Nuys

Recently,  I have been watching pornography
on my mobile phone horizontally
and I slip my phone into a piece of cardboard
with two lenses
that hooks up with bent corners on my ears.

 There I can see  the point of view of the man
staring at a woman who is participating
in sexual activity. It lets me turn my head
all the way to see the inside of the room.
Only a few degrees are woman riding a decapitated man
who’s head is my eyes, but the rest of the room is
somewhere in Van Nuys.

Somewhere, deep in the valley, I’ve become fascinated with
keeping my clothes on and looking around the room.
With the sound down, I watch the corners,
looking at the paint or the small fake bouquet to the right of the Jacuzzi
or the light that just pokes in the top left corner of my view.

We are transported over the hill and
down to deep somewhere I'd never expect
somewhere only I have been. A young man with a goatee sets up all eight cameras
and the one point to the left
  is just for me.

Evergreen

How many poems
must you read
in this antiquated doorstop
of a textbook

before you arrive at
a triumph, at Emily's
ghostly buggies or
William's chickens;

how many dead writers
must you spin back to life
with your eye-twitches
and your penciled notes

before you can breathe in
the trees or taste a cold plumb
or see the sun shining on Dover,
how many times will you use

me out of context or without
citation -- misinterpreted.
The truest truth is that
it doesn't matter; it's all written on graves.

Holy Trinity

I've got, I've got, I've got
alittle thought, a thought, a thought
about our God, our God, our God
and what he brought, he brought, he brought

and now I think, I think, I think
it's time to drink, to drink, to drink
the holy water, water, water
in the sink, the sink, it stinks

but my God, my God, my God
it's all we've got, we've got, we've got,
this sewer water, water, water
 he has brought, he brought, he brought

and I will drink and drink and drink
so I can give, forgive, and give
all this filthy fucking water
so my liver - it can live.

the Holland Tunnel

When the flood comes to Manhattan,
where will we be safe;
Will we have higher ground to
find beyond the fire escape?

When rain rushes down the
subway and the streets,
which way will we run;
which things will we keep?

Because that little pitter-pat
tip-tap-trump will start with a leak,
but the men and women of the past
won't let us forget to seek out

justice and to seek out rushing
for some kind of bridge or
some kind of something
to row or light or burn

something to keep us warm
something we warned about,
who will hold us hostage when
our sins come for our minds?

Who will make us pay?