These Poems Associate Freely

I broke the mold. I made a mockery
of your elation. I tried my hand
at gravity and watched everything

fly away
and become the moon

and so it was that nothing
stood still again. And life was all
a float.

My best friend Charlie came

to visit me yesterday, said there’s no kicking

the ball without me. I looked into
his dull brown eyes and wondered was it
me or was he really that lost, me
holding a ball for him was joy?
I take it away, I’m a holder back,
you have to earn it, with me,
and still it won’t go sailing.

He said he loved me for how I kneel
and look hopingly into his eyes.
I said, “You fall on your ass
every time, Charlie; don’t you mind?”

My best friend Charlie came
and asked, and no no-es were left in me.

*

The train’s a flood. If it were a river,
we’d all have died by now. But it’s a moment’s
weakness, thinking time and space will rhyme
for you and then it’s gone and there was never any
train flooding your eyes.

But little Mary Hopalong, her babes
are gone without her and no bucking bronco
bided it’s time so well as that train
they took. She loves her girls, does Mary,
but there’s no coming or going anymore.

It’s sex with the sun now, it’s sex
with no one, it’s a splay on the floor
and she’s okay – is Mary.

“Oh, how I love you!”
Why do all her violins
start this way? She’s eaten

nought but cheese, there are sores
on the insides of her legs, there is no
flower about her. There is no dress.

But they come running
to drink from her, they come

running. She broke her casket
and now she’s flooding.

*

Charlie loves the moon. The in-and-out
is so slow there no one
holds it down too long, and a breeze
sets it sailing. It would careen
into the earth one day, but I am

that masked man floating
between you and the goal, Charlie,
I’ll catch it all and you’ll
never have kicked.

I’m trying my hand
at interception, Charlie,
and I’m doing fine.