15%

she tries to get things out of men
that she can't because she's not
     15% prettier.

All girls should have a poem
written for them even if
we have to turn this God-damn world
upside down to do it.

always spend a penny
as if you were spending a
     dollar.
and always spend a dollar
as if you were spending
a wounded eagle and always
spend a wounded eagle as if
you were spending the very sky itself.

just an ordinary girl, 118
pounds, chipped from tooth, cute,
born in Reno, Nevada, a student
at SF state, she wants candles
married to her womb by the color
of a telescopic saint, so that all
her children will be adventures
     in light

Do you think of me
as often as i think
     of you?

we stopped at perfect days
and got out of the car.
The wind glanced at her hair.
It was as simple as that.
I turned to say something --

There is so much lost
and so much gained in
     those words.

"Butch didn't die in Bolivia. he came
home to Utah-- i saw him after he got back.
The Sundance Kid was killed in Bolivia
and it grieved Butch to leave him there."

He wants to build you a house
out of your own bones, but
that's where you're living
     anyway!
The next time he calls
you answer the telephone with the
sound of your grandmother being
born. it was a twenty-three hour
labor in 1894. he hangs
     up.

Pretty: except for the
puncture bruises on her
arm. Also she's a little
     thin.

Lemon Lard: with your old snowshoes
and your ability to remember dates,
you're all that you'll ever want to
     be.

sheep

Three sheep in a field
grazing beside a FOR SALE sign
are like pennies in the hand
of a child who will buy what
     he wants to

Men are walking on the moon today,
planting their footsteps as if they were
     zucchini on a dead world
while over 3,000,000 peopole starve to death
every year on a living one.
Earth
july 20, 1969

If you will die for me,
i will die for you

and our graves will
be like too lovers washing
their clothes together
in a laundromat

If you will bring the soap,
I will bring the bleach

San Francisco Chronicle Headline
June 26, 1942

Rommel is dead.
His army has joined the quicksand legions
of history where battle is always
a metal echo surounding a rusted shadow.
His tanks are gone.
How's your ass?

Everybody wants to go to bed
with everybody else, they're
lined up for bloacks, so I'll
go to bed wiht you. They won't
     miss us.

Forsaken, fucking in the cold,
eating eachother, lost, runny noses,
complaining all the time like so
many people that we know.

if you love a statue start a mirror.
Your friends will admire you.
if you love a mirror start a statue.
make room for new friends.

hinged to forgetfulness like a door,
she slowly closed out of sight,
and she was the woman i loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
     of her dreams

just because people love your mind,
doesn't mean they have to have your body,
     too.