This never was my house; you let me live here though,
And there will be, I know, new lodgers, one day.
It is not this, but the thought that I will blink
and never again find our crooked street
...
Where is my oorah? (it's also known as
Esprit du Corps - funny, that it takes war
To bring us together) all this fighting
Begs the question, just how did this happen?
...
Did I say the wrong thing? As I blundered:
The muddy-booted farm boy trampling Wilton
In the best room of the big house, wonders
At the footprints, asking what was it built on?
...
We sock-shuffled across the sun-warped boards
And lying down to read, you took my feet
pulling from my sole a fragment lodged there,
ministering with love and alcohol
...
Waking after fly-blown sleep and wanting
Nothing so much as to drown, I detour
Across town the long way by the lake.
Yet I'm somehow cleansed and lifted by
...
I Do Not Live Here
This never was my house; you let me live here though,
And there will be, I know, new lodgers, one day.
It is not this, but the thought that I will blink
and never again find our crooked street
if only there to slink in half-light and peer
through shutters, so that he will stand and pull them
yet more tight against the shape that shifts waxy
black leaves of the shrubs below the windows;
it is this, that cracks me up.