in reply

FIRST POEM
>
> (from an old manuscript perhaps)
>
> we dislike that you men & w0myn of meane rancke
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> wear silver buttons at your knees.
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> or that those of greater liberal estate & education
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> must for no cald blewe reason
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> tolerate your wearing tiffany horlles & scarfes
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>
>
> SECOND POEM
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>
> as fatal thoughts hover
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> children kiss trees
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> breath catches an iron lung.
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> faces in imagination's marmalade mist
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> tapeworm their ways
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>
> (six months later who would believe?)
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> kisses in relief thread the dawn
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> searching out the needing;
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> flee. do, not talk.
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>
> THIRD POEM
>
>
>
> tender but not without shape
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> a single vein in marble virile
> in its solitude even in its
> blockedness, a nerve turfs
> the castle
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> the sea roils away under
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> the bay's window
>
>
> fake softness for love.
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> small but large of gestures & always
> home in a pure raw
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> mirrored oasis
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>
> bird-flight
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> skip upons the sea
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>
> FOURTH POEM
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>
>
>
> if this tongue's hum were not so
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> unrelenting
>
>
> who would have the means?
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>
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> let the smile remain so
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> metonymizings
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> nothing more
>
>
> not even its
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> linelike bone between the lips.
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> separately together
> tear by tear
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>
> feed & flee feed & flee
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> like sad thoughtfulness of quiet
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> after the excitedmost circus
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> after the folded tent.
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>
> FIFTH POEM
>
>
>
> the deeper the quiet the
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> more the tenacity. all sort of things
> happen
> all over
>
>
> dream-poachers:
>
>
> in an iced land of pleasure
> they are most separate
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> and each, by
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> tolerating,
>
>
> recriminate
>
>
>