REED BYE

FRACTAL LENS

How does anyone know
where life is presently going?

By following
and sensing, and sniffing the air
and following along
according to nose

KEEP WANDERING

With nose open for

The arrow of the son is
aimed at the father

The arrogance of the student
is aimed at the teacher

When those arrows meet

The harrowing
knowledge
gives you the cash needed to
go deeper
where you where artichoke roots
brush your hair

My poetry teacher
tried to keep poetic mind fresh
from settling back on its heels
after handling
thought in a hand-to-hand combat

She tries to move it forward
onto its toes
gathering soil

to grow in the changing light
new strains of emphasis
But she’s all fire

And being taught, I can rouse
flame from the root
of my tongue

And show the earth’s bounty
in an abandoned
storefront

Genital fire also
grows from this root
and comes alive to continue
where there is temperature,
wind,
forms of being, water

There is earth without leaves,
cold sunny streets,
a red-tailed hawk
over Friday afternoon traffic,

And shadow formations
in the facing foothills—
the red rocks—
my body scans
like beer cans
outside a chapel

EYE OF THE FROG

On the leafy green
a frog rises to see what’s
up, world, today

Renouncing incomplete
desire templates—
Surveying vehicular passions

Sunshine recuperates
a quiet
global minute

A long flame
right past the nose
of those looking

Rooks and jackdaws
Doves cry
Chalk is what to limestone?

Butter dish breaks
No matter
“What is a dish in this world?”

What caprice or
melting Siberian peat bog
od’d on methane

His blood spins
the braised features
make a chain of

Confusion and collapse
A time to love
what has continued

In poems--
Whose killing floor
is this?

Cloudy sky
shining on
earthly fields and hedgerows

Big leafy branches
Birds fly
No stillness

In stillness
Dream but no dream
In stoppage

Boats afloat
a fiery shore
where words should be

Water buffalo
at the stinking gates’
sun-flare

The sun reddens as the
orchestra pit
flounders

Sandy bottom
dentures
clapping

Vision:
All limbs and organs
puffing out willing

Surface fools with
depth for
factory rails

Going backwards —

No worries
People on couches watching
people in beds

Proof of trials
He can’t speak but hears
in blazing colors

Duskily deformed
upon platens of earth
a winding track

A jagged row —
along what wall will it lie
tomorrow?

At the ball a

crystal mirror

of what it is to be inside