Stug Jordan

When can we be lazy?
like two dogs, with eyes half open;
stretching our legs through the grass,
laying; getting almost nothing done.
...

'Was told it wasn't he but was,
but promised it was she, was not;
they struggled to be we, and just forgot.'
...

A song for the innocent loner,
the plough-hand and fish-boner:
his slow pipe
lowers as he listens
...

Older body parts are the accessories for littler lives:
Older arms are the slings to be carried in;
Older legs are the stilts to stalk the earth with;
Sometimes an older hip is a convenient seat;
...

I reached out
as we slept,
slowly waking
finding the bed,
...

On an august night, a half-rain
stumbles glass; the child-bride,
in a bruise of love, endures her pain;
her eyes obscenities as she cries.
...

Admiring death from afar;
A bicycle-shape closing
On the foot of a hill,
Where bird-drawn wings panic
...

He looks
my way like a bull:
a hungry animal
reminds me of his face -
...

Back of the hunched black house,
a garden’s white water
in a slow fountain, a sugar bowl.
...

Retired from the fields of corn,
the old scarecrow stands
abandoned on the lawn;
old ropes, binding his hands.
...

He wakes up to rain on his window,
the wash of gutters and drains
in the street; an early car starting;
the yawn of a garden gate –
...

Just to think how close we came to ill repute
by signing off our names, to hold heavy hands
in the long corridors of the magistrate’s court;
or to have the weaker of the two sold to the vicar,
...

And Adam said he would prefer
To be alone,
Anaesthetised on god’s table
Before the operation,
...

I am not a poet.
I have not been to university:
no old lecturers have singled me out
for special things to come,
...

Man danced
Woman faltered.
The room spun
Accordingly.
...

The path knew before the footstep;
even before the ghost of a shape
passed above the stones and mud.
...

I look at her family as though
I had been born into it,
to imagine her ancestors as mine,
and that our relationship is almost incestual,
...

Gotti loved Letti,
and a house to let they got,
and Gotti was pretty.
...

Lucky is the rain,
For its concealment is sublime,
When absorbed by openness
And rid of counterparts;
...

Twists her hips and grins
like the victim
of a parlour game.
And the black dice choose her;
...