Blue Work Shirt

to Doug & Jan Oliver “I order you to operate, I was not made to suffer.”
Probing for old wills, and friendships, for to free

for Jim Carroll, on his birthday A lovely body gracefully is nodding
Out of a blue Buffalo

I. Le Bonheur

dogwood flakes
what is green

the petals
from the apple
blow on the road

mourning doves
mark the sway

Since I’ve decided to revolutionize my life
since
”
decided
”
revolutionize
”
life

Tonight, away begins to go
farther away, and the dream
what do we know of the dream
metallic leaps Jackson Pollock
silvery streams Jackson Pollock
I gaze across the sea

see in the distance your walk and you
pass the Pacific, distant and blue

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?

Blue of the heaps of beads poured into her breasts
and clacking together in her elbows;
blue of the silk
that covers lily-town at night;
blue of her teeth
that bite cold toast
and shatter on the streets;
blue of the dyed flower petals with gold stamens

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves

I sing of Morrisville
(if you call this cry
a song). I
(if you call this painful

voice by that great name)
sing the poverty of my
region and of
the wrong end of Morrisville.