From the Fishouse

i.

In the rock garden you are a rooster –
hard cock, head of the line. I lift my mallet,
shake it in front of your face.

Watch me
tap my hammer down the length of you.
Hollow. Gizzard of dust.
Do you want to know how many
I’ll break before I am broken?

ii.

From the ruthless cities: tattered shade naked at the window, empty bottle, a cabinet of
powders, fearless love one feckless day, another’s name called from the morning bed,
then the gossip, girls on the telephones hands between their legs, a song played again and
over, seven fights one night at the bar, three cowards, no – four, a trunk of armor, the
pistols, the rifles, the one-legged birds, cancer of the sidewalk, a woman’s dress torn from
her frame, a writer dead from writing, the platonic dancers, all the toothless men, the
battered hip, the friend that forced you forces, a pool cue overhead, a cock ring – not the
first nor the last, plowed in, snowed under, without boundaries the dogs that roam over
yards, another emptied bottle, another rich man gone, pale women that hang their heads,
others slicing their wrists, the child was beat to laughing, laughing, windows closed in the
brief night, from this the men come, they

seek me, risk their bones.
Stone before they saw me,
broken before I ever saw them.