particles of you i thought about our kids at 6 this morning. i was nestled in yr neck, breathing yr sweetness. i'd just knocked over yr glass of bedside water reaching to turn the loud alarm off. you jumped & sopped up in dawn darkness, slid back under our covers. both almost 10 & 14. & i thought of rachel & the baby any day. i opened my eyes in a bob-dylan-eyes way, sleepy, & naturally far-sighted; many times you look 19. rachel's age. & i become 20 again, hell, 12. 3rd poem for my first grandchild my daughter is pregnant with a baby boy rolling & rocking in perfect womb who almost has the name dante, but probably not. rachel's baby-shower is today -- her mother set it up. i don't like her mother, yr grandmother, my wife of nearly 20 tumultuous years, that's a whole slew of other poems. may you love her well. my true sweetheart is asleep here, dawn on saturday in erie -- grumble of a truck in the apartment parkinglot, but ann is deep & warm in dream. we save each other with love as if life graces us, finally, 20-some years later. you will love ann too. we touched as teens then fell flailing into the black pit of our decades separation, lost in a wide chasm of loveless hell, & touching again now in our 40's. oh 35 week old wombed infant grand- child sucking yr microscopic thumb in sonar photo, know me. amerika is a grand land best lived wombed or underground & peaceful. strive for peacefulness & love. smile. look at MY dreamy smile minus the bad teeth of a middle-aged factory poet. at times you'll weep, it's ok, emotional ecstacy is electric birth, white light tunnel, unmuffled coo falsetto voices -- wet eyes blink & blink april 10 the crow is a black gland groaning in a tree, pulsation squawking like labia lips at cockless blue sky of morning. give me me. ululate honesty & blindness in rapid rem eyes, freedom & mental imprisonment. surreality of kosovo eyes of children, my eyes. what if poems unbuckle my pants to sweetly suckle milky marrow from meaty bone, is that sex? is sky blue skin? the crow is loud unmerciful cancer gutting my mind. all the dead in the balkans rise thru throats of crows today. what i did last night it's a skeleton crew. delbert's been out for a broken knee. henry's out for a broken ankle. fisher was fired. rick bid on a first shift job. steve went insane, quit. jay got his degree in nursing & is working at saint vincent's hospital. john bumped to first. other guys have been switched to second. so it isn't unusual for the boss to assign me as a flat-sheet helper. contract says completely permissible. sometimes it's better than running the presses. sometimes not. it can be a terribly itchy job, fiberglass dust swirling everywhere. certain resins increase the itchiness. listen i lifted (with jeff) 26 4'x8' 3/8ths inch sheets weighing 150 lbs each, lifted them out of the 400-ton erie foundry onto a skid, flipping them to deflash the excess around the edges. it is primitive work. 1950's-style. & i'm surprised the office people have it together enough we even get our paychecks each week. i expected a sore lower back today, but i am popeye superman! sitting here with the internet china & a few neutron bombs or secret iraq biological weaponry slews of terrorists striking countless ways & everybody beyond the outskirts of erie pennsylvania was killed - around noon today. i have 2 fans blowing fresh pre-apocalypse air around this clean apartment. & i'm chewing at cashews from a can, sipping cold lemon-lime soda. 2 more hours before ann is off work. "everybody in amerika outside of erie is dead," i'll inform her, & she'll shake away a little smile for just a little while. i'll miss the world & all yr poems, not that anybody is listening. devastation. massive loss. & the sun shines like summer here. like hugh (connie) fox i have breasts ghost-dancing in michigan & mexico & sometimes isadora shakes her finger at me, her giggling finger, as i swoosh thru a party surpising students & faculty alike, blue chiffon. red lipstick. what do i know about octavio paz? nada mucho nor this urge for female movement. i am gross, a man outside a college. i am no poet, a writer without theatrical histrionics. imperfect perfect people they need our balance, our lucklessness that stocks their winning; without our broken families & personal tragedies, without brash awareness crashing against soft church ethics like a crow thru stained-glass at noon, like a sign of doom on the best day in human history, without these microphone-feedback poems, how cld they drive a lexus & make money on a cell phone & have straight-a kids well-mannered straigh-a kids & food in a freezer. there are people who believe they have it together & they have it together, life is tight. everything happens as they expect it will, with bonuses. mass suicide of underground amerikan poets a weekend is agreed upon, & midnight. internet-connected, e-mails flying. postings to the boards: phone-calls prohibited. one half gallon of vodka or drug overdose, anything readily ingestible & deadly & a good belt, a rope, whatever might choke off air. life is screwy & doom-like, slaughter & mutilation. morality is stupid & silly with blood pouring from wrists & ears of wispy children, & worse, death is simple biological termination. we don't require gods or an after-life or answers. experience over. completely separated. however the method we strive for outcome, gone from life on earth, gone from kerouac's lumberjack shirts gone from bukowski puking in a green plastic bucket gone from war-planes over serbia gone from smart-bombs cold-cocking iraq it's a booming economy & we're all broke. even the justice department ignores us, altho the irs has bugged our lines of communication. hell, all we are are hedonists, living for pleasures like food drink & drug love & fame, or pasts are wrecked & self-mockery lights our faces. nobody has written a poem a novel out-lasting a little time. we are hobbyists & failed journalism majors touched with social schizophrenia touched with emotional retardation. all hope is illusionary pipe dreams. march 20th, 1999 -- not even THE WASHINGTON POST notices our blood.