Before when he had the Palmer hand
but better: palm trees—light-lined
pencils' curving & flowing, for years,

There are still hammers, aren’t there,
somewhere, and bricks dried in brick kilns?

Work has stopped for the winter,

You love when the oak leaves shimmer like silver,
and you love the Emergency Man.
You hear him running, the blood in your veins

The café walls are covered with pictures of flying parrots;
I take a table, rest my arms; the table gently tips,
A dozen strangers sit and sit and talk, all they do is lovely,

After midnight, lying in bed thinking of you,
I heard a squeal, and let the cigarette fall
From my fingers like a petal, as I watched the window open

Enough inside jokes,
let's move this bash out
under the stars. Heap up

I awake, three in the morning, sweating
from a dream of possums.
I put my head under the fuzzy swamp of cover.

I understand:
for years, perhaps, you have lived
underground. Handling only

At first, we spoke in many languages.
Mainly jabbed and pointed amidst
The din of pounding and sawing. But

At the back of a Point Reyes ravine
Mescaline, three powdery silver piles
Poured on knife blades and then and there licked clean.