To Paint

sanding
meditating
shrink-sitting
reading Thierry
du Duve seeing
every anything
coffeeing
learning some-
thing, I can’t
tell you what

Things Painters Say

All grays are a little purple.
Even on clear days, air has a certain weight.
No paint ever dries the same color.
Openings crowd paintings.
These are just stepping stones.
There is always something to do.
It’s not making, it’s seeing.
Painting chooses you.
This is the rest of your life.

Friday Night Walking

street cooks
fried sugar stink
county fair shop
sidewalk coated

florescent pink
gum-cascade
smelly rooms

vagrant finger-
print frosting
faces fractured
in double
vision scatter
signs into
people crush

headlights usher
new drunken
discovering

that friends
become nothing
more than a few
months ago

Over College Hill

Every window on the hill
reflects sky breaking
over buildings back
to the other side of the world

Shadow sun-dials across
dormitory asphalt,
this long path every day

Snow melts in droves down
concrete riverbeds glistening
crystals in the gray

Afternoon heaves up the hill
across rows of houses
which are tiny airplanes
caught in floodlights

Every year I squint at the city
sitting out on the balcony
studying March
waiting for the poem to come.

Hospital Trust Tower and the Sky

I

Provincetown
salt water wash
against
electric sheet steel


II

F-14 gray
with airport lights
against
Fra Angelico’s the Annunciation


III

The Atlantic at
Cape Cod
against
duckweed green pools


IV

Transparent
oxide solvent
against
Air Force officer’s coat


V

Perrywinkle
buttoned-down shirt
against
wide granite field

It Comes

Bits of snow
barely dissolving sky
barely a thin static
across the buildings
barely air to breathe
barely this, barely these
barely rain freezing
along the city.

Late at night
when you lay down
though you’re covered
in blankets
pillow over your head
the truth still comes
in dreams.

Doors closing,
watching friends
leave their houses
alone on the street
deserted, always
walking

barely backs turned
barely visible
to the streets
barely lit
barely any snow to write
bare history in
with footsteps
barely scrape
the pavement
deserted.