Twelve Partial Truths and One Certainty, and: Double Acrostic for William Wordsworth, and: [The Truth Is I’m Too Impressed by Wealth]

TWELVE PARTIAL TRUTHS AND ONE CERTAINTY

1. 1. This is the line in which I save no one from a terrible death.

2. 2. Tomorrow we will discover a new city growing out of what is left of the old city.

3. 3. When a film is taken, that film passes over the world like a light.

4. 4. I know the hideous secret you think of when you read the phrase hideous secret.

5. 5. In some dimension you are covered in a gelatinous ooze & it is unnatural to think otherwise.

6. 6. Your brain is self-aware & believes itself to be the entirety of your body.

7. 7. This is the line in which I take from you everything you have ever known & give it back to you, renewed.

8. 8. Before you reach your house you must first extinguish the fire.

9. 9. What you want is enough of a thing to give it all away.

10. 10. The stars are communicating with us, & you left the iron on.

11. 11. You did not leave the iron on. You haven’t used an iron in years.

12. 12. This is the line in which we save each other from our terror.

DOUBLE ACROSTIC FOR WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The sea’s bosom reveals itself to me     like a stump drug horribly along the coast:   & shake & swallow grub:   the erstwhile freegans who suckled gold   from the foundry’s teat         & spared the heart what it could not give away for cash:   if the world is ours,   I opt to fleck amongst the nightjars:     join the tiny siskin reveling in its bath of dust and glow:     our coins belong loaded in a sack   & dropped down to Proteus, who will let them pass:     or in the alfalfa     buried:     silver blooms of peaches drown inside gourmands who pluck their fruit:   his land is dead silt   who has purchased for gain:   & spilt     not his own sweat in the tilling:   let us pass this world in celebration of the pit & not the plate:   a pup opens up a bit of meat & finds inside the bone:   & here overtly is death on her haunch:     sleeping flowers, upon       whose bed we both shall lie, misled: must I put a scowl upon my mug and run for the hills:   I undulate wildly as any man in the breast:   & swoon courageously when put upon for sex:       Darling, how are you fallen & in what bath?         Great God! I see the earth a cow who with his coin a man has bought:   there is no peace interred like marrow in its bones: so let the winds move us, that we may wend with them:   small hawk slipping away from itself beyond the neck:   a       full throng of flowers cut from the muddy up gathered source & laid like dancers sleeping in their feathered beds:   & better yet a straw       held timidly by the forlorn man: strata leveled ages ago:   made flat by the weight of the old titan’s aggravated heel:   Epithemeus, who always acted first, took giving to a fault:   & man was left to seek out fire else he bite the cold to grip his end:

  & soon the meat was cooked, & leather tanned into a purse:   & once the purse, the shoe:   & followed then you nightly walked upon the earth, & lucre followed you:   our drink no longer bottled at the source, nor taught     its use by the plant from which it bleeds: we drop soon our wit:   walk hard upon the grounds our fathers to our fathers’ fathers passed:     yea, Wordsworth, show of hands that ye have seen our edge,   and took your chance narrowing the lamb upon its blade:   my faith to you sir,     my faith and my time, as yours you put in us.

[THE TRUTH IS I’M TOO IMPRESSED BY WEALTH]

The truth is, I’m too impressed by wealth. Where once as a young man I was committed to a studious poverty, now as a husband I want a yard

in which my dog can run, where I can plant a few seeds & watch them grow. Here we...