There must be more for you to do
than permit yourself to be shoved
by the wind from coast
to coast to coast, boot on the boat prow
to hold the wooden body
under, soul in control

Ask at my temples
where the moon snakes, tongues of the dark
speak like bones unlocking, leaves falling
of a future you won’t believe in

Ask who keeps the wind
Ask what is sacred

Don’t you get tired of killing
those whose deaths have been predicted
and are therefore dead already?

Don’t you get tired of wanting
to live forever?

Don’t you get tired of saying Onward?

You may wonder why I’m not describing the landscape for you. This island with its complement of scrubby trees, picturesque bedrock, ample weather and sunsets, lavish white sand beaches and so on. (For which I am not responsible.) There are travel brochures that do this better, and in addition they contain several very shiny illustrations so real you can almost touch the ennui of actually being here. They leave out the insects and the castaway bottles but so would I in their place; all advertisements are slanted, including this one.

You had a chance to read up on the place before you came: even allowing for the distortion, you knew what you were getting into. And you weren’t invited, just lured.

But why should I make excuses? Why should I describe the landscape for you? You live here, don’t you? Right now I mean. See for yourself.

You stand at the door
bright as an icon,

dressed in your thorax,
the forms of the indented
ribs and soft belly underneath
carved into the slick bronze
so that it fits you almost
like a real skin

You are impervious
with hope, it hardens you,
this joy, this expectation, gleams
in your hands like axes

If I allow you what you say
you want, even the day after

this, will you hurt me?

If you do I will fear you,
If you don’t I will despise you

To be feared, to be despised,
these are your choices.

There are so many things I want
you to have. This is mine, this
tree, I give you its name,

here is food, white like roots, red,
growing in the marsh, on the shore,
I pronounce these names for you also.

This is mine, this island, you can have
the rocks, the plants
that spread themselves flat over
the thin soil, I renounce them.

You can have this water,
this flesh, I abdicate,

I watch you, you claim
without noticing it,
you know how to take.

Holding my arms down
holding my head down by the hair

mouth gouging my face
and neck, fingers groping into my flesh

(Let go, this is extortion,
you force my body to confess
too fast and
incompletely, its words
tongueless and broken)