Larry Levis

—for John Berryrnan—Is dog eat dog out dere'—Big Business,
Mr
Bones
You know what I'm doing now

Toad, hog, assassin, mirror
Some of its favorite words, which are breath
Or handwriting: the long tail of the ‘y’ disappearing into a barn like a rodent’s, and suddenly it is winter after all
After all what

Those twenty-six letters filling the blackboard Compose the dark, compose The illiterate summer sky & its stars as they appear One by one, above the schoolyard
If the soul had a written history, nothing would have happened:
A bird wo...

Some called it the Summer of Love, & although the clustered,
Motionless leaves that overhung the streets looked the
As ever, the same as they did every summer, in 1967,
Anybody with three dollars could have a vision

1
Looking into the eyes of Gerard de
You notice the giant sea crabs rising
Which is what

One was a bay cowhorse from Piedra & the other was a washed out
And both stood at the rail of the corral & both went on
In each effortless tail swish, the flies rising, then congregating
Around their eyes & muzzles &...

My poem would eat nothing
I tried giving it water but it said no, worrying me
Day after day,
I held it up to the llight, turning it over, but it only pressed its lips more tightly together

There is this sunny place where I imagine him
A park on a hill whose grass wants to
Into dust, & would do so if it
For the rain, & the fact that it is only

Sister once of weeds & a dark water that held still In ditches reflecting the odd,
Abstaining clouds that passed, & kept Their own counsel, we Were different, we kept our own counsel
Outside the tool shed in the noon heat, while ...

In the Borghese,
Caravaggio, painter of boy whores, street punk, exile & murderer,
Left behind his own face in the decapitated, swollen, leaden-eyed head of Goliath,
And left the eyelids slightly open, & left on the face of ...

Now that the Summer of Love has become the moss of
And the shadowy mouths of tunnels & all the tunnels lead into the city,
I'm going to put the one largely forgotten, swaying figure of Ediesto
Right in front of you so you can wa...

The cop holds me up like a fish;he feels the huge bonessurrounding my eyes,and he runs a thumb under them,lifting my eyelidsas if they wereenvelopes filled with the night
Now he turnsmy head back and forth, gently,until I'm so tame and stillI...