when i tilt the cup
i make it sing

every cowboy brakes his arm,
falls from the horse, coughs in the dust
most dogs gets hit by the car,

how can i have done wrong,
how have i offended?
do you want to write the poem
or be sane? because

we can have it so
the sun will be there
and the world can be still
we will have all agreed;
and sitting with our heads
leaning on our shoulders
like three of them that are hanged,
we can have it that we survey,
without needing to say

did you get what you asked for?
raving in the woods,
talking at yourself with
the assurance of him who is drunk, the drunken poet
who speaks with the hundred selves,
who sways like the palms of day's last light,
who spits long strands that will not break;

he dies in a hospital far from home,
dreams are less than just dreams
they are ruiners; and you curse them

a young poet, he grew up,
he sweated in the jungle and
died paralyzed in a foreign hospital
far from home, the young poet
cried for his mamå and his old bed
and the peace that is dead leaves
blowing across the driveway

who is dead,
there is blue light from below
and no light where we are at,
being in the caverns,
i imagine that it is just like
the quiet reflection, of life
lived under the lake and among the reeds

who has died,
when and how many times?
we nail it on the signpost


it must be this current of life
that i hear so much about

respectable people come to my house,
they won't tell me what they want,
but they wait outside at all hours
so that i'm filled with doubt
and my house is not a house
but a metal boat. sinking and
echoing dully as the shots hit



when i swim in the deep water
i know what looks up from under

my belly must look whiter
than the small moon
you can sometimes see
in a dogs eye

i know that there is a snake
that would take me down

everybody knows;
thats why some people dont swim

no snake bothers me
but i know that the reeds
sleep upside down;
they spend their days thinking
of a secret that is soft and dark;
the reeds are an empty green house
where the ghost never gets upset


i'm not scared of the deep,
but being on top
of all that deep

and im scared of the reeds
and the spaces in them
where we used to live