Dara Wier
	Land of Steady Habits Goats with baby goats chewed on shirts On several rows of singing blue clotheslines. More horses were everywhere (wild horses in Wyoming and Montana) some were for them, some Against them. Scorpions, spiders, tarantulas & lizards stayed in places they wanted to be. A river, wide and deep and filled with grit (& Film canisters, fan belts, tin cans, pistols, Printing presses, piano harps, harness straps) Loosened from times a thousand miles off, kept To its course (for the most part, when we let it). Gods gone loco kept us up all night perorating Over their pitiful stories (we liked our clock Precisely because it no longer cared to tell us Time and looked like something lost without a Cause, with no purpose, with nothing to lose). A sloth’s hair grows more slowly than any hair In the world. I glowed in the dark when thoughts Of you filtered in. I marked the spot. Darkly You gathered momentum & scattered it everywhere. In a matter of minutes you were long overdue for A crucial juncture (you showed me your seams). We anticipated a retroactive prelapsarian motion. Way too many hours had been given to synchronized Thinking. That was a waste of time. Therefore Chicago claims it has populated the world with Fine zippers, or slide fasteners as they once were Called, as Chicago once was a dismal swamp and Now it's not, with its river and beautiful Buildings. It could go either way. Peacocks Are dragging their tails in dusty quarters of time. When I close my eyes I can see them sweeping. Another Factor May Have Been the Course of Time Anybody melancholy admires a willow Broken as it is, messy & frangible Incessantly sweeping and unsweeping Thoughtless in the best sense Tenseless, mindlessly eternal & tangled not & doubled-back & Unconscious yes & surveillant as It oscillates serene & superficial thus And of course through a thousand Registers of green this and green That analgesic swerve sussurations Heavy on the swell & sway, light On the shredded surplice index, Delicious swash vibrations applied In the brain wave exchanges, vox Angelica hung-over & hoarse, no Worse, ineffable surplus searches, Sequential cascade quotation series, Serial catharsis procession services,, Unreasoning suspension sessions, Assembling serration luster motives, Reappraisal creases in the wistful Dismals, at long last the cold wind Was done, an uneasy peace ensued. Invisible in the Torn Out Interiors A man looked at us across his little dish Of watercress and peas and said he’d wasted Five years. We couldn’t ask him doing what? He said he knew he’d let some thing alive die And didn’t know how to get it back again now That it was gone. He looked as if he were About to cry, as if a fresh death wanted him To mourn. He talked as if the place he’d been Had so unwelcomed him it had ruined his soul, As if it were a place into which drained an Absolute dead air. He said he’d left no friends Behind, no one who’d notice he was gone. And here he was without a job, no place his to Live, no one his to love. We said welcome home.