Last night we offered whispered chants in that ritual
        undressing

        of how we met. Everything has significance.
        That is what you said.

        But it wasn't what you said. It was more how you
        held me that time

        In sacrifices, everything is a sign: whether the animal goes willingly
        to the altar and bleeds to death quickly, whether or not the fire flares
        swiftly, how the tail curls and the bladder bursts a dream, a stumble,
        a chance encounter, even an unexpected drop of rain and this day

        Sacrifices will have to be made, serious
        Belt tightening. You don't halve
        What it takes. Because what it takes,

        It keeps. The whole kit 'n caboodle.
        So there you are: minus your caboodle
        Where the arrow crowds the corner.

        Ist verboten here. I'm almost
        Late for a very important meeting: What
        Looked much like a steering column

        I.

        I would go to war to defend my positions, he said.

        The room breaks out in laughter.

        It is a small room. There are no windows. A man
        Pulls on a leash.

        They tell us the war might go for another decade.
        I'll be fifty then.
        By then we'll all be used
        To drinking only bottled water
        To consider in worshipful adoration

        Through closed eyes
        I recognize the dark

        achtung!   achtung!
        my pulse ticks off

        by heart   its own
        nocturnal  catalog

        When I have fears
        that I may cease to be
        in Lord and Taylor's basement,
        not by bare bodkin
        but by knife of stainless
        steel and natural wood handle,
        I take stock, stroking the blade,

        As she walked I heard a sigh
        of silk.  Her high heeled sandals
        clicked across the floor.  And then
        she stopped, and when she turned she

        We've come to know the foreign war is far
        from distant now.  Dunes and palms are scenery
        no more. In fact, the war is where we are.

        The action's live, in time that's real. We're free
        to turn it off or on, to turn away
        from convoys, tanks, humvees, artillery.

        The deepest truths cannot be taught
        except by experience--
        Genet's face, that jail of dreams, each line
        in the forehead, a galley where lives pitch, hitched
        to the wilderness skin molds over.