Slamming Back Milk

From the center of my days comes milk
As if I were a breast not a car driver
Not an e-mail addict, not a surly shopper
Or a credit card swiper, not and certainly
Not a cow or a goat or a camel.

This is the milk you might call lace,
The last vapor of the jet contrail, a swimmer turning
A lap, a fascination with quilts, a quarter spinner,
An enthusiasm for Sharpeis, a glint of light
Off of a baritone, a steam room filled with Jews,
A manacle, a harmonium.

It could be Allen Ginsberg’s milk
Or cement mixer unloading its river of aggregates
Or the river itself, my God, the Rio Grande or
An inoculation against flu, what I mean is Life Force.
Life Force. Hear what I have to say? Opal pulchritude,
Oh studious one, Scholar of Kabala.

Mystic, at the center of my chest is a rehearsal dinner
For the bilingual wedding. Mariachi band,
Viennese waltz, a little tango and basketballs,
The girls jumping rope and missing, milk,
The last supper, milk the missing teen, milk
The shed kimonos, milk the aficionados of olives.

Liquidity and milk. Got milk? The moustache of
Literal bovine mammary secretions because I survived
Two winters in Wisconsin on the dairy farm
And have heifers forever before me, staring at me,
Cutting through me in honest cow meditation.

At the center of my days, creamy and fluid,
Malleable and filling all crevices, bottles of life
Force, the froth of it, steamed for cappuccino,
The latte of late, the cow of now. This hot milk
Flows. Milk of human kindness. Mother of cloud.
Mother of teeth. The anti-war. The urge to lactate Peace.