Hippies
Turning out a piece of art,
espousing
controversial points of view,
you always do
the things that say to Everyone:
"You're okay, too!"
and make your kids un-anxious,
just like you.
10 May, 2004.
The Mosh Pit
"A Cloud of Dust announces in the Night
where Dancers in a Pit have come to blows."
One's gender is a small thing to the throes
of Social Intercourse. "We do not fight.
There are no sides, no standards to uphold."
To look at them, it is as if...
the very odd coincidence
of having fun and violence
were normal. "To ignore the pain
of being struck, for having leave
to strike, achieves an unexpected ease..."
Indeed, it may relieve
the Great Collective Lunacy
of reckoning identity
in murder. "I recede
intact! But for my bloody nose,
no one would ever know I'd been...
27 April, 2004
Men
When passing sideways, nervously,
within the Fog of Sex,
a man and son are enemies.
The crisis of their Test
suggests an even match, it seems,
a man against a man.
Asymmetry asserts itself:
The Child must best his Dad.In his boy's eyes, the Old Man sees
the nearness of his death.
Combatants often find themselves
ambivalent. A single breath
is all that ever separates
the will to kill, the will to die for Cause.
From there we go our separate ways
to write our separate Laws.
21 March, 2004
That Panoramic Feeling
In a moment of exception,
clarity derives
from Altitude. I see myself
beneath a source of light,
resplendent. All we know,
the groundwork of our pride,
becomes a debt of gratitude.The act of gazing skyward
from the bottom of the Night
rewards the most Diminished Eye
with penetrating wakefulness
and episodes of Sight.
17 March, 2004
Pre-Paid Pizza
Every body minds a Home,
yet craves a great deliverance.
Some thoughts are the equivalent
of doing things. The doorbell rings,
a knock disturbs a dream.
Awakening...
what remedy but sizing-up
the one who calls, and measuring
the magnitude of threat. Admit me
(or Just Anyone) if I should seem
a reasonable bet.
07 March, 2004
Whether
God is a master of the plausible/deniable.
He offers "miracles" subjectively.
When we decide
impossible conclusions have obtained,
confusion summons faith. Believing in
the most Extraordinary Things...
Our Fallen Kennedy
had little use for much more Truth
from Roswell, nor Proof,
than anybody needed, Then,
to interfere with ignorance
and feel a desperate sympathy
for everyone.
07 March, 2004
Re: argh
Oh, c'mon...the sun?! We've only just begun
to have some Fun
here in America. There's been a Storm
of such in-cal-cu-la-ble Force!
It's been raining like mad for about Two Weeks,
and I've really come to like it. But at first,
there were the in-con-ven-ien-ces, the Raincoat
one finds dusty,
wrinkled-up, inside the closet from Before,
and the Umbrella
you can never find at all. But then,
one acquires, one achieves, one gets a feel
for the aesthetic of the Gray and Wet. The world
is all transformed. There is no human
movement on the surface of the earth
that is not filled with frenzy. Heed the rain.
"Take flight!", a billion drops are whispering
(and screaming) in the ears of every Fool. But I enjoy
a bit of urgency, a sense of siege,
anxiety. I'm just like you.
04 March, 2004
Sent
You have not written.
I'll write soon. Direct me,
in some thoughtful way,
with a question. That I
may write, and not just write,
but ANSWER, too.
15 January, 2004
hu'man
Truly now,
this Bed is a slice of heaven.
I am an Old man
whose works recede from him. The past
is full of frenzied making.
The present,
memory, a doubt -
all stand guard and bar
the fabled Way to paradise.I see Great Ideas
recruiting from the Womb
and making faceless Groups
of the ambivalent. Identity
is lying forfeit at the Gate.
And all these paths are Hate
that do not turn us Out
again. As individuals
we test and stretch, and amplify
the meaning of a single word.
01 January, 2004
One Direction of Travel
Where do we go from here? The West..
is fully occupied. "Civility"
is out of space. And the Idealists
are crying out for Natives to convert.
Nor do the Anarchists
have any wilderness
to shed their clothes and all their common sense.It feels a bit like Europe! Now...
that we have reached a Coast of sorts,
and face (like the Atlantic, once)
a vast, impenetrable void, again,
what can we do but contemplate
the cities we have built and left,
as if it were our fate?
24 August, 2003
The Point
To get across my poems, read
a single line, then stop,
and wait for something. In each line
you'll find significance and, usually,
a small poetic whole.It's like a knack for skipping stones.
I watch them sink, but not before
I've measured my success. How well
have I approximated That
which lies beyond the shore?I've never walked on water. Yet,
I'd love to make you think
that there are ways to leave the Beach
that shrink the Ocean's Width and bring
horizons within reach.18 July, 2003
Moondance
Now that I have lost her, I...
can clearly see that she
was the only person in the world
whith whom I could discuss (in its extremes
of terror and delight)
the Magical Divine.
14 July, 2003
Judas Cheers
If the wind alone can bring
the certainty of smoke
to the question of a fire,
I imagine there's a way
the future reaches back a hand
to touch us, who aspire.And every lucky boy and girl,
who gets a whiff of destiny
(and acts accordingly),
must seem to Them a prophet, then,
for shockingly distinguishing
a plainly present fact.In other words, to Act
(to live a private truth,
to Choose and be alone),
is infinitely venial
when Fathomless Necessity
compels you to the bone.
06 June, 2003
Borderland
Immigration is imperialism
in reverse. They come to us
to be our slaves
and do the dirty work. We give them all
a sense of club, a big idea,
the purity of will
to hate themselves. A foreign thing,
the body can't digest,
can only die or kill.
21 May, 2003
Friendship
It's up to you
if I'm a thief or not. As long
as you're my friend,
there's not a person in the world can say
I won't return the things I stole,
however long it's been.
They call that borrowing.
14 May, 2003 (For all my friends in need - Thanks!)
Jack
The worst things that ever happened to me
accomplished the same thing:
They checked my arrogance back down to a level.
And I can't help but observe, today,
in the obvious evidence of God's own strength,
that I have NOT been disabused
of all my arrogating thoughts. In fact,
it seems, that some of them
(and I cannot confess the ones)
have actually HELPED -- by driving me
in those directions where I've found
some unexpected truths.
11 May, 2003
America
I asked a bunch of soldiers once
how they could all squat down
and fire their guns at once
until the enemy was decimated,
when it was obvious and quite inevitable
that some of them would die.
They answered me, in unison:
"We were motivated
by the image of a single bullet
accomplishing the job, even if meant
that all the rest had missed
entirely."
04 May, 2003
Fire Sale
Now that the war is "over", I'm afraid
that the American agenda in Iraq
will over-step its noble, tranquilizing aims,
and take a spoliating tack.
The soldiers are still there,
and all their guns
are no more perspicacious than before,
in separating friends from foes.
So you tell me, do you believe
Saddam had hidden bombs?
Or is it that we'll find a plot
for killing pregnant mothers in New York
to justify why we have shot
the first of them to say "No more!"
25 April, 2003
Iraq
I see the war. The bully of the cave
has gone outside to bash some heads.
Inside, the tribe divides
among two camps. The ones who watch
with satisfaction while the point
is made again
are members of a hungry class.
They loiter close to power, covetous,
and wait for morsels to descend.
The mothers in their ranks (horrifically)
imagine all their sons are kings,
and know that some must die.
The other ones, the ones who cried:
"Don't go out there and kill that guy.”
exhibit evolution of a kind.
A slimness of muscle and preponderance
of skull give evidence
of an aversion to the hunt. Ideals,
divorced from earthly strife,
are rivaling theosophy
among athletic women and the men
admiring them. Both sides
are shouting gravely from the cave.
The one: "Return!”
The other: "Don't come back!".
01 April, 2003
Immemorable
Oh, I won't mind forgetting things
as I grow old. So long as I
forget I knew them, too.
An eye for one's own prints,
among a mess of tracks,
should be a talent of the young.
And I would rather cataracts
diminish what I know
(and all that I have done),
than hesitate before I stare,
once more, into the sun.
21 March, 2003
An Alien Tongue
Sometimes when I am listening
to a very bright person,
and they're talking in some language
other than their own,
I hear a sort of bullheaded thrust
in what the say. It is as if
they've managed to forget
(or maybe never knew)
that there's a handicap when you're in Rome.
And I imagine in their tones
a poetry of sorts,
a courage, above all,
to say the say the things that must be said
in any way they can.
26 February, 2003
An I.R. about N.
Somewhere between distraction and the obvious horror of it all is a place I call Sweet Resignation. It means I've grown up past believing I was happy when I had just forgotten where I am, and have begun to suspect the possibility of a different sort of good. I see the fullness of the trip, how the eviscerating pain dissolves into a mindless sort of bliss that makes the universe all white. But I have ears as well... a recent sort of gift. And I can hear the sound of distant bells. It is as if the wind itself cooperates with some almighty will, and brings the fragrance of our dreams. Oh, I can see and hear and smell, the size of something more than this!
25 February, 2003
Happiness
Some field or o p e n space
from my childhood
may be remembered to have held,
on just that one immemorable day,
a single bloom of special hue.
And I cannot recall at all
the reason I was there.
25 February, 2003
Tomorrow
All settled plans must wait,
and not begin.
An hour stirs the settled heart,
but stills the troubled house we're in.
Who says the night is short?
A passerby, the Sun, adorns
the picture in a window frame.
But he, like all his twins,
does not look in.
They pass us by, again, again...
24 February, 2003
Castaneda
Talk about your echoes...
I see this Indian kid
just grinnin' on the BART,
his eyes 2 slits
starin' up at some vision
of divine symmetry
that's dancin' in the air above his head.
And he's mouthin' the word "Wow"
So what can it mean to me,
a rider on the train,
but "Yes. Proceed.
It is all as you believe."
14 February, 2003
The Lazarus Problem
If I have bid you "Rise,
and make all human haste!"
I really must apologize
(for such a human waste),
then turn a father's cheek.
I was surprised
to find at such accomplished heights
(however bright and vanishing)
the headway of my Earthly Tribe.
It seems but yesterday
that I first gave you leave to fly
beyond the Garden's harboring Green.
What can it mean
when all my favored progeny,
and all the very best I've sent
(to look and seek among the stars),
return to me but cindered things?
Of course, I wish alive again
the very, very best of me,
that I might prove a deity
deserving of such offerings.
But I prefer to re-invent,
and make of cinders promises:
Another band of reckless men,
of singularly cunning sight,
must rise and come and try again
to find me in the Night.
09 February, 2003 (For Columbia's Seven)
Vain Glorie
Is it vain a rabbit run?
Or if an ochre marigold
evoked the Summer sun,
would an impiety be done?I see a noose (Or better yet,
a blade against a wing!)
around the throat of every gifted thing.The fabled right of exercise
implicit in the gift,
becomes in every humble life
a martyrdom of thrift.
21 January, 2003
May & Can
I know it is the Sun
that shines upon the moon,
and not the gaze of men.
It is too soon
in our Divine Experiment
to think our will (We train our eyes
on every corner of the night.)
the same as lucid sight.I am capricious to the bone,
the maker of a thing or two
I'd call "of Perfect Kind",
but own that all the best I've made
(the baubles of my pride)
were never those I sought by force,
but those I chanced to find.
16 January, 2003 (For Paul V.)
The Crab
What edifice do I construct?
What wave-bourne sands, with claws erect,
do I from oceanic hands collect?I summon visions and conceive
of things withstanding savage tides,
though I'm a thing that lays a grain, and hides.To loiter where the world decides
between opposing states of grace,
one must prepare an undecided face.
15 January, 2003
The Truth
How brave the bearer of my voice,
who listens not with ears (which turn a thought
against what louder thoughts declare within),
but takes me at a sight. The charm of eyes,
much greater than the songs of birds,
is that they (to my infinite surprise)
dispel the questions of our words.
10 January, 2003
Subtitled
Run below the picture frame:
Some letters strung together
sentence-wise, a narrative
for undecided patriots
who toe the line, and press their noses
flat. I think
that I shall (having seen,
so many, many early times,
a frenzied dash into the sea)
refrain from reading what they write,
and, better, hum along instead,
as if the scenes before my eyes
were playing in my head.
08 January, 2003
War
Beside a violent water fall
I stand. The spray is cold;
the mist confounds the world in fog.
All thunders. Heavy stones
lie mute beneath the roar.
What noise they made when once they fell,
the ancient river tells and tells.
19 December, 2002
The Funeral of a Great Man
What power there! We could not dream
the scenes of pregnant circumstance
enacted on the darkened stage
of his unflinching mind.
Nor could we, in his tendency
to recognize a stranger's face,
imagine that he held us all
beneath a father's gaze.But we who've marched beside the box
encumbered by a weight of bones,
may take as our deserved reward
a stolen glance within.
I think we've seen the sort of flight
that cries against our temporal hearts,
by seeming to become in death
what we, in life, have been.13 December, 2002
StarStruck
As I beheld a most exceptional and winkless star,
it shot. And I, for being such a thing
as also burns and dies,
believe I may have briefly felt
the permanence of men and stars.(What ailment draws the eyes away
whenever we have chanced to gaze
upon a token of our plight?
And why do thoughts of endless life
still plague us in the night?)I'd rather, having dreamt a while
of circular trajectories,
awaken in a regal style,
discovering the strait I'm in,
than beg the onset of the night
atop some bald and howling hill,
that I might chance to dream again
with consequence and will.But here we are! It seems one day
since we first broke a childish tooth
on adamantine fruit.
And even as we feel our youth,
the merest sizzle of a flame
reminds us while we light the sky
what meteors we've seen.
28 November, 2002
"i only have eyes for you"
some c'mon out again (be ridiculed)
sorta song sang out. the culprit
was the speaker of the house.
i listened painfully as he imposed
the tearing pressure of his words,
and made a whole elaborate house
with floors and rooms for me to be
the helpless person i've become.
i would have thought it difficult
to fall into such servitude,
without a prior exercise.
but here we are, alas, and all of us
(a rather bawdy band of boys)
stand ready to obey the call,
with hardly any fuss at all.
13 November, 2002
Tidal
Every day he went, she watched him go.
She held her breath. A count of steps
would make him stop.
He turned his head. She waved.
He went again.07 November, 2002
The Gull
I cannot speak but cry,
and, crying, must delineate
the limits of the sky.For I ascend as does the sun,
and lift the listless eye away,
but do not die with day.Nor may I ever touch the face
that seems to dim beneath my wing,
to join, alighting, at my death
the shadow of a bird-shaped thing.
28 October, 2002
The Hotel
1. Check-In
"Let me know if the room is not
everything you hoped for.
And if the size of your disappointment
is not so great as to preclude
the possibility of there being another room
in this establishment to satisfy...
then, as I said, just let me know;
I'll see what I can do."2. The Bell Captain (overheard)
"There is a group of gentlemen
returning in a limousine.
They will be extremely grateful to me
for something I did earlier.
If the gratuity is more than fifty dollars, you
may take five for yourself."3. Room Service
"No, Sir,
I do not believe there is anyone in all the world
to have appreciated my gazpacho
quite as much as my departed husband,
Sam. I insist you have a bowl."4. The Proprietor
"And so it is goodbye, again.
We shall suffer the time before we know
you are returning to us,
as if it were possible that you
could patronize another place."
17 October, 2002
The End
The end, the lapsing of a line
(a punctuating mark),
forever threatens to describe,
with silence of indefinite length,
the Thing so many words have tried
to keep from being said.
12 October, 2002
Self Sacrifice
I'd say to Them, if They were at my side
(the Ones who many hours have labored here):
"Behold, my spade has struck at some strange vein,
and jets of strangeness loosed upon the air!"
But as I am alone when this is done,
and have in mind a miner's selfish plan,
I am content to find that not one man
has heard my weapon slide between the bones...
Nor burdened the exposure of such wealth
as spreads in reds and vapors on the ground,
with sympathies and gestures best reserved
for accidental spillings. So I found...
Reversing the direction of my search
(Yet, taking all I found, how well I gave
to some impending digger in the Earth),
a treasure at the bottom of a grave.
18 September, 2002
best western
black's horses come
some runnin' up the hill
some not. some run and run
a plain's forever wide and long
some hills mean stop
sometimes a horse's gotta run
to make a mountain flat
11 September, 2002
The Vandal, The Exile & The Ghost
I.
I sensed a lull in vigilance today,
and stowed a polished blade.
Best look away! Attention's better placed
where "charlatans" have splotched the walls
with colored paint. I'm of a mind
to make of these pictorial scenes,
of nudes with curtains, vases, and of fruit
but ribbons, sundering. My eye
has turned from darkness, hungering
for that peculiar strain of light,
which burns behind, beneath, Below,
and only flickers when the blow
of my dispraising knife elides
some senselessly baroque detail.
So what of surfaces, I say,
when all the seeming cuts away.II.
When hell broke loose I saw
Inquisitors divining Truth,
the Flag (long-standing sentinel),
our troops in gallant monochrome
engulfed by flaming calico.
Abutted bravely by the banks,
where now the raging River flows,
there once were low and humble homes.
I know, for having lived in one,
the value of a prejudice.
We might have judged Them, when they came,
the Enemy. But now I dread
we are (who once were of a Name)
disbanded, nameless and alone,
as I outface unequal Miles
about my equal throne.III.
Oh, dear, the way's a bit confused!
Which foot ahead, and for the foot what shoe?
Shall I revive a memory
(of crisply-ironed linen pants)
to fill this void with circumstance?
Or is it fitting, naked or ill-dressed,
that I should stumble out of doors,
where other Partials dance and moan
among indifferent Wholes?
The answer runs about with fright.
Upon a wall of perfect white,
imagine first the dots. The links, the lines,
my thoughts: all serve, yet cannot find
(with enervated hand,
content to merely warm the clay)
what formless things demand.
30 August, 2002
Idyll Hour
As I was unemployed
and paralyzed in piety,
I mused away the afternoon.
What profit in a reverie!
For laying claim to every chance,
a miracle of Happenstance
arranged me by a tranquil pool...(Oh, I believed, for having lived
an age beneath the Breadfruit Tree,
in gen'rous gusts of gravity
which favor most the man who'd sleep
but for the noise of falling things.),Where, lazy as the hand of God,
a vagrant wind I couldn't see
made waves. Then, imperceptibly...(What open eyes were blind,
to make a world of sighted men
a closed and sightless mind.),There came a change upon the scene...
(A weird reversal of the flows
which ever join the Here-It-Is
to what the Maker's will had been),And we who had but gazed till then
in our enraptured state,
beheld ourselves in Nature's ken,
the makers of our fate.
18 August, 2002
Play Right
Tonight and evermore,
the part of "The Child" will be played by me.
Whose voice is that? An empty stage,
with actors of the faintest gift!
While I am giving emphasis
to such a line as turns the House
to silence, what is this?
But who, among our company
of merry players, could it be
to make of jocund lines and acts
(which I have written to effect
just laughter), shall we say,
a bit of Drama? Now I see
the thickening about their heads,
and why the audience (of late)
confuses Him with me.
11 August, 2002
The Byzantine Shuffle
When come two lovers on the beach
upon a Sea-drenched dog
who runs in circles on the sand
(At times we touch the line of surf,
and howl with blindness!), they should stand
inside his rings of Ecstasy,
then kiss each other, just as if
the line of footsteps they had drawn
were turning, in some secret way,
towards Water. On another day...When you and X are all alone
(The weakness of a single flame
surrenders in suggestive sparks
to darkness.), you will see
that in those fleeting signs and marks
which you had read and understood
for waiting on a kind reply,
were written latent enmities:
"Awake! But for the dreaming eye
the blessings of a longer night."
11 August, 2002
A Writer of Poems Suffers Under a Prosaic Tyranny
After my capture, when the lights
had merged into the Sun,
I drew a breath of difference
and sighed as if I'd won:
"Interrogator, why art thou
so terribly confession-bent?
Am I the only luckless one,
of all who marked the Walls today,
to win your company?" I'd say
the garments of a vagrant should
(just like the feathers of a bird
content to waddle on the ground)
confine themselves to grays and browns.
So Darwin's blessed amnesty
delivers some from casualty.
But I have penchants of a reckless sort,
and foolish plumage. I resort
to wild displays of coloring
whenever I am forced to see
that there's a death inside the night,
which lies in wait for birds like me.
"I couldn't do another thing
but stand my ground and feign surprise
at having roused you from your sleep
with my strange 'Cuckoo!' cries."
06 August, 2002
The Messenger
I have of late begun to strive
to alter and to modify
the patterns of my waking life,
that I may sleep when does the day,
and wake when ends the night.But denizens of darkness may
(as I, for having been awake
at those strange hours when the night
appears to shatter and to make
of earnest shadows earnest light)...Confess addiction to the Sight.
And profits (as a trader may
who trades between opposing States)
have I with earthly jealousy
deposited to bank. My fate...Is (now that I've accepted blame
for trafficking in madness) sealed.
And for my efforts to reclaim
a place among the healed,
who straddle dawn and dusk, have I...Inherited a fatal lot.
The envoys of my ilk, who brought
the gifts of needed medicine,
were thanked with murder. While you sleep,
we are the villains you have been.
03 August, 2002
The Propagandist
Take heed; the hour comes!
The world is full of dancing men,
and each inspired dancer soon
(of all who shake this merry throng),
forgets the way that he had come.
To make the noon so hot and long,
as were an hour the length of life,
we stand with bellies in our backs,
and abnegate historic strife.Now, dance with me as if we shared
a single, restless pulse of blood.
And make the beating of your heart
as quiet as an insect would
when temporal floods of amber come
to make immortal crowds of one.The hour passes, and the grave,
distinguished by our fevered treads,
receives those bodies we have caused
to dance without their heads.
01 August, 2002
An Elevated Position
I have, but for a moment, ceased
my thoughts of thinking that I see
the sluggish trails and wanderings
of men who are the same as me.
When they are doing as I do,
and stirring in the wilds of night,
what blindnesses approve
the absence of our sight.
And while a muzzle follows you
(The crosshairs will align!),
remember in your own pursuits
the treacheries of Time.We are but once or twice, they say,
a subject of the hunt.
And when we are compelled to flight,
in speed and stealth and stunt,
behold the wealth of what is man.
The effort makes the right.Reversals being what they are,
when ironies abound,
I think that I shall raise my gun
when aiming towards the ground,
that I might once, before I die,
The Predator astound.
31 July, 2002
Missionary to Sodom
Oh, when and where should one begin?
The spinning of the carousel
does marvels to the human eye.
For being in a fatal spin,
what marvels we've denied.The colors of the carnival,
the awful reds and blacks
which flame and foment anarchies,
have brightened in this amber light.
The ponies, on their backs as well...Have splendored into porcelain,
their horsemen. And the energy,
of all this futile spinning, must
imbue the spirit of a man
with hopefulness. I trust...That in those faces I have seen
(whom destiny has joined to me
by making them my family),
I may resolve more than the masks
which I have worn. Alas...They are converging now,
the ones who in their movement seem
but ghosts of me. And they convene
to make a portrait of the man
whom, in so many ways, I've been.I see, I see, and recognize
now in the mirror, whom they say
has butchered millions and allied
with Satan. Are my eyes
the same as what they've seen...When they have chanced to look upon
a murder? It would seem,
the standard pay for seeing well
is death. And I, whose eyes have been put out,
may in my blindness tell...That all the ones who've come and stood
on slightly-higher-than-the-ground
have lied. Is it allowed
that some mere reader of the page
may read the Word aloud?What is it in these dog-eared books
(the Bible, Torah and Koran),
that draws from men such Godless sounds
when they are telling whom they can
that they must read to understand?A man I'd been expecting came,
just as the crowd was thinning out.
And rivers of opinion went
like echoes into silence. Then,
we were a muddy pool again.But I, a mimic of the beast
who spoke in tongues, addressed those men
who loitered by the mountain's base,
and thrust upon their disbelief
a truthful language. I was brief...When I, as I was spinning round
and casting meanings into waste,
twice whispered what I meant, then said
that spinning in a circle with your eyes closed
is a very, very dangerous thing.
05 June, 2002
Self Reliance
A quest is (in a time of questions) such
a chancy office of the will,
that I succumbed to Wonder where I stood,
and of the asking took my fill.A light, I reckoned (as I swung
and tossed my lantern towards the darks
which lay beyond the range of sight)
does little service to the eyes
when they are drawn as if the dawn
were marked by dancing fireflies.I think for having lately dwelt
among a frenzied sort of men
who raze the night but are content
to hail a candle as the Sun,
that I shall hunker and rely
upon these trodden sticks and twigs,
and build a fire where I sit.
So, come now, paper-wing-ed things.
01 June, 2002
Estranged
Awake, my child. It is tonight
that I, an erstwhile sleeper, must,
with my most female and persuasive voice,
suggest as gently as a breath
that you should look, while looking's done,
and from the sights presented you
appraise the outcome of your wish.If it were now such as it was
when we were last upon this path
(both looking out, at shoulder's width,
and closer, by the surly helm
of our ancestral ship),
I might aspire and decide,
for both of us in mated stride,
that these great, scending dunes of dust
we spread before our modern prow
are like the waters we have known.But I have eyes for blizzard's mess,
and know this fog for what it is.
We are a dagger in the ice,
my once and newborn son.
Embrace your station and arise.
Thou art among a wand'ring tribe.One star, whose nightly pilgrimage
(as much as any beggar's foot,
upon the deserts of his day,
impresses markings in the sand,
which mean a passer's come and gone)
about the heavens, and a bit
of earthly touching too,
has given up its reign of night,
and is yet sinking. In what sky,
and for what foreign pair of eyes,
are auguries appearing? Why?
31 May, 2002
Clairvoyant
The limits of the language lay
in rings around the central Word.
Arranging circles as it could,
the music of the thing which said
that I should try to pace myself,
and make a rhythm of my plans,
expanded. Is a symphony
(and are the listening ears, which sting
for being so besieged) the same
as my reactions to a storm?When I am touched by many things,
the sounds recorded at my birth
(the many tolls of bells, the rings
which drown the early cries of men),
are heard, as if it were again
the moment of condensing one
from all the manies. I have been
a trumpet in the strictest sense,
for making music of the winds
which I have gathered into me.
29 May, 2002
In Loco Parentis
A poverty of witnessing,
a small amount of "There you are!",
appeared in guarded readiness....To savor and salute the God
whose salutary spectacle
exploded forth the Fall.And then, while He was disbelieved,
His hands enmeshed to make a blur
of where His working digits were...A fire of frenzied frictioning.
The lights and sparks confused us all.
Now memory is gone. How small...We may, at mirror's depth, soon see
erections of our bravest sort,
collapse like waves against the sea.
22 May, 2002
The Perfect Ones
The downward-firing light of noon,
when seen through those discerning eyes
as gather on their lofty roosts
to meet the noon surprise,
must seem a strange inversion of the smokes
which nightly rise. It's true,
as any high-placed spy would say,
that all things of sufficient weight
to pain a bearer such as you
(endowed by day with bearing strength),
must fall, as even bidden light must do,
against a surface and reflect.By force of factual gravity
are all good truths condemned to fly,
when they have met with solid ground.
And we, the substance which rejects
both light and dark, for difference, deny
that anything which comes from out
to settle on a different skin,
to enter and transform,
may be the very flights of things
which we have tossed for knowing them
the worst parts of ourselves. And then
we are the (angry) same, again.
07 May, 2002
Oquendienne Flower
Cold and heavy are the drops
condensed by pressure from the air.
A rain, a portent and a dream
(a long and sinuous relief),
appeared above the upturned heads
to touch their faces and their grief.We drank. And I, a floral ordinaire,
with petals bright and steady, there
absolved (by drinking past my fill)
the ones whose mouths were strangely dry,
for drinking the amounts they brought
with their un-ready cries.
30 April, 2002
Restraint
Some puddle by the place you stood
has come to stillness, after whiles
and whiles of there-were-standing-you.
And I am left to mark the flat,
as at the end of dialogues
where one has figured... Looking back,
I see I was the listener,
who merely watched for spreading rings
from quiet places where you dropped
the careful offer of a stone.My habit of observing falls
(and all that they with time expose
for rivers wearing at the shoals),
has trained an otherwise suspicious eye
to trust, and credit as the crop
of all things working towards an end,
(or if they merely seem to go
beyond this present, as they did
when some abandoned going went)
an end as if an end were meant.But now I see the files of men,
pretending in this aftermath
(where long the tumult and the spray
of frenzied entries to the pool
have settled into amnesty)
that all this messy work of late
(of tearing through the limen's gate)
was but a flight of dreaming minds,
and all we've dared to learn from this,
but lessons of a youthful kind.
27 April, 2002
Cutshort
Occasion, night and diffidence
inter the subterranean.
But to the looker-out (of sight and skill,
who manages an eye, by force of will),
the eye returns a favoring glance: a line,
as life itself has seemed at times,
in spite of errors and of loops...
(Deliver me to me! For I,
by chains of circles, feel me bound)
the figure of "Advance!".I've wondered long, and wished to find
where on a circle, by design,
the Powers that be (for you and me)
have carved the exits. Once outside
these questions of morality,
I know that I shall swing out straight,
and find my way among the Late,
among the strivers I have sensed,
(like me) who, knowing line's can't end,
submit to bend and bend again.There is the aspect of a prayer
which keeps the ones who pray and ask
from some consoling sight. It's fair,
as I now pray for answers, that
the light of questions come before
(as hordes of asking only can)
disguise the target, and impress
a vast and littered battlefield
with death. I am obliged
to cast my spear and die...If at the moment of my grace,
when I am seen by those I seek,
my thoughts are of awakenings.
I swear (if I may speak
with lips and tongue to stone)
I've heard the murmuring dead.
Who lives a lifetime on the earth
may say: (because they've heard it said)
"We are but hopeful carrion,
and stir, though we are gone."
24 April, 2002
Coronado
This part's necessarily slurred.
A father and an erring man
am I. Before tonight,
an ark I called my fondest wish,
traversed the darkest ocean. She
became my eldest daughter when
I rent her from her mother's hem.
And ever since, and ever since
I grounded strangely on that shore,
(installed myself by hat in air
-we were so gay upon that day-
which twirled, which twirled,
then settled on my head to say:)
I am arrested by a fear.
And fatherhood contests itself!
Hip, hey, ha-rooh,
the missed are well.
A king arrives and conquer's done.
A daughter (and, for everyone
a plain enticement to the feast;
a spread, a royal come-and-eat)
are offered by my gesturing hand.
And you, good man,
for being handy to the throne,
are gifted thus, and thus alone
you'll suffer on a princess. Done!
17 April, 2002
Moribund
Oh, there's a presence I can sense,
when those clear pictures which appear
upon the lightward face of things
have blurred and gone. It's been a fear,
as long as I've had eyes to see
(and, in poor light, to recognize
among the shadows, hunting me)
a signal of intelligence.In movement there is evidence,
whilst I retract from where I've been
a hunter by my own regard,
that I (as I must know my prey
when he withdraws from habitude)
am known by something that predicts,
for besting me in stillness, when
I'll stir impatient, and begin...To call my quarry by that name
which I have learned for empathy
to hunted things. We are the same
(inside this vicious ritual):
the one that I'm obliged to kill
for his unwitting wilderness,
and I (like him, compelled to thrill
at nearness to my death).
12 April, 2002
Acknowledged into Subsequence
Squint once tonight and you may see
some smolder of the light you need.
Reduction is the way to go,
if, in the masses that compete
for all your breadth of seeing, we
(the half-charred lingerers,
so burned for nearness to the heat),
are all that you may taste of flame.
Come closer to the influence
of seeing things but thought to be
inflammable, erupt as if
composed of fragrant gasoline.They say that pilgrims to the summit boil
at lesser altitudes than this,
for having such low vapors press
against the threshold of a hiss.
It means (if you were listening
for those faint gurgles which impress,
upon the target, signs of strife),
that some fine sorties from the base
have fizzled. Is a life,
once given to attempting flight,
an equal to the multitudes
departing into night?Before the baleful winking light,
all full of lunge and threat'ning at the edge,
I am arrived. Now contemplate
your own position, vis-à-vis
these many brothers of a state.
And ask yourself, while there is time
(before the lateness of the hour
imbues the asking Voice with power),
wherefore a man of mod'rate means
(such as a you, or I, or him)
might wager being, to exist
as but a glimmer in the dim.
06 April, 2002
The Anarchist's Lament
"Reflect, at distance from the origin."
The sounds of voices we have been
(Oh man, it is with tiredness
that we, the heirs of blessing, bless
new speakers), are but echoes of the past.
And if, for instance, I were last
along a chain of heretics,
I'd know, for speaking timely (late),
that I had spoken of our fate.
I wish I had the means to change
the histories that we've deranged,
and would, but for this telling need,
now say: "I am not now
imprisoned as I am."It is a while since I've been touched.
The cost of membership is high.
A seat among the curling smoke,
which lofty ceilings (High!) invoke,
must mean that I'm sequestered where
ascetics dwell. It is my hope
(and foolish as a boy may be,
who thinks so of a mother's gift),
a Bacchae's blood may serve to veer
(for all my father's reining back:
Apollo and the rest of that),
yet outward from this inward coil,
if but to visit, touch, retract,
and, by so touching, spoil.
30 March, 2002
Minstralis
My sense of purpose suffers in the mix
where hordes of men, succumbed in silence,
come to weep and twist.
I am a voice inside of this,
ephemeral, plangent and a bit amiss.
But I have reckoned signs of order
in the howling chaos. Is a mist,
supremely moistening the leaves and trees
(which, ever-verdant, lie beneath
these clouded masses), all the same
as one good downpour? So, the rain
does (with its many downward-firing strains)
approach the music of mortality.
And one, who dreams of targets, as I do,
may hearten in the knowledge (it is true)
that some of us, in our most blind attempts
at bringing water to the roots
(to feed that sorest need),
by beating our wet wings against their boughs,
so silently succeed.
28 March, 2002
Insobrio
C'mon a lantern, or a sheepish play!
"Who goes out there?" 'Tis I, amok-run,
while the world is gay.
A symbol's ease of light (again
it was the fireflies who spoke,
with phosphors in the even-ing,
the night) owes everything to darkness.
Whilst I woke...Against the dims of this or that
(as winking things grew fierce and fat),
I was opposed to poles of certitude,
and rather (as a light is called
to cry its brilliant magnitude),
would say, if asked to vote for one
of only two ways: "To exist,
the moon defies the sun."
27 March, 2002
The Diplomat
One day each tribe,
with progeny behind,
made swathes of Them,
and likeness into lines.A man, of sorts,
a leader in his mind,
at point against and eager to his time,
supposed, as I walked conflict to collide,
a weakness in my solitary stride.And they who followed him (the moment held
no sounds of footsteps other than his own)
were, unbeknownst to him, concealed
behind the fury of his frown.Oh sure, there are those forces which decide
wherefore we reckoned (he and I)
that neither one would step aside.
But I will dare, rememb'ring, to surmise
that had we seen some sign of right,
some signal in the color of our skins
(that one of two so matched as we,
one brightly dark, one darkly bright
must own the honor of the way)
one would have ceded passage on that day.Yet I am nervous on this road
(where sorts of men must come to cross),
and say to mothers as they pass,
with nurslings at their bosoms: "Loss
and weepings after sacrifice
are needless in this contretemps."I spoke aloud and was misheard,
when, from the message I had meant
for ears outside this influence,
those listeners of me construed
in kindest counsel only threat.
23 March, 2002
Exodus
Slow, slow the morning and its change.
Let's think a while of fleeting dreams,
and of the places we have been.
It may, the night prevailing thus,
too soon appear we haven't left
at all. The bed is both beginning
and the end. One story framing us,
conspirators in telling, must
enlarge somehow, and (old enough
to be of ancients and of youths)
conclude precisely where we are,
in light of endings and of truths.I saw, and may be ridiculed
for thinking me a master then,
such sights at onset of the trip:
a line of stones, an arch, perhaps a bridge,
(dressed in such Summer sanctity,
that I could neither will nor think
of passages into the past
to explicate why dawn and this,
resplendent as the noon, at last
appeared a coming into day)
and, for the footsteps gaining there,
an exit and a way.
20 March, 2002
Prey
The moment stood. "I should...", I said
"for all these things appearing now,
reveal, once and for all,
those aspects of myself I've held
behind a screen of maybe-this."Then quickly, as a sighted thing
must ever and must always fly
from its appearance (I have been
so nearly captured), it was I
who, when the moment of disclosure came,
decided hidden to remain.
17 March, 2002
Mission Rays
Some peoples of the world present
such willing sands. And I consent,
with playful handfuls, heaped on heap,
to make of their come-hither dunes
a place where I may deign to sleep.My castles are but brief. Delight,
and all the gifts of contact, fight
against the laissez-faire of they
who think as do the cubbied crabs: the tide
erases all, whilst all must hide
to strengthen barricades at night.The change afoot is permanent.
The natural rinse and toss of it
opposes my most careful "There,
a piton through these granite ribs
permits ascensions from below
to scale a tortuous throat and chin."I think the arrogance of monuments
erected for the sake of speech
from silent sediments, like sand,
will always make of silence noise,
and ignorance understand.
14 March, 2002
Disabused
I dreamt of you consoling me
for something I had lost.
The sadness of the matter is
I've wakened. So I thought,
as one would have to, when alone like this,
that it has been a sham.
Oh, there are trumpets in this memory,
and smoke-filled bars. I am
emerging from a night of sleep.
No dawn, or changes, of the sort
that raise long-scuttled barges from the deep,
are working on my mind. At least
as far as you're concerned,
it seems a head of mythic size
has rolled against your loafers. Now
it is my veined and marbled lips that speak
as granite. And the prize,
yet waiting your discovery,
is yours on top of mine. My eyes
have found no reasons why
(for all I've sought in rhymes to say
with rhythmic vagaries, and sighs)
the product of our brief-together (yes we were),
was "Us" instead of "I".
09 March, 2002
The Cuckold
What is it 'bout the girls who seem
an issue of the bark? Bright gleams
appeared of amber-captured ancient things
at each firm pressing of the flesh.Against a rough and tortured tree,
I bade my love reveal to me
the essences from which she sprang,
and why the boring worms, that know
the wood, spoke well of her and sang...To me. When I first sought the dirt,
and placed my head upon the rot
that fringes those deep-digging roots,
I swear I heard an Irish song.But now the elves and fays which I've disowned,
to live a while among a sort
of city-living man,
have clambered in her throat to say
(and with those kissing lips!) to me:"It was a while, but here we are
again." Imagine, by the winking light
of distant memory, how far
to backwards is the night. I've known
the summit of a stolen day,
and forwards older I have grown.
07 March, 2002
Beez
Lo, a birth, and it is mine,
into a selfish cell of time,
amongst arrayed Them, wall to wall,
my larval brethren. Heeding call,
we fidget in an equal mass
(a caste of slaves, one sordid class),
by inculcation from within,
to feed a flourishing machine.What ceaseless shivers of the wing insist,
(the central presence of a god
in place before we're ever born),
gives answer to the nascent "Why
a perfect multitude admits,
into homogenizing ranks,
a seed of difference?" To enlist,
by lure of difference, different thanks.We come, as ordered, to reflect
upon the deity we've made,
such sameness as She bade. For price
of thinking us a filial group,
the ones of us who might have stood
alone, ambivalent before the god,
have seen the mirror of Her face,
and, in themselves, Her grace.But by the force of I-am-new,
I sacrifice my membership
among the feeders of the bloat,
to make a question of the past
which birthed me into servitude.
And now do grieving ask (or asking grieve):
can I before the Queen I've slain,
an elsewhere-hive conceive?
01 March, 2002
Perihelion
And so begins anew
the effort of the day,
which drives insiders to the street.
The men who've long resigned a home
(and taken as their daily haunts
the Palisades of Enmity,
and "may I for a farthing keep
some distance from the center, deep
and silent" as they'd say),
have also moved in for a change.
But nothing is as per the laws,
which we for sake of diff'rence held
as equal to the rights of birth.
So now the cold, as had the warm,
makes room within her working ranks
for healing and for harm.
27 February, 2002
Initiated Boy
"T" minus one: The moon is full.
One day before tonight was good
for crying out while there was light
yet streaking. Now, behold the dawn
arrives and finds: Me, an inverted man,
exposed in compromising pose,
athwart the lines of gender. Was a rose,
so sweetly scented in her prime,
e'er more than this? A nose,
as I had trained for noticing
the everythings of wrong,
now fills with fetid yes-there-is.
And, lo, the stink of me today
(for I have bended knees to Him
who spoke to my uncertainty)
is all that I may smell of bliss.
26 February, 2002
Masters of Light
Beginning where we cannot go,
a messenger departs for here.
Who trails a scent of origin,
for benefit of patient we,
arrives regaled in Sun's bright smell.
The painters of most special gift,
with eyes attuned to what He sends,
must hold in their frail palette's wish
the message of delight. It ends
at once when brushes lift
from off the canvas. What is it
that they who paint with what they sniff
(with colors from another realm),
from sense to sense transmit?
25 February, 2002
Suspected of Misconduct
Did you say a year was
all that I can last? Is
(if I drink a fifth) now
all that you have thought of?
Am I still investment grade? Why
do you still remain? So,
there is yet a moment. Life,
outside these recent urgencies
of take-me-to-the-toilet-bowl,
may yet assert a lucid "Hi".
To the observant Sober Cats,
who live in Ready-to-Deny,
I say I am a drunkard. That's
enough pretension for today.
And if I were to walk the line,
they'd say I was okay.
24 February, 2002
Imperium to Bounty: Here
At the outset of a jungle, sprawled,
(as would caught fish there go to dance,
for being driven from the place
where they had only sought the chance
to swim and dream of deeper things)
ten men, my own (for all their sins
of excess on the bloodied grass,
bourne out of needful sufferance),
did one third Sunday of the month
decide them to a mutiny.I asked them, as they hated me
for all my tensions on their lines,
why they, free swimmers in the deep,
had e'er consented to become
such shallow-seekers. Must I keep
attentions on these volunteers
who sacrificed a lightless depth
to come so near the fatal sun,
if I am ever to control
the colonies that I have won?I fear the nature of the place
where, seeking for a name and wealth,
we dared invoke our given right
to steal. Was it by stealth
(with sails aggressive in the night,
impelled by winds we brought from home),
that I, a captain of the Crown,
departed from civility,
and bade my swimmers drown? We are
adrift in sacred seas.
22 February, 2002
Junkie Interrupted
Go mind the door, my friend.
The sound of summoned cops,
aggressive on the fire-escape,
can only mean your tempus fugit. Drops
of some oppressive fluid fall
now quickly from the ceiling's height.
Go see! Who comes in uniform,
with minds made up for thee,
are pushers of another sort
of drug. Is it philosophy,
when at cross-purposes,
which orders us into such camps as these?
Now climb, and madly. There is time
to reach the summit-center of your bed,
for them to find you as you wished:
not living and not dead.
21 February, 2002
Armageddon
Imagine an event
of such far-reaching touch,
the death of many thousands, shall we say
enough of them to liberate
at once the rest of us. One day,
quite soon, now visible from where we are,
we may awake to such a sound
as would, but for the silence it produced,
resemble the detachment of a leaf.
The ground would be so littered by the Fall,
and none of us would think it strange
that Winter was the end of all.
17 February, 2002
Famine
A lifted hand reveals: Nothing beneath
the stones we turn explains,
with seed-sign or some straining green
encoiled to down, the death
of aimless grazers such as we,
who came once when, not long ago,
it seemed the grasses would endure. But now
we are emaciated cows.They say the mouth infects, for all good hands
at work upon the mother soil,
with cancerous slobber. What can they
who feed a shrieking gut suppose
of silence in the fields,
where once the clamor of "I Give to Thee"
was loud, as loud as e'er
the susurrus of blood should be?
15 February, 2002
Rhythm
Who walks outdoors for wanting his own beat,
aspires to be the rain. My feet
were given, thus, the cadence of a stray.
And once the thoughtful lift-and-place
of that which hammers long the endless day
had slipped into the maybe-I-shall-stroll,
without the structures of a There-I-go,
the noises that were made against the street
became as random shots across the bow.
Explosions of I-haven't-got-a-clue
were heard to ring with strident piquancy,
where only know-it-alls of walk
and jog-in-place had gone before.
I broke from constancy! Oh my,
how there are currents which abscond
with any Broken-Free.
04 February, 2002
Fire
There will be loss. No doubt,
the countdown is correct,
and I have judged them as my friends
whom I've had reasons to suspect
of feeding tinder to these flames. We burned;
and, for complicity,
into the smoky, spark-filled aftermath
(where there blazed daylight in the end)
I went, a darling of the heretofore
just-dark-enough-to-mask-the-smell.
Am I what you defend?
Now, for the brightness of my act
(the very cause of your surprise),
became you that, as I'd supposed,
which I could ne'er have hoped to see
with my once star-fed eyes.
02 February, 2002
X-Ray
Overexposure, most especially
of film that's black and white,
has the effect of making things
surrender their own light.
Into the poles of Yes and No,
from out the grays we daren't broach,
the flights of maybe this or that
go light, so that our reckoning
is but a bold approach,
which asks of nothing to confess
some something. It's a mess
of all the digging scrutinies
aborted on the surface. Depth,
beyond what I had first surmised,
becomes the answer which resolves
no adjectives from light.
24 January, 2002
L'Ingenue
I'd shut lights now, and once tonight
the experts of the waning light
would see that I had dimmed myself
to be a member in the dark.
Of all the gestures I have learned,
the ways to pose for that effect
which say that I'm a natural
and to be taken at my worth,
no greater gift is there to give
into the Christmas of a night,
when hands are waiting to unwrap
the layers of abashed-am-I,
than here-I-am-a-virgin-still,
matured to this awakening.
What goes unforced into the light,
comes out again. Twice bright I am.
22 January, 2002
Mens Rea
Sleep is one generic
(but for the dreams awake inside)
expanse of "I can't fathom little things
with which I'm satisfied."
So there I was beholdin' her
at tide-wash on the beach,
with children in a clinging fringe.
At play around the central Mom,
(their tiny ankles deep
into the agile, moving sands),
I saw the offspring of my fondest wish
imperiled by the tide.
One woman, mother's instinct made
a watcher by that ecotone
where sea-bourne creatures fly
great sorties o'er the land. She knows,
for having once already been
a bride. Before such motherhood
as would itself (for some fry's sake,
or for the looming threat of wakening
into a childless life) deny
the very joys of giving birth,
what can a man conceive of this
upon a barren Earth?
21 January, 2002
Reveille
With long beleaguered instrument,
my lips in blowing unison
made music as you've never heard.
The horn He forged to make the voice
that I once raised to elevate
our falling soldiers (Gone before
we might have guessed the cost to us.,
is now a shrill and hateful song.
There is an end in sight of this!
We may with fresh eyes look upon
what once we thought ourselves to be
when Good was indissoluble
from what in earnest suffering
the palsied labors of the weak
against the tortures of the strong
resembled as they died and shrieked.
18 January, 2002
Oh, Sam's a Sham
Middle of the road kinda soul:
boy shoulders and a bit of tit.
While Harries go among the flock,
in guise of docile Harriets,
I boast a universal size,
by wading in the gender pools.
The very lure to snag "her" eyes,
my hips enshroud no genitals
beneath suggestive folds of dance.
The maybes of my push and pull
permit of broadest dalliance.
The width of my accept-who-comes
becomes a narrow strait of "Now,
that you're a man inside a bra,
to fit my shrinking panty-fill,
no need for cocksure attitudes."
Whomever stiffens first his will,
so wins the authorship of Right.
10 January, 2002
The Midwife
"This is not the sort of fear, I hear,
through which one cannot pass."
A stone has fallen from the hand.
Upon the slope of gravity,
a prince is poised; for sale.
The bidders are: uncertainty,
the music of the womb. "I say,
what was the damage to enlist,
for just the first few bars?
I think that I should like to see
a gesture of intent."
Before the crisis of a doubt,
today there were such auguries,
one might have taken at her word,
who called in through the opening.
"Come out, young man. Come out."
09 January, 2002
Recess
What boy-big things grow small? Oh, there
are spaces for the lookabout;
one candy-weaned transcender seems
an eye alone. Through diamond shapes
of chain-link fence, against his face,
I am reversed with him. Inside,
there is a paradise of sights.
But for the haze of asphalt, grey,
I could appear to him. As I
am faintly fugitive, and he
a looker-out, we cannot meet
without the haste of our goodbye.
07 January, 2002
Abolitionist
Agreed, imagined shopping trips
behind an eyes-closed consequence,
become as arcs from here to there.
I am a bridge of living. Once,
these turnstiles promised ecstasy,
the trains departing toward excess.
The doors were found to be all closed;
the pilgrims to the marketplace
returned to us, with wares unsold.
Whatever, in their mysteries,
those bundles might have said to us
of man (in pallid uniforms,
both gray and blue, we were as boys
back then, un-frightened by the hunt),
the prospect of a commerce won,
the wiles we were but learning then,
required the advent of a mind
as struggles now to understand.
03 January, 2002
Flakefall
"The scythe of Autumn felled the withered day,
and low the grazing Winter claimed new hay,
in hungry double-handfuls." I
am tempted by the echo of old lines
to quit this forward place, but am arrived
where boldly-stroked black letters lie
succumbed in whiteness. "Once, before the snow
had ever spoken harshly to the ground,
it lay but as a gift." One sound
returns me now unwilling to the page. "It is an age
of cold white hysterical noise."
24 December, 2001
A Book Between
It is a lie, you know,
that death vacates a place where something was
alive. Until you looked for it,
I'd swear it was right there upon the shelf,
between those two thick volumes, pressed,
a little spine of pink.
Go look, I'll bet it's as I say.
So many sleepless nights she stretched
across the empty space. I watched her raise
one arm up to that shelf,
then turn to see me feigning sleep. I was
obedient. In that respect,
a midnight reading of a favorite book
is like an infidelity. I bore
the stealthy footsteps taking her
to whom she read. Her restlessness
is all that I can guess
would make her hide it in some other place
before she died. I wish
I could have watched her reading face.
18 December, 2001
Revolution
Anonymous above the water line,
what thoughtful pressure bows the surface? Tense
with insufficiency of breath,
aspiring tenants of the underworld
are frantic in their sloughing. Oh, my earth!
A recent ransack of the tide,
in apoplectic jealousy,
has swept into the coffers of the land,
and made new swimmers, with a sudden blow
of her remembering hand.
15 December, 2001
Ambivalence
Outside again: the better of me gets
a simple traffic light. It's red;
and a pedestrian reduced to this
am I, who can't abide his head,
nor judge the sprawling crosswalks as they are.
No surging motors, headlamp beams;
the far is only go-green dark.
Yet I am paralyzed
at willing's curbside, imminently late,
and never nearer to the start.The outbound trip must heed. Direction's whim,
the clearing coast and most of all
the moral question (stay or whether go),
are arbitrary matters. Small
before the signs, I ache for clarity!
What constellation breaks? The moon
is free of all encumbrances.
But I am paralyzed
by some subsiding notion of a "Yes,
it is the moment to embark."One step's aversion to itself awakes
the vision of a walking man,
through fog. A distance I can't penetrate
is gesturally his; he can.
But take it as an omen, fair and square:
when unseen perils in the night
you dare, for thinking late the light
(while we stand paralyzed),
go harmless as befits the neutral fog,
whichever way you go from here.13 December, 2001
The Latecomer
Were weary men, and all of them
a crowd at harbor's door.
The banished light, the night's intent:
make drinkers of us all.
The Winter's threat spoke worst to him
yet welcomed at the bar,
who frost's first meal of nose and ear
was off'ring on his farm.
Where fallow-fallen row and row
October might have saved,
to waning day he broke his back
for harvest of delay.
When midnight brought him for his drink
to dark the tavern door,
I staved the dawn off for his sake,
and joined him for one more.
10 December, 2001
The Harlequin
What thing on earth resembles him
when he is painted? Wild,
escaped from my menagerie
and flown between the bars,
appears he to the ready-drunk
in one disguise. Of three
I know he owns, the scarlet one's
the bravest suit by far;
reserved for that red company
as well inspires the show.
And in that secret habitat,
where nightly he must go,
are his most daring somersaults
performed. The raging teeth
are all that he may see of them
who grin in privacy,
at sporting vantage they have bought.
The borders of the stage,
where scarce light finds our painted boy,
confine him to his cage.
09 December, 2001
Zero Sum
The rope that hangs bedeviled is
to nature's teaching taut.
The serpent straightens from his coil,
for burden of a thought.
When timely hunger wrings the fang,
a life must come to naught,
but wakes the question at the scene:
What is it we have bought?
01 December, 2001
The Seal Hunter
By silent speculations of the oar,
(I row a gainless line, just as before
the hardness of the stone returns the strike.
The waters of my passing run alike,
unvaried to the constance of my prow.)
I seek among the ice flows. He is now
too near! A quarry fleeting from my sight
advances with the swiftness of the night.But Winter's dearth inspires a hunger mad,
(Oh startled loon, you dove but soon were glad
I'd driven sullen silvers to your beak
in frenzied schooling flight) among the weak
whom memories of the hunt alone sustain
upon the road of death. For all my pain,
I fear that I may never catch you. Still,
I know that I have touched you with my will.
27 November, 2001
The Alternate
At daybreak after troubled sleep,
I woke into dismay
to hear the question I had dreamed.
A darkness on the day
would lay its hand which way I looked.
At first it was myself
who swam uncertain on the glass,
with visage of an elf
I knew from nightmares wandered out
to occupy my bed,
then stole inside my very clothes.
He watched me from my head,
and blinked his eyes as I would blink,
to prove that it was me
the mirror framed in such strange guise
to meet his company.
Nor was the vase of flowers right:
"Illusions?" then I thought,
as sniffed we with our elfin nose
the fragrances of naught.
Replacing then those blooms we held
with our uncommon hand,
my tenant gave as answer this,
that I might understand:
"Whatever in your history
supposes to exist,
in service to a sensual truth
the present must resist."
26 November, 2001
Mosquito
A fiber has come wild upon the arm:
the slender tail is black against the skin;
its head is anchored firmly in the flesh.
A hair among the multitude of hairs
that make the ticklish mat which lies between
the prize of blood and those who come to try,
has sent a signal meaning that a touch,
one small but lively presence on the crust,
is not the harmless knitting of two hairs,
nor even the alighting of a mote
such as a slash of sunlight might reveal
in senseless swirlings ever in our midst,
but keenly that sensation which betrays
a visit from the drinker of our days.
24 November, 2001
Gentlemen
As omened evils may at leisure prowl
where long in stillness fallen echoes are
but ghosts of sound against the ears of men,
who, for the haunted lateness of the hour,
make quick their steps upon the cobbled bridge,
I too am lively o'er the tar-black Thames,
when neither moon nor lantern's feeble glow
can scarcely light a stranger's hidden aims;
but go all men as must into the night
to walk as if with sacks upon their heads
among them as like blinded by the dark
but roused up by this riddle from their beds:
"What lightless velvet of the paw conceals,
but to his prey the panther soon reveals."
17 November, 2001
Slave Heir
Alarmed by the sudden leap of the sun,
(up to its usual place of torture
over bathers and their parasols -
the spinning disks of more than hue,
which draw by force of briskly turning hands
the careless eyes of children
touring gaily on the malecon)
I woke from counting how the palm trees whooshed
(the portent of an ever-bigger one
was always taken by reflection first)
and how they drooped against the fender's curve,
in nightmare limo black,
as I, a tiny diplomat,
deciphered well the artifacts
of tribal peoples up for sale,
whom every fearsome palm tree bent
to black, exploited for my vision just
behind their begging masks
and kiln-fired reaching limbs that stirred
from under sandy canopies
of tangled palm tree roots,
to hiss the frondy wish of heat
(the melting of my one-way glass)
upon this swift miraging car.
15 November, 2001
Deja Vu
When the present snags for likeness to the past,
and the catch-claw of a moment catches fast,
you may see a haze of dream upon the real,
as the pressure of rotation from the wheel
turns remorseless on the closure of a day,
lest the pleasure of a yester gone away
trip the forward machination of the clock
and arrest the laggard eye in captured shock.
10 November, 2001