I will burn then for you - a poem

ignite me, I am frozen,
my bulb, stuck in the socket,
wishes to explode to flowering,
do not leave me in Spring,
a bud on the vine,
but light my fuse, I will burn then
for you

parthenon - Nashville, Tn. - a poem

approaching, one is struck by order
plotted on fields of grass, and rising
in those columns, Ionic capitals,
if it is holy to become silent, in awe
of a simulacra that transports you
to the Hellenes, I became as a saint

meteor crater, Winslow Az. - a poem

meteor crater, Winslow, Az.


we step out to the observation deck
and look across it's expanse,
a lateral vertigo takes hold, where
you're afraid you'll fall to the other side,
'it happened at the earth's beginnings',
you know they're not lying, the ancient dust
covered by eons of red iron oxide
is quiet as the Buddha attempted,
a child wondering about Sunday School lessons
is clutching the rail, prepared to leap
from this end to the opposite
as he jumps up and down, prepared to fall,
his faith leaks out his pants leg,
just like coins through a hole in his pocket
rattling across the man made floor

provenance - a poem

asking his provenance,
he hated the Turks,
they for no reason killed
a million of his people,
balled fists and tired eyes,
a tear,
north and east
of his oppressor,
he said in the end,
the heartbreak,
the agony of geography

empty, then fullness - two poems

empty

I now know
all of it
trees, escrows,
blackened steak,
bills of lading
all bottom out
to empty
--
fullness

sails full blown
grow heavy
with emptiness
ariadne's thread
always forgotten,
icaruses, all,
wings melting

empty reprisal - a poem

I went to the Fair
this evening alone,
buds in my ears,
playing music amidst
the out-ers attending,
expecting to feel lonely
I fell, entranced,
caught as a passerby
in a crowd of belong-ers,
how many young men
with young families
reflected me, ages ago,

occuring to me,
I was just one node of
a circle,
small, yes, but part of one,
help building fractals
that I standing, upright,
I could see building
one on the other

shards - a poem

he recovers shards
from broken pails
rusted from heads of
water, bottomless,

a one man factory
electrified
operating through night,
through barrenness,

listing quietly, efficient,
as ink leaving pen
to paper

symphonic - a poem

symphonic, I hear
that one slightly untuned
cello bleating right notes,
lithe fingering over
the frettless board,
removed from the
orchestration, sadder
than the rest

american youth - a poem

I must let it go,
the promise of youth
beyond middle age,
that toy ball hidden
in wire racks
at the grocery
we all hoped for
as children

relapse - a poem

she sees things as normal,
devastated, sitting,
watching the world on a screen
flit by, sepia shadow on the floor
flickering away at the dust
accumulated from an inability
to leave the couch,
when out the window a bird
bats at the glass, it sees
it's reflection,
she turns again to the screen
to see hers

tucked away - a poem

what is it, you ask, with you,
meaning me, my arms flailing
to my internal music, dancing,
as if the center of everything
tangible, regretful, pathetic,

I do not know where it comes from,
this subjective tape recorder that keeps playing
through your talking, your excitations, hurrumphs,
it simply plays on, this dialogue too, of memories,
imaginations, things I sensed from when a boy,

suddenly I am the Fool whose journey
has ended, become wise by your countenance,
your frown, making aged wrinkles at your brow,
my dancing, ceasing,

when I was a baby in the belly
I was fed by heartbeats, mother's breaths,
the strains of Mahalia Jackson
beyond those fleshy walls,

perhaps Johnny Cash and Dino Martin
filtered through to me, just a corpuscule,

that is what's with me, I say,

again the music begins,
my toe taps at first to the tucked away rhythm,
soon my legs again prance and my hips begin to sway,
at full gyration, I recall Charlotte, at home,
us running, playing kick the can,

you shake your head at the holy fool,
your shadow receding now through the cracks
on the floor, around the corner, now gone

afterlife - a poem

when we attempt to speak in dreams, it's obvious
how unnecessary language is, how its always
coming out garbled, confused, and upon waking
we find ourselves speaking in tongues
even we, the dreamers, no longer understand,

emotions, too, need not be so acute
in their wakeful rendering, rising abruptly as tears welling,
when in dreams, emotions are the air we breathe,
they are the colors of the atmosphere,
the lurching air we mistake for the skies,

that we could communicate
those intuitions to another, in wakened language,
would be then, a way to describe an afterlife

cocoon - a poem

tonight I shall float on the egg,
flowing tides will abet my wakes
I created earlier in the day,
swallowing them in depths
only the swimming fish, beneath,
can understand,
I will not require air, even people,
or work, that creates discordant swells,
I will dream, murmering alone
beneath real blankets, comforted,
as the chrysalis in it's cocoon,
before waking, the first time,
a butterfly

bell kept hours - a poem

vespers is calling through the bells of my city,
we teeming through streets on our ways to eat,

while the holiness of sundown, apparent at horizon,
drifts through the lungs of singing monks and nuns,

we happily continue in ignorance, creating their fodder
blind to the sacredness emanating from those ringings,

dumb to their numbing distance, one must listen to hear,
like that music from spheres, before cathedrals were standing

hinted life - a poem

unsettling at times, to discover
all along this other person
living in the same skin as me
who at times takes flight
over a mountain peak, hovering,
fashioned with bamboo feathers,
or assumes the role of judge,
condemning me to years of regret,
certainly a constant critic, always
observing my motives and deeds,
never sleeping, this 'other', yet
always nebulous, only somewhat
alive in dreams, usually in the
backstory of any story I'm living,

wholeness is a myth, if taken
to mean united, singular,
when it comes to living with
my better half, we are two,
distinctive, divided,

I wonder frequently which life wins,
the manifest 'me' that goes about
making coffee, eating, sleeping,
assuming the 'I' of me,
or that one of my guest, the
hint-life that is lived and only
partially, yet real as the sheen
from an apple

changes - a poem

the real ones are almost imperceptible
in their dawning, suddenly things just are new,

I suppose there are those who have slowed
enough from what remains dull, manifest,

they see them coming and know when
to act with them, alongside them, in them,

it is they who blossom in the bud in Spring,
grow in the flower in Summer, know when to die
in the Winter, now fodder, unalone, unafraid, changing

the machine is ticking - a poem

the machine is ticking,
run by slightest moonbeams,
let alone by the ravaged sun,
sucker punching away,
wild corners, what's around them,
leave swaying shadows, bent,
twigs in water, and all of it
ticking away to what lies
at the next bend

school work - a poem

I used to sit at my desk
really, at the a.m. radio sitting on it,
supposing to do school work,

I would hear a happy song about love
then another about sadness in losing
another

something inside me, musical,
attuned to the wires on the desk,
floated with strains of Brahms,
exulted at Elton John, and
felt low listening to 'Jackie Blue',

the next day in school
when taking tests, or demanded
to solve a problem on the board,
the music stayed with me,

I would attempt to recall what
had been learned the previous night,
when all I could do was dance,
not outrightly, there in school,
but by taps of my toes, drummings
of my fingers,

only when the music subsided
in the daylight of others
did I march forward through math,
the reptile in me calculating
how long until I would be home

lights - a poem

moving down the stairs again,
leaving day, into the cellar,
first the pungency of dirty root bulbs,
then darkness interrupted by one light,
her cannings line the shelves,
specimens seeming animal, in rusting water,

later we are upstairs running clothes
through the machine, the wringer crank
spun by unsullied hands, brings with it
through it's mechanical arms, white shirts
first, followed by black trousers, onto the
washing board, where we scrub the stains
into non-existence,

outside now, the clothes all hung to dry,
monochromatic interruptions on the
sky blank with blue, cloudless

tiananmen song - a poem

at this date, I only see pictures,
smoke billowing like world war two,
I think, 'how many souls billow with it'
of boys, girls, women, the men who wage
through them, as if anything is gained,
peering through the smoke, I search
for anything pure, a man on a white horse,
a lady in medieval garb, honoring the contest
with a handkerchief,
a prophet returning,
--
where is the song of tiananmen,
one lonely struggler standing before a tank,
to ignite our passions in gritty realistic photos,
he's pointing a gun at rosebuds,
picking them off before they can bloom,
he's the new sharp shooter sans machine,
perhaps he, that lone struggler before his tank
was the prophet returning

a poem for charlotte

when I was a kid in the seventies,
the fashion was, in my town
for men to be hairy and big, dark,
while for women, to be blonde and pretty,
but it was Charlotte, thin as
the new Sycamore growing in her yard,
with black, straight-banged hair that
stuck to her forehead from sweating,
who liked me.

she was a pixie, lacking the curves
of Racquel Welch, who remained
my unaware constant companion,
she simply was always with me,
through kick the can, hide and seek,
chasing me first when playing tag,

and now, years on, well after
I moved to a new neighborhood,
forgot all about her when I had
my first real kiss in eighth grade,
it occurs to me the devotion
Charlotte showed me, in those years,
when street lamps came on
only when the sun set
and Sycamores were young
and unnamed.

they are coming - a poem

they are coming for the poets,
calling them out, the resident aliens,
pens flourishing, to war against
hamburgers and shopping networks,

the peddling of verses,
....that is, the squeezing of
sarcophagi into stolen caskets,
has been out-dated, out-done,
outed by the clamor of pragmatists,

I give it a good lie,
steal caskets to bury what's dead
hoping no one notices my ceremonies
are unnecessary for civilization
to continue down some primrose path
a poet created,
and long ago

imagined cosmology - a poem

do not look upon us, we
who live in poverty of rooms,
rooms of stations of the cross,
we, blessed with lowliness,
loneliness in the blank staring night,
you, the stars,
dead, twinkling still through our dome,
we kindle your sparks offered us
to light camp fires dotting our hills
do you see them reposed in your sky,
yet twinkling through your dome,
do you dread our lights shining,
your silent witnesses slowly
determining your fates?