revisiting old work - 11/30/12

trees blossom in the brushstrokes of the world
roots unpainted
rooted in the brush
those who pass under their branches
have always lived as color
flecked into motion
if we are out of sight, behind the houses collapsing into perspective lines,
we will be always out of sight, even when those houses have crumbled
to the dusty floor of forgotten museums

The dentist has stabbed me again
We talk of gardens and weeds
my cheek tells me it is dying
Imagine the whole body numbing
And the sound of an eternal drill

A poor swimmer

Next to you
And naked
I am too far away
Though you press
there is a river of regret
And I am on the far shore

A weed in the garden

I have worked to excise you
Though the memory is like knotweed
What should I do with you
I have not done alone?
Perhaps only enjoy more
My failing body
And laugh at how little
Wasted hours matter,
Which now seem so urgent

iambic couplet.

The schemes, it's often said, of men and mice
aft angly gang. But why? It isn't nice!

Written while sleeping

All night I've sat awake
The room too hot for rest
Now, finally: a cooling breeze!

fragments - fish caught in the pond

indigestion at 4 am
the magic, repeating hour
how would I shape my words at 7am?

my feet have tread more carpet than rock

I should work to honor what I have

If I ceased all the activities I secretly regret, as wasteful:
what would I have left?


this cluttered house is closing on me..

If I returned myself to stillness
how long til my brain ceased begging for 'more'

I'm disappointed in people
can I still love them?

my teeth are trying to die,
are they sending signals to my body?
or receiving signals from my heart?
or are they only teeth?

I'd love to dip into a cold lake
naked
NOW
and emerge, to lay and sleep drying in the hot air

So many memories cause me to curse aloud,
surprising myself with the violence and sound
what kind of a person
builds such a history

I love gardening
digging
planting
shaping
learning the names and nature of things planned and accidental
I love it
but avoid it routinely
barely do it
habit trumps love
evolution is not progress

words like rain
philly's been soaked this june

I'm often surprised
by time.

inconsistency

"but I know what I like",
the old joke goes.

My likes, I discover; forget; remember with doubt.

Were you beautiful yesterday?
Was I?

silent night - edit from 6/19

My head's tucked in my arm
like the wing
of the bird who even at 4am is singing in some tree,
I feel the bicep press my temple,
my tightening jaw
but not the blood in my body
not the healing of wounds:
blisters gained in gardening;
burns seared brown while baking bread,
holes, from being, finally, left behind.
If the sunrise is coming, it's silent
if the night's slipping past, it isn't so loud as my hair rustling in hand.
and the voices that filled my ears for three decades
make not enough echo now to drown out
anything

examining a painting

I know enough to look for symmetries
blue in opposite corners
green in the others
I know to look at color
warmer colors as the eye moves in
toward the center.
Look for the center: I know this;
look for light, I know - and pools of white
prop up the thick material greens, and reds
blood in the water
or fire, hemmed in
Imagine what stories the abstractions tell: I've learned this.
And, I know what comes naturally: pareidolia,
finding faces in the fire; the sea; the mountains of paint
I've learned to find god in the mountains
burning
too great to frame
I've learned that the author is dead
or beautiful
And if figures dance in the textures of the paint
I've taught myself to dance as they do,
embody their sinew and motion
I'm discovering how to dissolve as they do

hammering forms - slow work - sonnet attempt 2

With free verse,putting words down isn't hard:
whatever comes to mind, I write. The speed
of writing lets me drop my critic's guard -
the product though, might not be worth the read.
With structured verse, the words are hard to find
and once found, often wrong, or weak at best
I mean this exercise to stretch my mind
but so far it's my patience that's most pressed.

learning form - slow labor - sonnet attempt 1

though we together might an hour spend
at length conversing, or in company walk
a while, we'll afterward in separation end
and be no closer for the shallow talk
we've shared. Why, then, continue stealing time
to meet, if all we gain's a few forgotten hours
that make of true friendship a pantomime
and make of us two vacillating cowards
who neither build, nor cease, but carry on
the sad charade - for habit? or for want
of imagination? should this wan
farce end, and we no longer one another haunt?
Would that our lives were once again entwined!
Else part, and each the other leave behind.

blood's slamming in my jaw

blue lines in hands

scars, years old.

disused legs shrunk and shrinking 

underwear stretched half off

genitals loose hang out

and I slouch

sweating over right words

siren's song

the cries of men
whose wood boats break
on rocks, time,  promises,
little things

How beautiful!
delicate, strong-grasping,
bodies taut at oar,
on rigging, nimble-footed
shining in the salt sun

 my dad worked in a psych ward

did wood cuts

of the patients there - he'd been sentenced when he wouldn't go to nam and they pretended not to see his objector card

so one night some guy attacked him in the hall

he wrestled in school

so he pins the guy, but is scared to let go.

and one autistic or something, stands and watches, and he shouts at him go get help

and the guy wanders off

and he just has to wait for hours, pinning, wondering will someone come.

patients

400 lbs of fury
like a demon, arms and arms
whirling

or the hallway at night, where you wrestle
he's found a knife
and you pin but hours are passing
and you've sent someone for help who only says
"eggs"

they all look so desperate
but hungry ghosts never stop eating

someone else's dream

green eyes glitter
in the dark, all on you
you've got them
lifting sticks like rain
so when it falls
every night you can
remember

go out in the woods tonight.
devil's walking stick
your cane

bears may surprise
but 6 oclock
they'll go

you can stay after
but the dark

closing round you like
 rot                                       cold
plants                                                      
lakes                                     wet

 the sun
in the morning
warms what it sees.

door to door work

the winter was ending, and as I canvassed alone, forsithia bloomed

I'd sing "forsithia, for scythia," and I've forgot the other lyrics.

my favorite was being invited in for coffee

though the walking was pleasant too 

when it wasn't too cold.

I think I often didn't want the doors answered

when I knocked.

a bag from an art supply store
but she came to us for blue paint
and I was struck dumb
and still remember it.

a history

a deaf woman babysat
this was at the first house, so, before I turned 8.
because on the walk outside the door, there were houses all round - later, we moved to a corner.
As we struggled toward the street
she and I were angry, and whatever our conflict, we could not explain.
The weather was clear, and perhaps we were grappling
and one of us cried

I have wrapped my head in my arm
like a wing
I can hear a bird:
distant, or muted by the noise of house machines
I feel the pressure of my arm
and my tightening jaw
but not the blood in my body
or the healing of small sores - incurred in gardening or baking bread or being, finally, left behind.
I can't hear tomorrow coming - sunrise is silent.
the dread of it, or of night's slipping past, isn't so loud as my hair rustling in my fingers.
And the many voices that filled the space of thirty years
are silent though I summon them

have all my strongest passions been alone?

minding spent coals?

"it's over"

but her words were "yes".

moments of courage

soles grip ground
back fills
air to dantien
avoidance avoidance.. light
open
beyond fantasies of glimpsed beauty
or regret of lost possibility
or bitterness of time passing - no child - no second heart, arms empty or holding what is not mine
by any but my own admission
which I lack
beyond, beyond.
there are patterns everywhere.
form, collapse, wave,
I have been made to this moment
what shall I write

what should I do, to fight?
my clothes are off.
outside a bird.
inside, too many walls, with sharp corners: soul traps.
outside, no landmarks.
I  am too clumsy with weapons.
here, the hum of machines
I have no words
outside, the deep oceans, and the dark stars
how should I touch you
my legs have shrunk
there is blue in my feet
I can not earn deserving.
will not bow to beg.
there are too many raindrops.

I am grateful for joys
and I regret grasping too greedily
for those I could not hold
which was all that I've grasped for
so that now I let joys go
perhaps too easily
or orbit them making eyes
wondering might I just
once more

fear not

this ancient dust is settling with the rest

like snowcaps

it smooths the world

someday first man will wake

and find his bow

shake off the old ways

put his feet many times on our dirt

to discover his words

---

someday:
             a new man wakes
             shakes off our old dust, which we dreaded spilling
             treads us barefoot. goes seeking.

rambling

Electric light's a tyranny - how can one choose not to illuminate the night hours?
Light pollution's no wonder except that we can see the stars at all.

And at the same time I struggle to darken the white page.
Are ideas light or dark or particles or waves or shadows of quantum spin...

Am I darkening the page (darken my doorstep) or lighting the night?
Certainly not with anything too bright... I feel like a monkey flapping its lips

"Abadabadaba said the monkey"
But that means I love you...  (and oh how I do)

"Down there where the monsters lurk in the depths of your internal being", vamps Jean Shep over radio static, his words bouncing back from 6/18/65, ringing in my ears around the early hints of inherited tinitis...  my father calls the high sounds "crickets" but I don't detect enough range.. more like a wine glass someone played 20 years ago on the table after dinner, the sound remembering to echo again.

My teeth are rotten.  Those that still have feeling hurt.

But I still want new lips to kiss, if I can't have the lips that fit (not enough tar to keep cinderella)

Blank pages are infinitely empty.
I used to be across the street.
Many nights at the neighbor's house.
Days in school. How many? More days than I recall.  Which is to say I recall so little...
Mary had a little school - it was full of horror.

They're closing them now.

Perhaps if the prisons burst we'll learn the new laws.

RIP the black rhino, whose horn is now more valuable than ever... whose call, if we could only emulate...
but we'll never be a rhinoceros.  We're just monsters now.  We'd like to change but we can't.

I'll stand at the asterisk, and put my head into the outdoor air, and hoot.  You do it too.

*

It wasn't a very good hoot.  I'll never be an owl - I'm the last human left.

I and you.

Was it unfair to place demands on you?

Well.

Here we are.

Perhaps we'd best promise to call, and you can let me out in the morning.

I'll find coffee somewhere.  I know how to do it.  So don't mind turning the page.  You'll find work to do.

those 60s bond girls now are old

watching someone walk in an old home movie

they aren't walking now - if they're even living

but we see them - smiling, opening some gift, riding a pig

maybe we see them stare, catch a moment of stillness

I have some nights, up all night churning words to butter,
nevermind if it's fit for bread

other nights, like this one, spent writing one word and deleting it,
repetition like a mad man,

breaks to pace the hall and think "when this is read, who will I be"

I want to consume what I see: 
                                                       she's tall
                                                       her angles spell "touch"   
 c'mon, the reason comes after
we know what we want

                                                                             
                                                   I don't pursue
 I have done, but that ended.
                                                  
haha.
         I can show you a porch where tears dried in a bubble
            but I still want to conquer.
                                                                           there's kinski on his raft, surrounded by monkeys.
                                                                                   had herzog threatened him yet, with a gun
                                                                                          
all this desire
without end.                                                                            without aim.

                           it's easy enough to be hungry.

critique

these poems

I think, are vague

because of cowardice.

which was the first hospital?

there was a visit I had to be snuck in
because children were infectious
a bed against a wall
another smaller bed more centered
one on wheels
aunt laughed in a metal frame
another slept bloated.
grandfather in tubes
mother down a long hallway
bald or maybe bald later.
I don't remember ever holding hands,
not once, with anyone.
that's something people do though
and they cry
I don't remember, not once, entering, or exiting.
I'll pay attention next time, I'll remember.

whichever school it was
outside was all cement
fenced in
vast
with no dimensions
and we pressed our fingers to our eyes
calling powers from beyond

much later I said "remember"?
and he laughed. "scorn. that was pretend."
i didn't answer - but mourned.
i'd thought we were pretending together.

dim memories of play

i think in an office                                        
a girl made me clay                                                a game.
and formed me after                                  
into flesh                                                       did we reverse then?          

if she had waited                                                 many years
we could have been flesh together

(this is a true story, though I'm unsure of it)

on the schoolbus a friend put salt in my hair
the seats were green                                                  maybe it was all indoors
many drivers different years -
then ran his hand through my hair
and the salt fell and fell                                                  did it happen at all
been falling ever since
eew he said
and I think,
when my eyebrows flake,
or my ears leave layers under my fingernails
if he hadn't thrown salt,
would I now be dissolving

I stole your name
but names are old magic - I did it quickly, desperate,
and you stole something of mine

many times, my clumsy feet traced the steps I saw you dance
 that night
in your living room my face grew hot
and I'll try to dance now
but staring at the far night
I grow quite still

tonight
your ghost again.

I'll seance
and discover you
summoning me in the dark
all along

let's have power.

you spoke like an ape.

    some repetition of another's words

I thought you were

wanted to tear you apart
 with my teeth

    hear you ask "again"

there on the table

 if your leg had brushed 

mine.

mine, again,

I'd have done it.

sleeping woman on the train

Her eyes are closed - just so -
The corners of her mouth are smiling
eyebrows arched
hair piled
she is kitesvara
When her head nods forward
the sun sets
When she disembarks
another incarnation boards.

fever. restless.
 think of names like mantras, now unspoken, now rotten, in the recesses of old pulled teeth.
scratch at bug bites.  lick them.  who has touched me there?
 is it the old touch or the absence that itches

when a voice in the night is thinner than radio
"goodnight" not even so warm as a blanket
I hurl myself into cold rivers, old depths, but one can't drown in thought
not peacefully.

torn letters

I'm cut by "time's old thornes"
but really just by cruelty: mine and theirs,
really just grasping - nevermind too tight or not enough
just me now.
                   hearing the same old pulse.
wishing on it - like one learns to do, on hairs, and on bones,
 on things that break, and blow.
I've followed my heart to dark places
and it's racing ahead to the end
and I can't let it go.

Yes it's pulsing. I think of you often. Nothing to do with you. Though. It could be.
If I say your name like a mantra
If I draw our meeting
If your shoes are filled with voodoo
but you're off again, away, like
that morning we drank coffee, after
I'd slept under your creaking floor
wishing the bus still ran.
even face to face, you lived too far off
Like visiting an
Aquarium, glass clear but firm,
Made of lost time, or many betrayals, or youth or strangeness, me with hand on...
Glass again, very wet behind, and if I joined you, drowning
Always the trouble with yous,
with mermaids, with holding too tight one's own hard demands
or fantasies
Easily exploded by the suck of time
by more than waiting
memory has you always smiling
never with your back on me
a smile that first smile or
an ecstacy if we got there
never leaving me at the door
in the morning to find my own breakfast in the rain.

some faces haunt
or I haunt them
one passing sight prompts
yearning for a year
one gone with errors
 leaves me guilty, waiting to apologize,
will you forgive me, if I return?
if I don't leave?  If I meet you, for the first time, saying
"I have wanted this?"

certain ideas take root like weeds.
"control".
perhaps one prays,
or builds a house, or reads.
perhaps a certain god can answer.
maybe spirits come,
or protests in the square bring change,
or letters to the officers keep bombs from falling.
at night, if sleep won't come, then,
tomorrow, maybe,
wait.

ancestors

above oklahoma
one was adopted.
in kiev another fled a czar.
someone tailored for a king
our rabbi spoke in yiddish, I listened for the english,
words like stray dogs, wandering.

I'll feel foolish, even in the fog, even under an eerie moon.

grandfather sat in his chair
napped when tired
I struggled for words
if I found them it was after cancer wasted him
and he was buried in טלית and a box.

If I try to remember the other grandfather, grandmother,
it's ducks I remember, by the porch, or dolls, in the room I'd visit, piled high and watching me
or the dog nearly eating rhubarb leaves,
or a boat.  It's a window I could climb in, by the lawn, or half a dozen other broken fragments.
I can dance on the shards
in the old graves,
sing old songs at midnight,
but they'll stay buried.

leaves fall like coins,
I may follow their path
or see the bare branch
or the pile on the ground
but in spring, what will they be.
with me, many leaves,
my father fleeing one thing to another
I led through old houses,
refusing to live at home
wondering which ancestors
will open their arms

Suddenly.

Spit catches in my throat
rain overflows the garden.
choking, I sit, stand, sit.
Birds will flap in the street.
wingbeats like drums.
I'll inhale, exhale, rasp, refuse
a man in the clouds plays violin, sans bow
pulls a strand of gut over the strings,
sings, over the narrow streets, and chagall's cows, and the moon.