Reynolds & Midway 60

     "The nest is full of nothing when the bird has flown." - I.A.

I see kiniggits pricking on the plain,

the crosses on their breasts, the horses' nostrils

steaming, and the stamping clopping hooves

with iron shod, I see the clumps of earth

fly up, and in the distance from a square

cut in the stone I see a rope, a braid

of maidenhair, say chestnut? Lethian,

or some rapunzeled girl, trapped in a cell

twain storeys high, of smooth wood and baroque,

fine carven, swirling stuff, and on the mantles

many vials, vases, polished mirrors,

porphyrian oddments, or of whiter work,

blue filigreed marble, flakier sandstone, veined

we should have said, for he was thinking deltas

deep inlaid, and Pound had come again

with some new brighter stuff, can someone list?

Can someone come along with us, O come

ye blousy spirits, there be avatars

in me and many, may we be possessed

of thee, but soft, for there beyond the door,

beyond the gate, be darkling things that cry

and wait and lie, that gibber in unjoy,

ungainly in ungrace, not far afield

but close and clustered, toady moist and gaunt,

or in an ungallumphing gravid mass—

Then pray upon the Cross, and say, O Christ,

for Thou art with me, I shall fear no evil:

None shall taloned tear me limb from limb,

O Lord, for I have with my rubbing thumb

upon Thy body, narrow on the Cross,

thanked Thee with gratitude, and anxious love,

and unaccosted laid me down to dream.

7.21.15

Smoggy w/ a Chance of Fiery Death

My teeth are swords! My claws are spears! My wings are a hurricane!

the moon in the sky is an eye in a river it sees sliding

by or a skunk in the trunk of a cinnamon tree

he sd, we can't stop here, who's stopping ? Never

tell a tale that it's over or make it so tall that it shivers

and makes of itself an emblem of dynamization

in closed-eyed visions of ere and then and when

when timeternity's chains wheels seeds and gears

grind in black opaque revolve and winds wind revolving

the sky in the river a wing or a tail or a claw or an eye

by its shine and colour you see it's a thing for scrying

he sd, who are you, why are you here and you were trying

to hide but you couldn't because of the bolt of the fire

that from him showed him in all of his decadent glory

who taloned and vast laid waste, breathing, flying

10.19.14

Reynolds and Midway 47

                        "Take it away, Howard." - Woody Allen's Bananas
 
On the road he was on He came to him, and he
fell, as we fell, Reynolds and me (we should say 'I'),
as if down steps or stairs, and woke up wounded.
We felt it first, a deep ache in the side, 
then black and blue, then red, then multicolored.
For hours we lay in the emergency room
with no emergent physical trauma, triaged
fairly to a bright cold room to wait.

We slept and dreamed, and this is what we dreamt:
An Ozymandias, a monument

in some imagined past or future: Desert
civilized, but prehistoric: beginning
times, wound back to start, biblical settings.
We thought of Adam and Eve, of Cain and Abel,

a populous in utero, we thought

of Noah and his kin, but not the Flood.
 

Antedeluvian, the land was young

and ripe for husbandry,    yet not rife

with throngd humanity. Entwined with these

dream thoughts, or visions, were impossible

absurdities, my chair a captain's chair,

I had the conn, commanded with my clicks,

as ages happend past my ogling eyes.

Spirk at my hand and I a James T. Cock,
 

cook of the walk and riler of the roost,

an i am i, faux tetragrammaton

in silly miniature, a puppeteer

of myriads of poor Pinocchios

(his voice is dead for three days as I write)

and meaty marionettes who span the globe

to bring the constant variety of sport—

the thrill of victory,    andthe     agon

7.11.14

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes

At Shea Stadium our seats were way too high

to see the players, let alone the ball.

When someone cracked a homer, my boyish eye

flashed, but failed to track its trail at all.

I stood and gave a tipsy clap, the beer

secured between my tattered keds—non-Met

fans raised en masse a flatulent Bronx Cheer.

Down in front, a black and white TV set,

rabbit-eared and tinfoiled, showed the game.

I thought of Mickey Mantle, Joltin' Joe,

and Mrs. Robinson. Though it's a shame,

I can't remember now who won. I go

along with friends today as I went then:

equally loving games, and mice, and men.

- 6.1.14

To the Woman I Love

How many years I've loved you, who cannot return
my love, how many tears have wet my broken bed,
like seeds sown in the darkness, where no stem is born,
but where the breath that speaks of love says love is dead,
and sounds like silence, and like depth, and solitude,
that faintly go and then as faintly come around
again, like silent blackbirds in a winter wood,
like violins and voices stilled and void of sound,

until there's no more counting, no more new amount
or number, and we just let go the hem of time
that shrinks and shrivels in the pitch it was made of,
and heart and mind forget what it had meant to count,
and can't conceive the point of meter or of rhyme,
and do not understand at all a word like love.

12.12.2012

Reading Walcott

For Andrew Mandelbaum


When this man writes white almonds, I pretend I'm blind
as a bat that's lying dreaming on a book of Homer,
so I can go on reading, in my head a number
of voices ricocheting, a deliquescent grind
of genuine island lilts and one that's less refined:
my landlocked cracker mimick. No. We must remember
the almonds. White, he said. Alright. I see a comber
Curling in, on top a watermelon rind-

white froth of foam that seems to want to settle down
upon an arc of shoreline where I see together
a woman and a man in daylight sharp as a diamond.
Her hair is dark and flying loose, skin cinnamon-brown,
half-naked, and him the same; they laugh and love the weather.
They wave me over to them, toss me a sweet white almond.

Ballad of Morning Star

I got up sick this morning, Lord,
  it always starts that way,
and found that my old lady
  and my hound dog ran away.
My landlord said, "boy, pony up
  for two months now, or split."
O Lord, you know just what I got,
  but I'm not sayin' it.

I took a bus on into town,
  to find a paying job,
a hard-ass boss just up and said
  I was a no-good slob;
I almost wrung his scrawny throat,
  so angry I could spit,
O Lord you know just what I got,
  but I'm not sayin' it.

I thought about an old guitar
  that I had put away.
I bought it as a strapping lad,
  but could not hardly play.
I'd pluck and strum all night but still
  I'd turn a song to shit,
O Lord, you know just what I got,
  but I'm not sayin' it.

So in a filthy bar I sat down
  with a glass of scotch
to sum up all my good and bad
  and wound up with a botch.
My Daddy said in days long past
  a good man would not quit,
But Lord you know what I still got,
  though I'm not sayin' it.

A sharp young man was sitting tall,
  just down that sticky bar,
who drank out of a shot glass
  with a hand as black as tar;
and with a grin that shadow-man
  shook up my soul a bit:
(O Lord, that man knows what I got,
  though I'm not sayin' it.)

"I'm known as Morning Star," that man said,
  with a frightful hiss,
"though I'm as dark as night and cold
  as any warlock's piss."
His words slid out as chill as mist
  from an unholy pit.
O Lord I saw him plain as day,
  but would not own to it!

"Up in your room, dirty with dust,
  you stow an old guitar,
go find it now and brush up on
  your chops", said Morning Star,
"Tonight is inspiration;
  and tomorrow, bang, a hit!"
O Lord, I saw him through and through,
  but did not own to it!

Tonight I took that old guitar and,
  good Lord, how it rang!
what chords my hands could fashion now,
  how gloriously I sang!
But, Lord, I took that old guitar
  and, in a pious fit,
I cast it down and with an oath said,
  "I'm not playin' it!"

My room got hot, a ghostly moonlight
  through a window sash
lit up that old guitar which now
  was but a mound of ash;
and, nigh but out of sight, old Morning Star
  spat, "I admit,
Your will is strong, your soul is God's,
  and I'm not touching it."

And soon a stormy wind struck up that,
  blowing hard and fast,
wild as a pack of jackals braying
  with a furious blast,
took up that ash and had it spinning
  quick as a hot drill bit...
  ...Still got an old harmonica,
        but I ain't too fond of it.


2004

War Party

While far behind our hearths and halls
are fire-warm and woman-rich,
the icy rain shakes down in squalls
that holler like a banshee bitch.
No giving up, no turning in,
no time to worry or wonder;
just grit your teeth and take it straight,
and shake your fist at the thunder.

With miles to go through muck and mire, 
the sickle moon rides high in the night;
a silver splinter of Heaven's fire,
a wink of God's eye, burning bright.
No time to sleep, no time to dream,
no peace for the man that wallows;
no doubt for him it will be grim
when he meets with the One that follows.

Raise your shields against the storm, boys,
Drive on, be hale and hearty;
the eyes of your women keep you warm, boys,
Ride on, as one, war party.

The hills are hard and the weather evil
but soon we'll see that dawn of gold 
that stirs our hearts and drives the Devil
back to his dark, deep-harrowed hole.
The sun will rise and bless your eyes
just when your hopes had dwindled;
and those who were slain will rise again
in the stars, their brave hearts kindled.

 

Ballad of Jack Kettle

Longshanks sat in the corner
his back against the wall,
he'd come from beyond the border
where evil had laid its pall.
You could feel the darkness on him
Like ice it burned you cold;
but the devil had never won him,
in his eye that truth was told.

A mug of ale and a tall tale
we'll have if the teller's awake and able;
but if he's gone we'll laugh till dawn
and leave some coin on the oaken table.

Betimes beer tricks a fellow
and makes his reason wink;
the man's far better off yellow
whose heart-fire comes from drink;
so up says young Jack Kettle,
armed with his bunched-up fists,
bristled with ale-born mettle,
and all of his senses dismissed:

"Stranger, I see you're bigger than me
but I reckon not half those tales are true,
that say you've spat in the devil's hat
and that he had nary a lick for you."

Remember the night Jack Kettle was pissed
and took a swing at a man and missed;
remember the tale and tell your young
what havoc comes of a wagging tongue.

Longshanks donned his kid gloves
when it came time to settle
a score that rose in a beer mug
and in the hot head of Jack Kettle;
one mop in the hand of a barmaid
sopped up the blood that was spilled
from that sawed-off wanna-be David
who was lucky he wasn't killed.

Aster

TIME

It rose up like a black ship from the sea,
that top hinge of a giant serpent-mouth,
and broke the dipping sunlight on its teeth.
The poets lobbed out ordnance from the quay:
tick-tocking iambs beat an ancient pulse
as tongue and breath were yoked in ritual;
spruce measures pattered on its hide like knells,
or, lighting in that maw, were swallowed whole.

The bottomless gullet sucked up dribbled edges
of dazzling tropes and metaphors, duets
of perfect rimes flew in a desperate volley;
but when the sunset’s dazzling pinks and oranges
gave way, and far white stars winked like shallots,
then silence blossomed in the monster’s belly.


RUSE

The poets agreed in their subterrenean nave
to write more poems in praise of monsters, though
that would not waylay Time whose tongues of snow
inexorably licked each architrave,
blew gales of slow frost on each martyred figure
frozen in glass, snuffed out their sputtering tapers,
curled up and browned the edges of their papers,
contained one acolyte in ten with rigor

mortis. And so they sank leviathans
into the mundane deeps, set basilisks
on bridges, sang out Gaudete as griffins
stormed ramparts with their wings like m‘s, or chevrons.
Mastodons rode men upon their tusks
and Jacks with bright knives divvied up the women.


SOLO

Their one goal was to keep the people guessing,
and so they delved an apsis underground,
beneath the sound of heel and radial passing,
hidden away from even their maker’s hand
that scooped out blindly with a lifer’s spoon
the earth in rinds as hard as baker’s chocolate:
a buried enclave or ulterior Camelot
where in reverberating baritone

they summoned every lusus naturae
that answered their demonic invocations:
chimera, hydra, gargoyle, cockatrice;
and yet those apples of the devil’s eye
would still, despite a thousand permutations,
confess their sire, a chafing onanist.


ASTER

He scratched his head and thought of naval ships
at war upon some master’s oily water:
the canvas flying in flames, the shredded banners,
cannons firing billowy mushroom shapes.
He realized he’d given up his secrets:
he couldn’t see it straight, the ding an sich,
but twice removed he rifled through the pockets
of those to whom his beggaring lines were schtick,

the junk and jetsam of a live half-lived,
the stale bilgewater of a secondhander.
And so he rallied all those bogeymen
with which his suicidal brain was gravid
and watched his tiny reputation founder:
one title less for his memorial stone.


ABADDON

Despite it all he winds down fractured stairs
turning wide-eyed in cloudy dream spirals
that might be akin to those legendary gyres
he heard tell of. The yattering tongues of bells
still flood the echoing dark with o‘s like obols,
where mouths that never kiss still omm in ovals.

But he knew that before the poem started,
that it was never the brighter thresh of sleighbells
or happier clicks and clacks of jacks or marbles
that drew him inexorably to his inverted
Pleasure Dome, his topsy-turvy Eldorado,
mock-gothic and profane basilica,
darkling Atlantis, gloomy Shangri-la:
another dupe to his dear Amontillado.


CHTHONIC

There he scanned the breadth of his brain’s horizon
like one plunged headlong in the ultimate pit:
some vengeful Lucifer or madcap Urizen
droning his self-obsessed magnificat -

while in a derelict garden statuary
stood tiptoe in the rain and minor angels
wrestled in windfall when an ordinary
sunset flared the stark walls of Tintagel
stuck on its evergreen and desolate hill
hard by an unbroken sea no man could ride,
its waters churned white by the serpent’s tail -

and heard the dead men cross the Bridge of Sighs
heading for holes in the ground that were the size
of graves, where they were buried until they died.


SIGHTINGS

On Presidents’ and Independence day
the colors in the evening sky flashed
in the Hudson River whose slow waters washed
against his feet. Better recall July
than bleak and gaunt-boughed, icy February
when wind swept off the sleepy river and smashed
the glass of his gollum-eyes to a fire-splashed
blur. In summer time he watched ships ferry
up and down the river, past Bannerman’s Island.

He only saw it from the shore: a brushwork
rook-shape in the air was all he gleaned
of a castle, once fortress and stockpiled armory.
The Indians said the place was haunted. Naturally
The locals saw strange lights there in the dark.


HAUNTED

He never saw those lights, though often he gazed
out toward that island from the mountain road
above West Point or from the riverside
where it was said a failed cadet composed
his Ulalume. Now maybe there’s your ghost,
he thought, that gloomy subterranean bard
remembered for his bells and his black bird?

And yet he knows there really is no ghost,
knows that the dead are happy in their tombs;
that though the eye is easily tricked the mind
is the softer touch; that even if men were blind
the dark would resonate with spirit voices
crying out angrily from forsaken places
or whispering to themselves in empty rooms.

Yaw: way

A lone & piercing, crystalline sigh
not with a language but a cry
the poet's lone, barbaric Yawp
from city stoop & mt top
over the rooftops of the world
whose chimneys billowed out the Word
that Whitman bellowed & willie blake
whose stanzas made the mts shake

& Ginsberg homosexual Jew
& King of May & bearded 2
w/ Solid Mental Grace obtained
& license from the Beat attained
"w/ iron swords on Iron knees"
had grokt the Holy Verities

Arcadians' Lament

Alow us now a moment to complain:
(What better means have we to pass the days?)
Now in gold leaf, the trees, once evergreen,
bow in remembrance, and their trembling boughs
no more are sweetened by the cries of birds.
The land is like a wizened bone that aches,
and in the sky a gauntlet of gray clouds
comes slow but sure, and the sun rarely breaks.

What light will feed us when the world is dim?
Apollo, now we pine through blasted groves
because your makers bang a barbarous drum
and damn themselves in mordant expletives,
who find in slag a stuff to cry their spleen
and curse whatever once was gold or green.

Danger

Gloves dusted with snow,
dry in a pristine freeze;
hard and tight-knit crystals
frill a beard and facet eyebrows.
Miles away an animal halts
and zeroes the wind, noses
air that fails to pierce his hide
though made of razor edges.

Boat jammed among bergs
means downtime, deadlock;
eyes, those famished maws,
study and feed as they flick.
A fresh red current slides
clean along the tundra,
pushing the great white fisher
like thirst, or thunder.

Castaway

Your tender petals never furled in earth
although you trace your heritage to seed.
A husband's touch may bring their fragrance forth
and balm the air as rich as wine or mead.
They gloss and salve the cupping palm with oil
and slide between a thumb and index, slip
a grasp as cunning as a moth and foil
a suit, with one coy turning of a hip.

Anointed with your sea-salt, tinct with spray
no ocean birthed, my hand's disconsolate,
my brow is ruddy, and my mouth is wet.
I cannot sleep with you so far away,
your shoulder like an island cold and gray,
and me so weathered, and so desolate.



(written 2001 or 2002)


I want you back, my beloved wife, whom I did not honor enough...(11.1.2012)

The Interlopers

Above the open jars of condiments
Flies hum and hover, filthy little things
That swoop and carom on their gauzy wings.
These clumsy, buzzing interlopers fence
With swatting hands that threaten violence
But strike in vain: for each Quixote swings
A blink too late, and flashing wedding rings
Clack on the wooden bench in impotence.

These scavengers will make the most from least,
Are not averse to perching on a tear,
Or in the whorl of an unguarded ear.
I'll stay indoors, sequestered as a priest,
And all alone enjoy my holiday feast,
Apart from flies and inlaws, and warm beer.

Falling in Love

No one did figure eights. When the pond froze
we walked under the trees around its edge
and looked for cracks, wondered if the ice
was solid, how thick, who would venture first.
No one we knew ever fell in through the ice,
but we'd heard stories we didn't need to hear
because in New York winter the cold
was cold enough. We took off our boots

and made too much of it, undid the laces
(that were so quickly knotted under roofs
burdened with new snow) with nimble
fingers limbered by central heating.
Someone always went first. Soon, the rub
of blades across the ice, the rub that made
a sound I can't compare another sound to,
signaled winter like a fanfare. So began

the criss-cross of lines, the powder gouged
by blades that sat the rest of the year out,
the meaty thud of elbows finding ice
less friendly than a road. With my hands
behind my back, each year before long
I got the manner of gliding back again
and swanned across the unruffled pond
that kept its dangers hidden under glass.

Forbidden Fruit

We searched in windfall, derelict and young,
 for flawless apples: most had gone to mold
 and made a brown and sticky pulp among
 trefoil and honeysuckle. We were told
 never to eat crab-apples, to resist
 their succulent green skin and sour meat:
 "they'll make you sick," our mothers would insist,
 but feasting in defiance made them sweet.

We packed them in brown bags and ducked like thieves
 across the field, into the harboring wood
 to share our bounty under sibilant leaves.
 No one got sick. We never understood
 the warning. But from time to time we'd squirm,
 our celebration spoiled by a worm.

Unspeakable 1.

The best poems stop in the throat. What comes
of the living or the dead: that windy babble
of birds and spring, is honey on spoiled thumbs,
a sweet-slick dummy. For an unspeakable
ache behind the eyes, which sounds slaughter
and symbols hobble, but rises for attention,
thrives its moment in a world of water,
and dies with a dribble too silly to mention.


2/3/09

Art Schmart

The snow-capped mountains make me lean sedately,
and in those silver nets the scalloped fish
make spineless u's, their O-gapes yawning brightly.
The lights splayed on that wedge of water flash
in all directions, and the boats are laded.
Past banquets or at cornucopias
I get no appetite; by many-shaded
apples and pears I only hear the buzz

of flies; at Titian's nudes I'm merely wanton.
I read the sacred names, but just get hotter;
I need the sheen of sweat, that primal odor.
A sonsy woman at the water fountain
leans down to sip, causing a sudden gush
of adulation, and a secret blush.

x

Telefono Phonics

Your ear's infected, meinen lieben shatz.
The tiny lieder tickle through the holes,
the curly saxophones of speech. What news?
I run my index round the open conch,
dab at its baubles, tap the sexy jawbone,
watch the tongue flick out its sounds. My German
founders on the air, too flat, too false,
it stinks, like sheiza. You're not even German.

Your ankles cross beneath the table, pebbles
swept from some little stream in Nayarit,
your nails not gussied by some whorish reds,
nor flaked azuls. I listen like a chimp
and breathe the dust, filthy and ignorant,
mutter que linda ach du Lieber. Nada.

x