Christmas

The chime of distant churchbells weaves
through wintered woods where branches ache,
dressed in the last-remaining leaves
this stealing season's yet to take.

I hold that far, faint hint of bells
a paradigm of melody
until a bird in sonorous trills
sings from a spare and crooked tree.

"It's Always About You"

Never drive angry is something
you heard once. Your foot gets heavy,
tearing down back roads.

Pull over. It's warm enough to sleep here.
And quiet, though her voice keeps screaming.

See the rise of the eyeless moon:
indifferent silver, tangled in cloud.
Realize it was never a face
that could watch or follow you.

The deer in the field lift their heads,
then suddenly bound away,
their white tails wave like
kerchiefs over a ship's rail.

It's important to understand
they were not saying goodbye.

When I Think of Leaving

I see you with our son
in the crook of your arm,

your stern sidelong gaze
that begs for nothing;

and the boy is waving,
his small pink palm

empty, his smile
saying hello.

Moving

The car runs smoothly, tires hum
on tarmac preserved
by dry weather, infrequent traffic.

The radio blares in Spanish,
broken by static,
Latin polkas, frenetic accordians.

At a steady seventy, low hills
flecked with sagebrush
slide below an azure backdrop.

Dashes join in the distance:
behind me the road
gradually regains its curve.

I nudge the pedal, lean back
in the surge,
almost sure I'm moving.

Motels

These squat travelers' limbos
mark outskirts,
thinning city limits.

In winter, pools are holes,
cracked basins
ashened by chlorine.

Neon repeats its dull pulse,
blinks its characters:
the gaps are custom ry.

Rifle the room for gifts,
wafers of soap,
sealed plastic cups, prod

the bolted-down remote
for the benediction
of television, news from

faces of strangers. Sleep,
dream unhaunted.
No one ever lived here.

Relics

On the glamorless outskirts
Of Vegas I catch sunset's
flash off derelict cars
between two shanties.

Weeds overtake the grills,
fill in the shattered headlamps
of relics rifled and stripped
like steel cadavers.

Two days later I pass
again, east-bound.
The ancient heaps are
opened, their gutted

insides cluttered
with rows of ragged children
jostling for a turn
behind the wheels.

A Regret

He trundles sidelong like a drunken crab,
his cap skewed at a fetching angle, feet
fat from his mother's milk, and rose and white,
push-pull along the carpet; fingers grab
the walker's tray for balance, arms splayed wide.

The saddle that he rises out of keeps
him from calamity, from the collapse
of limbs that slacken quickly, unafraid.

He bumps and knocks until he swings the door,
then whines until I can't write; wounded eyes
make their appeal through tears until I rise
and nudge him back into the corridor,
for which he wails. His cries are genuine.

Dad pushed him out, who should have pulled him in.


Note: This poem is about my beloved and precious boy, Jordan. This edited in 11.15.13

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)

Making

To make love: it sounds
as if something
should be there,
like a clay pot

baked, cooling, but there
is nothing. I catch
my breath like a man
boarding a train, and think,

that's what it's like:
a stunned tempering
of the knees, a warm,
unbalanced arrival.*




* Or, departure? As usual with me, this poem has something backwards about it. Edited in 11.15.13. Also, dropped the dangling 'of' in line 10 to the beginning of line 11. This was suggested by a critter at PFFA a long time ago which I think I adopted in the thread at the time but for some reason failed to carry over to this version. That error is now fixed. If and when I recall said critter's username, I'll edit that information in.

Mourning

We found the rabbit dying in the drive,
half of her body crushed. She had nearly made
her way to the cover of a hedge,
drawn by its arc of shadow. Blood in the gravel

marked her slow, deliberate passage,
now dry and pale in the sun. We crouched
in grief and whispered, not daring to touch
a thing so small at so bleak a threshold.

My sister went to the house and carried back
a plate of greens, as if that quiet
and far too well-composed mouth would open.

It didn't; but we saw the nostrils move
with one last twitch of reflex, and the eyes
rolled wide, in terror or astonishment.

Nesting

At last this chill; and yet
trees stay alive to fret
thin shadows through the blinds
and grid your fussy hands
that rifle a cabinet.

You kneel and rearrange
my things and make them strange.
The trees outside will bear
This slightly colder air,
accustomed to the change.

Spaghetti

The stranger at the gate stops,
adjusts his wilting hat brim,
not posing but composed: a

still-life, red complected,
hands hard, worn like boot-
heels. Smoke from a cheroot

rises, narrowing his vision,
but the eyes are like capers
black and dead as a doll's,

bottomless, unfathomed. The
dull thud of casement windows
coming to on cracked sills

heralds him, the small clicks
of cocked guns, curtains drawn.
The gate yawns. A jangle of spurs.

Para Mi Esposa

You kneel and faintly move
your cloying scent,
not cinnamon or clove,
Nor burning mint,

but earthen, like the dust,
or pungent brine;
or like the rain, or rust,
or musk of pine.

I cup my lips and quench
a parching thirst
while from your throat I wrench
a gasping burst

of Spanish expletives
that shock my wits;
and yet your grace survives
such aspirates.

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.

It is Twice Blest

Now like the moon among a crowd of stars
or a naiad from water set upon by lilies
I'll have you rise from sleep, for the night adores
the flowering of all brighter presences,
imagines flames from any subtle spark
that burns in deepest cold. Should you awake
and light a cigarette at the foot of the bed,
let Fancy fashion how the wisps of smoke
might wind like ribbons around your lovely head.

Give me but leave to wonder, in my night,
how you pass yours. I will not have your hands
folded like unblown roses, out of light,
but in full flower, bewildering as wands;
and in the darkness should you think how sweet
is love and pity my cracked and foolish heart,
then, far from you, feeling a little peace,
it may well come to mend and gentlier beat
while I tell myself you are not merciless.

For Fashion's Sake

All morning long before her mirror
a girl with many colored combs
sat laboring at her yellow hair
and picked at breakfast's tea and crumbs.

The birds that by the window sang
furnished the somber boughs of trees
with gaiety enough to ring
a little louder than the breeze.

Now gold the leaves that fell to ground,
and now cascades of brittle red,
all put down gently by the wind
upon their kindred's wonted bed.

While earth, appareled like a girl,
at peace addressed the sun that day,
another, for an errant curl,
a wayward tress, could not be gay.
1986

Spiritual Fire

The silver-tongued seduction
has never been my trade,
nor plying suit that's braver
than what with eyes is made,

nor will I offer roses,
nor flatter overmuch,
however fine the feature,
to win a woman's touch.

Let Patience, then, sustain me,
O Muse, or move my station
a little nearer Pieria
where to intoxication

I'll tipple holy water
and drown the rat, Desire,
and let my heart burn only
with spiritual fire.

On an Electric Bug Zapper

I heard the laughter of a moth
as he alighted on my wrist
(he was as unafraid of death
as any blonde evangelist):

What is the benefit of age?
There is an end to every road.
I terminate my pilgrimage
kissing the warm blue face of God.

Talismans

Gamboling bombadils in
lathered boots cross acres
of marsh and wet woodland,
thin and goose-throated

they boast of ancient lineage
and croak in mad dactyls.
Crack-pated mermen dream
naked on green stones

of girls leaning gold braids
from high turret windows
with coronets for eyes
and breasts like white birds.

The basilisk collects our
tendered coins of passage.
We cross the bridge and march
into havens and kingdoms.

Spirit

This is the guy I was telling you about.
So I stepped through the door, a little
carnation in my lapel, a dapper Dan
shaking my chain. She liked my chin,
my charnel savvy. I left the room and returned
later in the afternoon.

There are other kinds of being I mentioned
down at the service station. Yassir Nawssir.
Top your fluids too, twunnynineniyniefie.
Tarmac glistened, rills crawled over the road.
Birds turned lazy circles: naahtsokay.
Gehenna's angels.

Wiped a clear wedge in the windshield
and noted all emergency phones.
Radials no good, car too long
in dry dock; a/c kaput, and heading
south: Yuma, then Abaddon.
Tapped harvest.

Hanging Around with Pat

It didn't matter if we were having dinner,
watching a film,
or just strolling along, Pat was a winner. Swans
have this aplomb too, and most morticians. We poured
spackle on his shoes, gave him purple
hermans through his blazer,
he just smiled and nodded, smooth as a balloon.
You didn't see his hands much, they were
usually in his pockets, fumbling with silver dollars.
He was taller than you might think.
I saw him duck
as we tooled under an overpass,
lips sealed like a stranger aiming a rifle. He never
told us where he lived, if he had a wife,
a girl or what. Of course
we never asked him.

He looked stony under palms, but it suited him.
You only saw his hands
when they were in the open,
or his face,
that smirk in half-bloom, and the eyes
that blinked two, maybe three times in a day.
I paused before I stepped on the pedal,
looked furtively in my rear-view.
He rocked on his heels, hands in pockets,
immaculate tie, suit still pressed.
He waved at people who passed along the freeway,
and even the dogs seemed to know him.
I hated to leave him on the side of the road,
his pantlegs ruffling in the wind.
We drove by [later that same evening]
but he was gone.

He always looks unreal on television,
like uncooked oatmeal; and his shifty eyes
avoid the camera, the constant blonde
who stares him down. Of course he's in love
with her. You can tell by his hands.

We started to doubt if it was Pat we courted
that night, bought supper for,
took to a film he strongly disliked.
He never actually said his name was Pat,
we just assumed.
I recalled next morning
the blush of a shadow on his cheek
and he never instinctively shooshed a clamor
of conversation.
She undid the top button of her blouse
but he never peeked, though
you could see the tension in his hands,
like stopping the spin of a fourteen pound ball
fresh out of the return.


We never watch the show now, having seen
the back of his head for more than thirty seconds,
having seen him sit down,
put his hand to his mouth,
politely clear his throat.

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.

Where Shadows Crossed

where shadows crossed, where such tall houses leaned
like drunks, whose doors spilled tea-steam into dung
where horses clomped and paused, their bells at peace
that brought on silence like a Christmas scene

through windows wreathed with spurious drifts of snow
through curtains fringed with an electric light
of Yules that blazed eternal on black tape
wound back to spools like thread that brings to mind

the knitting needles and the crochet hooks
that crossed and crossed until the slow-made shapes
were born, each an epiphany, and yet

those scarves would never drape a grandchild's neck
though everyone pretended and were glad
to be so blest there, where the shadows crossed

Harsh Job Yen (J. Ashbery): Exercise

This sitting and typing, I'm done with it.
Dry brows in artificial light, the click
of calloused pads in shuttered rooms.
Shy monks stroll the boulevards, scribblers yawn
among pidgeons. There's no hunger without shape,
no ennui stranded in its vacuum.
I watched two men hauling garbage
behind the diner, mouths
pursed around their simple vowels. Qwerty
is enigma.

The higher primates will happen upon Lear
soon enough. I've had it.
I want inspector's gloves, safe temperatures,
bleach, fifty parts per million.
Quiddity waits in the third sink
in quaternary solution.
You kill mice.

The Shadow Men

Several men filed into a clearing
and some sat down to rest
on a hollow log covered
with green moss that most
would venture to say was green

and some saw men who levitated
seated on nothing but air
and quietly they were astonished
It did make a sound No it
did not it did did not

when out of the end of the hollow
log a mouse came
and some of the seven or nine men
saw the mouse and said
look it's a moose

You mean mouse
No I mean moose You're crazy
Look at the antlers
Some of the men saw nothing
and were deeply concerned

The fourteen suns arched slowly
the twelve suns ran quickly
the eight suns were still
The shadow men bickered and babbled
and some filed out of the clearing

Dream Fodder

Divide the flesh, pry skin
from linen wrested from its tuck,
roll back in the swim of sleep.

Unmind the knot between
the shoulders, niggling fist
that kneads the knuckled spine,

wink out the light that slants
through skewed blinds, a door's
click, the hiss of her water.

And down the road some dog's
nagging alarum filtered
through seven or nine houses

becomes a caw. Her knee's return
tilts a sea, the clock's tick
an even keel in cold salt.

A Warm Day in Winter

i get older, older than this mock summer who's young
always, ever the lamb that gambols, galumphs, white
and new & shining, for which is everlasting.
my bones are cold at dawn and crack like a ship

in a squall through chilling salt, though i am younger
than my father, whose hands are stronger. light,
like blood from a lemon, threads my eyes in oversleep
that greet the sun through injured gaps. light, my enemy.

o make me new, false summer, spurious spring,
but spare me flowers and the fawning of poets; bring
no birds with their calliopes of clamor, no doves,
no sparrows, no swallows; bring no bloodrush, no heart's

triphammering, no love's crush; only the reminder
of peace engendered by your generous fire that made
past mays more kind, when love brought belly-flutters
& handsweat, not this callous and creeping killing.

Circles: an Experiment

Brad tugged a cigarette from the box,
rolled it back up his short sleeve, flicked
a lighter open and birthed a cherry. He flexed
his tat for Audrey, whose backside tensed
in her pleated skirt.

Something in the efficient grumble of V-eights,
of a moon slipping down the arch of night,
pink so striking it cannot belong,
gum, lipgloss: signs and portents;
something in the meaty
compost of bodies, the music, the brawn of engines.

Audrey felt the chugging pistons knock,
the oily crowbar at the knees,
the stink of metal and heat. She kept her lips closed,
flipped her gum like a pancake, her tongue
flattened, pushed, until it hurt.

The bleechers shook, the young mothers
cupped their babies round the ears. Kerchiefs,
white tiaras, and the infinite blessing
of breathable cotton
walked in a pungent sheen
under the lights or did the seats a kindness
with a more mundane kind of shifting.

"So, they squeal around the track
like crazy planets, growl and bear their teeth,
push and bump and bang like toddlers
over a stuffed frog?"
"Stop being such a pain in the ass."

Epithalamium

At Matins,
pause. Doves
in covens congregate, and swans
complain.

Virgins in black
beckon with palaver,
murmur, simmer
in weather's swelter.

Cracked mirrors, lost connections,
clamour in pieces,
Pride undo, that vain adorning,
unmask the treble Graces.

Goose and gander, in planes
opposing, crush
the tenuous membrane,
concoct delerium,

dismantle the matrix.
Bell's cacophonous
pulse intones
Excaliburs, stilettos,

baubles and obols.
O brazen Philomel
perched in a pristine ilex,
preen and genuflect,

perfect the conflagration
of Aurora,
Beltane's fabulous
conjunction of azures.

Roads 1

roads:
to come through to
arrive to be at a place
here & now in the north
there the arrow points   >
upwards always further; though
a thread opens down &  outward
the same way: words gathering green
copied connected across down & outward
so to go up we dig down, remember and take w/
us all the things we have shined and tucked away to
remind and to keep us together bound in memories up




Nov 25 2010