quatro:quatrain

quatro makes a perfect quatrain
four times 4 perfecto canto
a b a b  A B B A
says Quien es coming pronto

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

epistle: a thistle w/o a thorn

More on zeros and ones: the One
that is God, the Father and the Son
the iamb hello that goes to show
that Hell is the heart without an O

without the Union of mind & Heart
the Holy endeavor of Human Art
that wholly shows the reason the Rose
is a Rose is a Rose & always a Rose.

little Beastie

6 is not 2/3rds of 10
66 is not 2/3rds of 100
666 is not 2/3rds of
1000

(if you do this to infinity
you won't catch up to God
tho the Windmills of Eternity
set you out upon your road)

Ahab: viaje primero

0 lunatico! el capitan! ai!
en la baja la mar por ay por ay
la ballena de blanca amiga de luna
o negra y blanca, y Todos y una

after William Blake : : quatrain

middle child a diplomat a
diplomatic little lambkin
lamb & lion little Lamb can
first is last & last is 1st 

ground 0

Equal sign is 2 lines
bunk beds =
parallel is
Loco Motive

O thou Moodna
straight & narrow
Iron bridge sign
2 lines crossed

math: Elohim: : hymn

2wo him 1st one
then to. 2nd
thought hymn lesser
than the first. But

when Won: When
put 2gether
all T00
gether  All is Good


"N amath's triumph came 
in probably the most significant game
in the history of 

Roman numerals."

ampersand

Christ the lamb is in the middle
and 2 thieves are left & right
left & right the big & little
cross & cross like dark & light

God is in the center people
heart is centre of the body
heart & mind like church & steeple
hands & fingers, head to nod. He

comes & goes a thief in day time
like a lambkin in the night
like a winter in a May time
like a lion in the light

blog

b...B...Blogs go backwards
first is last &
last is
1s
t

Ecooce

numbers lead to perfection
but also to confusion
numerology:
Eco: Foucault's Pendulum
Eco Echo echo eco e

reflexionoixelfer

the mirror
face it

Hiawatha (native rhythm)

cross is plus sign
times sign tilted
is an x Oh
x esposa

causes sorrow
zoila william
iambs iambs
in my head

william william
william wilson
I am will's son
son of man

william william
second son &
i am not the
son of Sam

sam is mas
in Spanish backwards
mas means more
and more means less

cross is plus sign
times sign tilted
is an x O
x esposa

causes sorrow
zoila william
i am I AM
(in my Head)

IO OI

soy y iamb
I am I am
all that was
and all that will be

3 plus three
times 3 is no one
three times 3 is nine
plus ONE

nine + 1 is
Sun and planets
Ten is good and
God is Ten

Epithalamium II

Dios deus
one and zero
all and nothing
ten es diez

z is s en espanola
z is zed y zero nada
z is iam iam soy la
iamb iamb I it says

bill & zoila
must get married
bill and zoila
must get wed

many tears
O mucho mal lo
siento, Zoila
por usted

Roads: bowl

the U is the shape of the bowl, my friend,
but what is the U's most useful part?
it is the beginning, and yet it's the end,
the being of body, the mind and the heart

(it may be the matter that shapes the bowl
but it's not the matter that makes the bowl.
You can't have a soul without a hole:
the consummation of both: the Whole).



2/22/2011

Bagatelles

1


Out of the mist she made
diaphanous (a swirl
round trunks in Doric
mode) a girl stepped

brightly

white cloth
rent
red palms
turning for that
sorrowing One

star-crossed

a kantele's
hollows sounded
tears pearled
blush

diamonded




2


green or
greenish blue or
aquamarine
not precisely turquoise

( though you sacrifice
the sweeter sound
or, rather,
not; but ) regardless.

to the surf extend
your flattered nail
with flaked paint

kerchief bellied behind
in brine ~ wind
where bicycles collapse
also that same

sickly green of coffee cups
and telephones
{starfish}
California




3


Southwesterly
a wooden bridge
spans
a gulley or wash

I see from below
under the sun small
as a star
night-time horns

swing gold to
silver
trumpets

straight roads
clear signal




4


thickets bristled
glossed nylon
pushed
cotton convex

here
stood beauty pure
unspoiled by
palaver

hip curve belly-
hole
cleft




5


like seeing
(not making)
a mountain move

deep earthly center
the stink of life---
[but that's a botch]

---of living: that mother-
ing essence
liquid & solid.




6


infinite regress, reduction
to You
ineffable

One:
one

least gap between
fingers holds
doubt's bounty
Stretch further,
harder.

A Light

Winter comes with tapered days
and wreathes in muffled whites and grays
all hint of color; the distressed
trees shiver now, like girls undressed.

The glass that hardens on the lake
looks almost deeper than the ache
in these two hands that hang like chains,
all Summers rifled from the veins

where fever burned some time before,
before the closing of a door,
before the silence and the drouth
of a blasted heart, a barren mouth.

Step forth, snow-mantled Death, and strew
your blight upon the living, brew
up storms, that all the birds take wing.
You'll be a fool again, come Spring.

In the Transit Authority

Like covered picures in a gallery,
a row of several vaguely-human shapes
make odd adjustments but are usually
as lifeless and immoveable as grapes
in some old still life; others cling to phones
and seem the more entitled to the space
they occupy with cocksure breath and bones;
for when they lean, it's with a certain grace
that says their poise is merely temporary,
like lines that hesitate before their ends,
as if to movement all were secondary:
the measure greater than the repetends.

Vanity

Amid the clack of teacups, clink of spoons,
clean, patterned table cloth and lemon rinds:
your hands, midsummer-bronze, long-fingered hands.

Was it a dream, or did your hands pronounce
those rites of morning, near the open blinds,
amid the clack of teacups, clink of spoons,

with all my body stirring? What sweet dawns,
to be awakened by the brooming fronds
of hands, midsummer-bronze, long-fingered hands.

Yes, I believe. Imagination reigns.
There is no other ear your touch commands
amid the clack of teacups, clink of spoons.

Let the mind falter while the heart contends
it is not reason now that recommends
your hands, midsummer-bronze, long-fingered hands,

but vanity, that never comprehends
the silence. No, I never heard them once,
amid the clack of teacups, clink of spoons—
your hands, midsummer-bronze, long-fingered hands.

Villanelle

I do not care for Villanelle
no, not in any circumstance:
She cannot tell a story well.

She weaves a strange and moody spell
on some obsession or romance
I cannot care for. Villanelle

will not inspire me or compel,
but merely leaves me in a trance.
She cannot tell a story well.

And one can spy the little belle,
her echoing footfall, at a glance.
I do not care for Villanelle.

She is a witch, her ways are fell.
Your patience doesn't stand a chance:
She cannot tell a story well.

Avoid the little mademoiselle
and send her packing back to France.
I do not care for Villanelle,
She cannot tell a story well.

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.

Separation

I go out alone and strain
my neck to find him
leaning aslant,
aiming at star clusters.

The sky is mostly guessed at
along this desert drive
where long palm fronds
hide giants from me,

rooftops eclipse galaxies,
hills truncate constellations.
I think of a pool I've seen,
so still it makes a bright

oval in the ground,
and of a child at the brink
who makes his shy contact,
eyes lowered on Orion.

Ojos

Watermelon seeds
currants
capers

shapeshift in eggwhite
The television
spells them

black fringes
lightly painted
flick like

jimmies
I would eat you:
eyes first

Mid-life (A Miniature)

Penny-whistle-
little siren:
Singing kettle's
heavy iron.

Lemon's sour
sugar sweetens.
Sleepy hour,
birds sing matins.

Click of tea cup
in a saucer.
Fingers pick up
dog-eared Chaucer,

Switch to Shelley,
tickle baby.
Spread the jelly.
Happy? Maybe.

Vanishing Act

Yesterday she lost
her arms. The sleeves
of her winter sweater
hang slack and cold.

She cocks her head
above the snug
turtleneck collar:
I imagine the missing mouth,

lips turned upward
at the cheek
she offers for a kiss
I manage like an uncle.

Parts that remain slip
from my hands like leaves.
I'll have to gather and burn them,
sweep her shadow out the door.

Little Things

Sometimes when it strikes
you're sure
there's poetry in it:

an epiphany
with full accompaniment,
all the ahs and amens.

A poem by Anne Carson
about a blue cardigan
was found in its file

behind my eyes,
an important file
in high memory,

when my son toddled
into the room,
eyes wide with discovery,

bringing me
a crayon
and a spoon.

 - about, and for, my beloved and precious Jordan. Thank You, LORD, for my beautiful sons. Edited in 11.15.13.

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.

Tennyson (A Vision)

I met the giant tending in a garden,
bending his too-small body over flowers;
his hands were much too gentle, and too tender.

The hair that curled about his chin was clipped,
and not the beard that I had dreamt: the broad
and silver mantle round a master's mouth.

Under the brows that slanted thick and heavy
as saturated clouds, the deer-mild eyes
(that seemed so sick of honor they could close

and lose no shred of brightness) gazed on darkness,
a kind that I had not been given to see,
that eyes in portraits gander sidelong into,

and through; the night that is the sum of griefs
past revelation or solace. When I woke
The sun blazed. I'm too easily consoled.

Thrills

For Jim Walker

It had been years since I'd last seen you.
We took a walk out back, over the hill
that used to moan and rattle with the song
of a tweaked and obedient engine.

You walked me through paths so overgrown
it took you a while to find them, but the ruts
engraved by tires were still there,
permanent as the grooves at finger-joints.

Smacked by weeds higher than my head,
where gnats were making their own weather,
I could hear the pop and blare of your old bike
wrestling with the ground, your Rosinante.

Once you sailed over the bars and broke
both wrists; you showed me the odd bends,
not proudly, like some Finn or Sawyer,
but with a fear that stopped a racer.

You never rode a bike again
but turned your bent for the blur
of sliding landscape and the song of gears
to a little saffron Karmann Ghia

that could stick to curves at sixty
and look blistering in neutral.
That night you missed a deer by inches.
Your foot never touched the brake.