Boy’s Life

This stem of obvious
cool dark wheels
silence of night clicking open
and clasping shut--
me in my hiding place watching
comings and goings, magical only
because I’m hidden, and it’s night.

I sway in the tree
or huddle in the window-well
with the warm bricks around me,
safe and excited
no one sees me

...

Now the night phases vaguely
outside the melding glass
after another round of noise
beat me near numb,
dumb at the dinner table,
the prattle of forks and tongues.
After another day of busy light
locking me in illusions of action
eyes and mouths everywhere
feet and wheels, hands and money,
opinions and desires
and no one sees me.

no one ever sees me.
I must be hiding still
I must have learned invisibility
too well
the warm bricks around me
swaying in the leaves

To be seen is not to be
much more than a target.
The bigger you are in the plundering eye
the blacker you are
in the hot corona.
Better to eat this candle
and keep hiding in the night.
I trust no one.
The warm darkness around me,
silence in the tree.

7/30/98

Bettina’s Sestina

Ease of the saint in bartering wisdom,
the truant forager sleeps till midnight.
I wire the Pope about Sunday in the trees
where time leaps furtively into the ocean
scraping scars of winter, as the blind turn to day
and frail snow earns each divinity’s displeasure.

We stacked the weak until around midnight
not wishing to clock our candidate’s displeasure.
Without further concentration we spit into the ocean
and the ocean spits back, sliding us into the trees
where we consider cocoanuts of wisdom
flooding lithesome frameworks once a day.

Bettina my love, give it a shove, share your displeasure
let it creak softly by night or by day.
You can’t get by with the wizard’s chronic wisdom
unless the curl is restored in the starved mote of midnight
and the ladder withdraws from its suit of the ocean.
You’ll be eating for weeks in the thumbs of trees.

There is no dancing here to illuminate the day.
The edges of protection fade into the ocean
masked by scattered canticles of displeasure.
Sorrow fails the clever wounded, suspicious of wisdom.
They laugh like darkness lost in trees.
They have not heard Bettina’s sob unfurl at midnight.

Salt flails, trying to attract the eager evidence of trees.
The fish wouldn’t miss the crease in its wisdom
though it’s fashionable now to spray doubts by day.
While we serve at the king’s last known displeasure
Bettina arrives in her carriage near midnight
tearing down the forbidden easement to the ocean.

Gravity’s onion is peeled back by the ocean
where Bettina leases the imaginary trees.
Caves of inconsequence fade into midnight
but the placating minions live to nod another day.
Bettina, marine dwellers urge their displeasure
upon the rocks of your woeful whim of wisdom.

We stand upon the waters of wobbling wisdom
only to screech the measure for measure of day.
Bettina clutches yearnings in the curl of the trees.

Selena Sestina

Her version leapt upon the region singing
while the students in the planetarium wept.
There is no legion crawling here at the last
to rescue my misgivings from my fate.
Her elbows grazed the fortunate heart
and solved the noose around my fantasy.

No one's window reaches first to last
or conjures long rows of sanctioned fantasy.
If all the average ruins in the city wept
they would twist the noose around my heart.
Regard this tangent whirling toward your fate
which I unleash with quiet singing.

Her wrist caught the light that her skin wept
upon the fleece of graduated fate.
Did the flaring diadem dim panicked fantasy
or does the stream of pleading last
beyond the grip of minor fishes singing
along the edge of her porous heart?

The loss of affable reason took to heart
the grievance of the random singing,
but she could not help but cough at fate
for blaring out the most envious fantasy
as morning planted streams that wept
to catch the sunlight free at last.

There is no cure for the grip of fantasy
that grabs and tears at my vagrant heart
with grinning fatal noose of singing
of her eyes closing upon the tone that wept
as I pound red-headed leather on the last
and throw myself back on the future of our fate.

What song has tied the noose around my fate
and kept this famished memory for last?
Not even mine, but stretched across the heart
of generations, foreign stanzas singing
beyond the reach of fables or learned fantasy.
Did you hear the antic pilot deny he wept?

Her version's shaking changing phases fate
as it phases me, lost in the breath after breath of singing,
not yet choked by the noose that time has wept.

devotions

The knot of attention is undone
by rampant sleeplessness
The curve of intent is fiddled
with, gone loopy, swooping
colors bounding and
bouncing off the sidewalk.
the chatter no longer crisp
as a self-evident smile
but dolloped in crustaceous wisps
knocking against my sidewalk table.

When does the beauty start, I wonder.
Can't waste this sunny afternoon
stolen from the IRS and other
landlords of my life. When does this day
get designed? can't we have
a deco border, a nouveau curlicue
edging through the high haze
and bus noise?

Just these radio station t-shirts,
old folks ambling in canary
and fuchsia sports coordinates,
junior high girls tanning
their winter white knees,
Doctors with their ties,
nurses with their grievances.

Shoe Inn, Foto Hut, Drawers,
Elegant Styles, Footers.
Babies dripping ice cream, cars
coughing poison, birds
on the captive trees.

At last a florescent green drink
bubbling on another table.
But it's not enough.
This day refuses to be defined
beyond the worn ordinariness,
the haze floating between the sun
and the leggy sidewalk,
the concrete amnesia.

1993

Before the Tree

When talent breaks its last rewarded string
and grace released its furtive song
all the bells in tandem then will ring
and sandwiches revive us.
Onward, moth of ages!
ordinary plates
relinquish vertiginous portals
for the leaf is not to be
and the dream is on its knee
before the tree.

Here in the garden of undeclared saints
there are limits on the brooks you can withdraw.
As fast as reason eats the valley's sun,
our day is done.
The garden smells of paint.
No windows grow upon the thorny fruit
and shoots of lemon colored uniforms
drape over arbors of lost rumors.
There is no edge to it.
We hear voices when there's no one there.

Head crowned with solitude
seeing far, roots far below
entangled with the huddled distant others,
nourishing the accidental and unseen.
Who knows if your heart is joyous or bitter
or your gaze more intent than rambled
flooded inward or released to be born
of colored air?
We hear only a rhythmic converse
with the teeming wind.

When windows creep upon the failed fedora
and angels black the weary Diaspora
the fantasies collide us.
Inward, sudden thunder's beacon
cavity of mire
unleash the fluted planet
for the best is not to be
the irredentist forest flees
before the tree.

[irredentist: one who advocates the recovery of territory culturally or historically related to one's nation but now subject to a foreign govt. From Italian for "unredeemed".]

Oct/Nov 1998

tasked

your task eludes your grasp
and your return is uncalled for
your failures nip your heels
climb on your back, you think
no one can see them riding
but somehow they do.

easy as the imagination finds
you lose
and the grasp cannot connect
with the tempest in your shoes

this least of all is true
that the renewal is uncalled for
no, the grasp is meant to be
the first reason you try
to complete the evidence of the street

1998

Greetings
Instability is a crushing boor
except on certain Sundays
when the feet of nations walk blindly
in the mire of consequence, why
are we surprised when those supposed
entities, parties, forces, all the choirs
of power persist in doing what they know
we know is destroying them--it's the urchin
revolt writ large, bannered across the sky
o'er the squalling pit of composure.

I send you greetings, earthlings,
pitiable creatures who cannot even see
into the infrared or ultraviolet,
who no longer sense your own planet's
meridians of forces, who are blind at night
and cannot connect your inner worlds
with your perceptions of the outers.
You wonder that I speak English--we
have been monitoring your Star Trek--imagine
our surprise to find many alien languages
whispered in dark barrooms at the edges
of jungles and slums. We are still puzzled
by what you mumble about in churches
and the braying of your electronics hurts
our 33 1/3 ears. Nonetheless
the concubines of conscience inhibit
the pleadings of the grass.

We now return control of your set
game match, your conjunctions and
disturbances, your permutations and
inconveniences, to you,
who did not miss them.
This is what we wanted to know.
We will have no further contact
with your gray minds, your buzzing
fingers, dead skin.
Please arrange for our souvenir parkas,
Renoirs, partitas, late quartets
and ball point pens to be sent
to this address. Didn't you know
that you are a living time capsule
buried in this abandoned neighborhood?
Turn on your TV, and
think about it.

1/30/99

The Ancient Plaster Has Wise Cracks


Truth has high ceilings
though reality roils
in the shivering dark.

Craniums carry
candles of pretense
but feet err
in bleeding shouts.

Faith is the dream
before morning
till light becomes invisible
in the panic noon.

Kind universe to trace
our jaunty brush strokes
though the crash of mystery
satirizes the lines.

Time has slender fingers
but clocks measure only
the folly of souls.


Pittsburgh 1996

Menu

He is the bland wolf
see him come,
garish pleas, greedy tongue
into the restaurant.
This is his greeting card adventure.
All around him voices munch
on stony ears.
Look what he devours.
He questions you: why
do you hug your guilt
like a stolen teddy bear,
like your mother?
Eat with me.
Enjoy.

The bland wolf
eating pie
faced with a mistake.
This greeting card adventure
has no bite. The worst is
probable. Evenings here,
voices munch on stony ears.

1/1990

On the Beach

On the beach you see
the beauty of broken things
worls
weathered form

the water runs in
the light runs out
while the small birds
follow

each tide wipes
sand hard and clear
brings new pieces

I finger the big
shell and the dry wood
birds head beak

and say to the sea
take me
take my heart

7-9-97

Night people

I figure the first poets
were night people
who entered the world in darkness
their day forever night

and so while others slept
they kept watch
against the rustle and glint
before it exploded
as roaring teeth
and they stayed alert to the
insidious slitherers
threatening sleep-stilled skin.

In their firelicked solitude they had sharp
thoughts.
As the cold early morning drifted in
they dreampt awake
and in the slow explosion of dawn
poems were born.

If they were singers
they had to sing to themselves
as the others slept.
They were hunters
who searched in the dark
for images.

In the light
as the others prepared to hunt
and gather
they were given to warm sunlit sleep.
Later, they would hear stories
of the day.

undated early 90s

Realms of Speed

Urgent as the close wall
odd in the ruined rain
we marched, greeted, sang
loved by clocks
arguing dreams, unfurling.

Hot sand of
burned light,
waves galloping and collapsing
their death shouts
the ragged rhythm of that place

but not these, honk honk.
Adapt, respond, be always
and everywhere
appropriate.

Give us not the drag of passion,
the sodden slowing tears,
the porous mud of rumination,
the obstacle of principle.
Beep beep. This kingdom
is a riot, where every agenda's
a king.

undated 90s