S'taff

I wait for the song to finally reach your heart,
for the sun of my true fathers to shake you.
I am not patient, I eat knives at my gentle
table, I wake up several times a day
always alone.
I wait for the thunder to crack over your city
of damp shock, the lightning to surprise
your mirror, so you can see the face
that I see.
I wait for the blister of a world to go away
and leave us to our own rain,
our wind, our snow, our sea,
our faces drowning in the same glass
our teeth beating in the same
madness, our dreams
at rest with each other.
I can't reverse the clasp of my mind
or the sinking of my heart
or the skin's discouragement without you.
Call it an unearthly instrument
too clear to bear a name
among the prodigal namers. All we have learned
is to turn away.

1/14/1976

Goodbye

I want to scream pictures into your mind.
Many of them are burnt with a sun I have never seen
but in them.
A leaf purple with other leaves,
a woman pink with strength.
I want to put us both on a healthy diet
and to strangle every cigarette in the world.
I want to not worry.
I want strings pulling ordinary language
past the quiet where my mind zooms.
I want the ether to be noticeable, but easily walked through.

I want your eyes where I can see them
and your hands where they will move when I move mine
and our lives to make silent dances despite our
weakness. I want you to have our baby
but only if you quit smoking first.
I want this to be the last time
I am afraid I am only kidding myself.
I want the world to tease us
to the limits of a love.

1/15/1976

Maybe the art is not apparent
maybe it isn’t real.
Maybe the silence out there
of embarrassment, of incomprehension,
that absence that is refusal
is wholly correct.
I no longer care.
I no longer expect
more. I ramble
on, being what I be,
as busy as the blood speeds
buzzing and humming.
Lonely,
sure.
But in here
with the light and the rain
the moist flaking fog
the dark boughs, the flashing trials
the golden trees, the melodies
in breath and out
why bother
stopping.
We can all
talk to the future.

12.10

This is not the silence of the cemetary
but of the soul world
of shadows that must be named and arranged,
of the explorations they force, and their rewards.

This is not the echo of the crypt
but conversation with a friend unknown,
another echo maybe, or another time
never to be known—
a phantom, or a future.

11/10

Twitter me this:
mania phobia
LOL
SOS

2010

So here among my fellow parasites,
the jibbering and buying, a warm
steady hum that cumulatively strangles
the given world,
and me scratching
the itch of writing, for that is--I've
come with alarming speed to accept--
its only remaining function.
We are the rapacious guests
and all I've got is silent gratitude
for my muscles working through this world,
its trees within the sky, its insects
ravening without conscience,
and for this brief moment
our fellow killers hidden.

In this most
comfortable age for as many as have ever
been comfortable,
easily sowing the seeds
of total destruction with every
happily stolen breath.

9/2/2010

The nerves of lemons, may they
peacefully reveal the limits
of forethought. What is the moment
when it's over? What is the future
when it's ignored? Eating can't
be remembered, not really.

Stan got on the subway in 1967
and got off the planet in 1983.
Where did he go? Does it matter?
He's gone. Was he ever here?
Or ever there? A fashion for two-toned

cars began in the model year of 1955.
Boys sat on hills overlooking the highway
shouting out their names. Ford! Chevy!
Buick! De Soto! Little girls squealed
and jumped up and down.
Now they totter
and smile, at being still alive
and yet, maybe not.
The fog before my eyes, the sudden clarity
through the earphones,
a dance.

7/2010

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

Let the buzz slip by
as the flowing architecture
wakes you.
Across the weary fog,
the ancient plot, the passing noise,
the relocated stone, the patient water,
the apples in formation, the air
in retreat. This fervent
dalliance.
The echoes of pain,
the anticipation of everything
changing forever.

7/2010

What is the measure
of this dislocation
that I know myself
best in anger.

But note another
sign:
of dry mouth,
sounds collapsing in throat,
mind dismayed
at the weakness of anger
to make myself
understood.

No eloquence comes,
only wholeness
in that instant.
It is the measure
of what I know
I know.

early 1970s

The Chain

By gripping my eyes
in helpless insistence,
I see what is needed

instead of what be-
fore them is behind them,
forever and for
now.

For friends who will not
touch,
insolence
is my only clothing.

Forever forced, I am
lost in the needle
of these
eyes' demands,

squeezing mud
and scurrying to perceive.

early 1970s

Between State

rate this impulse: fill the page
errands like this reveal
streams of forbidden will
wiser even than 25 years of humiliation
not so smart now are we
repeating

wrapped around the reflection
the blue curl of 6
pillow of nostalgia
no angry fragments of tomorrow
just hours of artificial rescue

ribbed garden, dangling return
evading, escaping the familiar moments
turning as a sudden monster.

silhouette of a friend
waves from the station.
that was long ago, and
someone else's friend.
all that remains
is his piano.

whirling, the torturous voice
gratefully far away,
the darkness trembles
with waiting light.

9/10/09

Things are
as they
sound
how hard
or soft, close
or far
wood
or metal
scream, sigh
breath

07-09

There are no trophies in my trophy room.
There are no prizes in the drawer, certificates
on the wall. All the gold stars
are lost in the sky. There's only

the setting sun burnishing the bay
and the cold shadows coming
to meet it.

12/07

Grasping the railings of the song.
You don't call it that--have you
been standing there long? I
rubbed misgivings from the air,
stroking the fervid counterpane,
foraging thought, thumb in hand.
The spilling wound and the starved
alarm preceded me
in the contemplation
of the stale flake of day.

The sea speaks only to itself
in grave hollows of absorbing
and rejoinder, a conversation
heedless of the sparkle, the crazed
eons, the dead. Pale whispers
from the bite of night, huge slaps
of air, from clattered cold to
sudden hot, the force of what is
and what is not.

You're laughing at me, cradling
your insane candle,
as if prominence excuses
such fractionate contempt
for what dives beyond us
to the depths you can't
ignore forever.

2009

The Slip

The intent of your poem is oppressive.
It urges flowering
in a psychotic framework.
The moon symbol clashes with the accordion
in the third line. Isn't the punch in the second stanza
a little too
on the nose?

You have no idea how many
poems about ectomorphs
crawl across my desk like panicking
corn flakes. Due to time constraints
we skip ahead in your life
to the inevitable failure.
Let us cavort
and entwine you at 90%
off the cover price.
Call this sour lemonade
but if Clint Eastwood gets
interested, we'll talk.

The window I used to have
is fogged with ignorant breath.
The day is muffled, the
night quivers and darts.
I haven't eaten since the last
time. Still, I'm taller than
you again.

3/2009

These Severed Words

These severed words
snapped by distinction

leak into whispers
of plaintive mist

revolving like a kettle
on the rim of emotion

where dreams bear grudges
and winds sweep clean

the vision of the deep
enclosure

the foreign blaze

2/09

Swirl

There she is in the darkness, slim legs
against the sea. I can't believe it
as I move quickly towards her,
a cold jolt reminds me it is impossible.
If this moment ever existed, it is past.
What was missed, is missed.
It's all mist now, swirling through dreams.
The day's measure of breath,
the forehead of the world feverish with time,
the diffident wait for the last chuckling
off of this mortal failure.
It's rain on the roof
splashing the morning.

3/09

This dream

Monumental grass,
placecards of wonder--
retreat in the vacuum
of snow
retreat
in the flavor of night

retreat in the style of shining retreat
in the stillness
of sudden sound

the mist leaking on the glowing
brick, the monumental grass

the murmurs of autumn
the whirling muscles of night

greet the new flame
with spangles of innocence
leave the ache behind

am I the last of my kind
who rode a trolley
who wore red wool,
who watched the lantern sway
until the chant began?

If the light smacking the air
spinning your mirror
were made of rooftops
and a questioning stare

behind the heaped bows,
the feathers would drip with inky blood

while feral adventurers sand the hull,
mumbling in neon.

Hammers bathe the dazed lobby
with scarred nerves.
If no one sleeps,
whose dream can this be?

I release you now
to your faint lesson
and the ranging rub

the words unheard
in the promised distance
and the waiting
to flower

the acts of night:
flamboyant silence
pretenses of hope
postscripts of yearning

bright darkness
vestigial song
last glance

5/27/07