Saturday, December 11, 2010

TRILLIUM

I would not want to live
inside anyone else’s clarity;
we always come to be confused.
“Who am I,” she asks, panicked,

when logic fails to put a face on sense.
Trillium, I think, shocked
by the purple of the sockets
her eyes haunt.

Chaired alongside me, Mother fidgets.
Her father, dead now forty years,
and her brothers, out of touch,
are the men she talks to,

those present more oppressive
than the passed.
“I don’t exist,” she says,
turning from my silence;

who, then, is this other
that gains robustness
the farther back-lit
memory goes to work?

Presently, she laughs, recalls
her childhood neighbor
bowing, reins in hands, astride his horse
in a yard only she has seen.

Now she can reach to pat my leg,
for I’m here still, where dusk
puts a patina of fine light
on clouds I cannot ease.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

ORTHOPEDICS


The leg is not what you thought it was.
No longer are you walking
to and fro the reconstructed
memories your mind wanders.
Well-lit corridors are a way
outside time, and their stations
hum with voices from around the world.

On your back, unmoving, day after day,
you begin to take apart
what remains of your person.
Someone else can have the sunglasses
and the wallet.  The watch
needs a timer and a reset key.

On one side of the leg, doctors have pulled
skin together with stitches;
the other side’s fish-like design
is a graft taking hold.
An external fixator extends
from foot to hip and keeps in place
countless fractures.

The tree is a painful fact.
The body has been broken
by its puzzle: pieces of bone
that float in the sky.

You recall the brilliance of this sky
and that it did not let you fall asleep.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

NOT ONE THING

The heart, first to depart,
is soon followed
by the other parts,

falling, as will being,
through the many
fractured distractions.

The stone mouth idles.
The pining lover,
whose longing was misplaced,

was angry
even as a child.
Of what could he repent?

The different days are all
a trial of moods.
Embers will be sifted

behind the eyes,
winds kindled in the ribs.
Please, may this be so.

May we not break
at the sharp point
or impede

the wheeled vehicle
our sleep has balanced.
Through inevitable

refinement of love,
may we frame fragments
in the generous
number of the house.

Monday, June 14, 2010

DARKNESS HARBORED A FUGITIVE VOICE

Every event has a cause
but the sequence of events is random
and nothing happens for a reason
or by necessity

You might have argued differently
had you trusted logic
for the absence of character
that belied your achievements

Company had eased delirium
Unfamiliar caregivers brought blankets
and pieces of meat to the vigil
they sat as you strengthened

You belonged, after all, elsewhere
It was time to leave your personal space
where the hoot owl called 
as sadness tumbled the river within

The shit you had smeared across your face
could have been streaks of painted color
and you wanted to prove fearless
even with your fallen understanding

Saturday, June 5, 2010

DEATH IS AN ANIMAL

There is a word
that has authority
and a person
who lost his sense
hearing the word

You have seen yourself act
    like an animal
and would again, if you could,
    with human footing

You are apart from nothing

The parts make sounds
holding their unity
at a distance

Saturday, May 29, 2010

GROTTO OF THE GNOSTIC ANGEL

The past comes to an end
reversing itself,
as we restore the future,
contriving to salvage
its garden
of ornate resemblance

We had pushed our memories
through cities,
trusting to find a sky
that flattened land for grasses
the unadorned could plow.
The heat was heavy with water

and the stones nudged into place glistened
alongside bits of chinaware and colored glass
travelled to set up house
(and house again)
wherein we recognized
our persons re-assembled

The two who conspired
to hold each other off
yield as one, oafish,
unable to stand upright
without a hand to help

Wings, no less unlikely,
catch the eye, averted
from the guardian’s
remote and placid gaze
above the whirlwind
of parents
driving youth back
to the old country
grandparents remembered 

We go back with trowels 
and wheelbarrows
to revive the grotto
with forms of promise
fulfilled and then abandoned
and hues of restlessness
inimical to settlement

The angel stays implacable,
as if a figurehead at sea

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

TWO HEARTS

I took two hearts for birds.
The first, a silver fledgling
in the landscape’s one tree
polished the sky

when it took wing,
and in its place,
a brilliant sun
declined to nest.

Years ran down feelings,
as if the brooding
had not hatched.
The light came on

one night in the kitchen’s dark
when I opened the refrigerator,
which was empty,
except for the frozen raven,

a past century's relic
on its Wedgwood platter.
As I reached in
to pick it up,

the bird’s skin turned translucent
and I could see the heart
inside was pumping.
My hands went right into the bird

and I took up the heart,
which was good-sized,
lifting it out
with a freedom's intention.

I am holding the heart
in my hands
and it is spilling blood
onto the floor.

The tenderness I feel
mixes with yearning.
I find the redness
of its aeration flattering,

and I don’t want to get
myself in trouble,
taking back
what had belonged to me. 

Friday, May 7, 2010

LOCK-DOWN

  “Escape did not promise anything worthwhile.”
                                                    - Chekhov

The rickety door opens out
from a dark room
onto a screened porch,
as far as one can go
(without violence)
in the faltering make-up 
of sense. 
Past low sweeping pine boughs,
a view of the uncut meadow -
birds prepare
in faded light
for lock-down.
The bent figure of an aged woman
he had once seen buried
continues her ceaseless rooting.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

FROM HERE TO THERE

Go through the wall
when you get back

a dust pours
over your hands 

your soul was once substantial
oscillating in the mud face

you wear dry
through fanned air 

Between dignity and intimacy
you can now inhabit

the long countryside
under construction, 

ribbed passage 
through bulwarks,

and the clanging bell
of darkened light.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

THE COMPLETE PRESENCE

The complete presence
of almost nothing
- the person vanished -

stirs its memory, embodies
name, voice, and gesture,
forgets the face.

Unawares, others trust -
only I am
watching this familiar

relatedness turn duplicitous,
the man seeming
equal to no

more of distance
than umbilical measure,
is, will be, has been

uncoupled - finessing
recall from indistinct
imaginings. His silence

breaks the trance
of speech, will
cracks, forcing acts

to hope for
incoherence or movement
toward vital, joyous

enterprise. The car
pulls out, heads
for the horizon's

linear necessity,
scraping past perspective's
diminishment. Clouds flatten 

feeling, the storm
moves in, and an entrance-
way door closed

prematurely.  Skittish
with indifference?  Bowed?
The beyond boomerangs,

and the here
comes back to
returns life from

what he had
thought to put
behind.  Others.  Estrangement.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

THE DANCERS

This has never happened
that things are the way they are
because they could not turn

The dancers, staged to question,
improvise.
What could be more real
than the body?,
when individual expressions
become an ensemble’s
disclosure through 
form’s achievement

a dream of scattered presence
re-assembled 
and for the self (which is the audience)
original emotion 
shaped by attention
focused every instant
here, where we are, as we are

      *

The dancers
are floored
to start, heaps
that separate
into the limbs
of trunks
tunneling
air, narrowing
proportion
in a wanton
flurry of leaping
motion
triumphant
grace of simple
lines no one
knew were drawn

      *

You carry your feet
with your breath,

lifting the pounding heart
from its cavity,

and ranging with intent
over a prophetic space

knowledge cannot reach
to put a hand on

      *

There are no lights,
but lit by wrist and fingers
upturned faces

display moon masks
until the shoulders drop
and the arms flare

as elbowing wings bank
into a spiral flight
hips pivot through

Friday, April 16, 2010

FAMILY PORTRAIT


Pop songs, on a radio,
scratched at the darkness

Doors shut and opened
throughout the house

Your parents were snoring
but nothing was trustworthy

Chance had left you
to wall and ceiling angles

that converged, like feelings,
foreshortening corners

In a dream you ventured out
into the unfamiliar woods

prowled trees
adorned with scalps

and the dead snapped back,
stinging across the face.

Scurry, dampness,
and torch light
,
turned the warrior
back for breath.

No telling how
frightened or captive

the family would look
in the kitchen, in the morning

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

THE MIRACLE

We came upon
and entered
creation by chance,

participating
in an unfolding
of events

that went on
without us.
Fire was the event 

that turned my desire.

*

Either and Or
set up the choice.

To take a breath
before I needed one

to flash out
of my appearance.

The sun always got dizzy
from its fear of heights.


Tuesday, April 13, 2010

HEALING DAY


A white owl with red eyes
lands the sky

We twist around, go for
the open garden’s edge

drawn to the sounding river
because the back

is a flowing river
rising to silt

the danger
darkness has become

     *

The lover, the friend,
and the stranger
each will betray you

the lover for passion,
which is beyond reproach,
the friend for gain,

which will not last,
the stranger for evil,
which has no recompense

With each you must go
willingly, permit all wounds
to bear weight 

lost directions,
scar threading sinuous
complexities

     *

The brightening light
we wade in
obliterates distress

powerful
as a mountain,
as its agile lion,

moving past
the owl still
until the last

wing feathers 
stitched to the taxidermist's
skeleton

Monday, April 5, 2010

WHEN THE POEM MOVES ON

The starting point is at the bottom
you get to using words, their tilted
sounds and false show, for support.

Surefooted, laconic, and culpable,
you work moves past embellishment
girding image with mendicant emotion,

constructing loss by left to right ascent
that altogether disappears
inverted sky, an empty bowl

when something happens off the ground.
This is the poetic leap,
finished with meaning, and there is nothing
     
about it to point at.  The poet goes back
to the articulated house.  Its brick
chimney draws smoke above a gable roof.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

HERONS

Spaced along the shore 
like chess pieces in an end game,
stalking, patient, still
feelings sorted, thoughts 
not meant to arise 
and feed off memories.
An egret moves suddenly,
stabs at a fish in the water,
swallows it whole.
Then what you desire
(and you are always in pursuit)
folds into difference
needs recalled as pleasure. 

You brought rod and reel.
Always, the scout of wind,
water’s white caps. 
Past lives float upside down
in the lake swells,
and just beneath the surface,
anger glinting like a silver lure

The sky fathers traffic,
twigs carried in beaks,
a landing dance 
of plumes and clapper. 
The knowing self points out
a female heron, lining 
the woven nest 
awaiting ritual, high 
in a tall tree's chill
and the rookery's noise.
The place will be defended.
You go away. 
.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

SHAPE-SHIFTER

                       who changes ways
                                     n
                                     o
                                     s
                                     t
                                     i
                        p h y s i c a
                                       
                                                            by melancholy  healed
                                                                         
                                                 in the half life of a star,
           
                        must hold desire fast                        well past
                                                            amorous tradesmen
                                                           pocketing  diagnosis
           
         *

           much/might
           make/mulch

clumsily pronounced                        peeves
                                                                        are no end
                                    against is with

         *

            the breath of an animal

                                                imagination    a long winter 

opening for light

          *

to recognize as mine                                    ideas so foreign
                        as to seem some other’s

                                    and what assent I gave
            I now retract

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

SCAFFOLDING

The top of a building climbs 
to the bottom of the sky,
lifting its dream bones off the city pavement.

Clouds patrol coffins closed 
to the failing afternoon sun 
and the cotton candy vendors wail
across the traffic and pushcarts.  

Workmen are taking down scaffolding
and untying the blue tarp enclosure
that billows, like sails before a wind dies out.

Onlookers point to the building,
its reflective glass, which alters perception, 
entrapping shards of straightforward light
bundled for flight.

Monday, March 29, 2010

STRAGGLERS

The roughened barrier of skin stops the cold
and the blood continues to drip
through scant sums of flesh, numb thought
the frozen earth begrudges air.

Use has exhausted the abandoned plains.
We trudge across their pillowed sheen
like the remnant of a scattered army
struggling with diminished strength

to forestall embrace by ice.  
The sky runs its factory of heat
at such great remove only a trickle escapes
to warm the garnets set in our chests.

These are the tiny transmitters of feeling
our bodies herded to recover.
The breath you can see is a thin blanket
for the seed-bearing sleep of forms.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

CACTUS

The desert has kept its promise of peace
to the son who accepts the havoc
his presence brings to hostile ground:  

wind-scattered rubbish, metal scrap,
rusted and twisted into beguiling shapes,
and the off road vehicle trails

that cross heat-cracked gullies of creosote
and boulders spewed by infrequent storm.
The place he comes to isn’t named

for divine encounters, and he wrestles
not with angels but with less remote
forefathers, who vie with him for the red

flower atop the cactus barrel.
They claim resilient ornament
to justify the pain they bring to others.

The son hears his father pronounce him worthless
knowing that the grandfather listens
and confirms the judgment;

the evidence runs through him, failure
to go it on his own and make with little parts
a semblance of the greater whole

and he within its emptiness.  On the night 
his silenced mother tossed her mind in
with the screech and howl of dark distances,

she made her final argument
in his defense, entreating
an inscrutable issuance of old suitors

and fresh rivals that flapped for her.
On the clothesline stretched outside her home,
ghosts way back in her inoperable brain

threatened and cajoled, and like her husband, 
were most severe when feeling
came before them stammering, and the cold
chill of stars feathered fright, speaking strangely.

Friday, March 26, 2010

THE REAL THING

So much of what we do
could be done differently
and more to our liking.

This makes us angry,
and we argue.  Then one 
has the fortune

to notice feeling,
the real thing,
had been growing all the while.

(Color is now deftly handled.)
And sometimes what we feel
as real is not.

Weren’t we excited
by what we thought true
(we flashed with excitement)

and chagrined to discover
new feelings still grew?
(A continent, almost,

had come into view.)
No longer would we like
what once we had liked

(Who finds truth “unchanging?")
and we puckishly explored
our changing minds.   

(Their spaciousness seemed lush.) 
Really, what was true,
and we agreed,

was always otherwise. 
(We wanted to be honest.)
Circumstances intervened.

We were helpless to act,
made to settle, where we were,
and do what we had done.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

THE TOAST

You see blood on the keyhole
at the side entrance to a person
within whom you live

Doubt turns you away
and gives the body's stigmata
time to heal

A gaunt face calls you back
the weighted chest lets you in
the party is going strong
suffering is out in the open

More and more you leave
words for those who can use them

On tiptoe you sneak past
the big room
- a stop that would elate you -
and climb the back stairs, 
dropping your coat with the others

Below, the doors to the big room's
balcony open over a spilling lawn
Someone has raised a glass
in your honor

You see into shadows
past the lit necessity
of sweating trees
where your restlessness labors

Your hand moves slightly,
an involuntary salute with intention
to make good on escape

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

WINDOWS

The sky is a rain of ash
mind a passing traffic.

The apartment’s humming hasn’t stopped.
When the windows are left open,

our feelings can get out
and let themselves back in.

We might name the most familiar
but cannot say which ones

others will have stifled.
The view stacks rooftops,

like patio chairs, past brick
facades, and in a close by building

we take innocent movement
for a signaler’s intent.

He passes through rooms with open shades,
retrieving words

that mean for us to touch.
The needs we conceive

seek expression:
responsibilities, like fish,

and happiness,
the simple hydrogen of light.

What we don’t want
gets started as a mattress.

There just isn’t room
for bending excitement back

or moving apart.  Our skins,
pale from remorse, 

glow, and the dry air
leaves us short of breath.

Monday, March 22, 2010

CYCLOPS

The busy eye, by God intended
as a third for every mother,
a help for safekguarding children,
by chance mislaid, alone
upon a wombless monster’s brow,
whose measured gaze falls short
of targeted heavens
and the wavering horizon’s

unmerciful confinement.
Accident confounds design.
The artist has a vision,
then a child.  No end of love
will finish both aright, no reach
of heart engage detachment.