Category: Poetry

Nosey head lamps and brazen horns,
The freeway hustle squawk of a night club on wheels,
Small towns  wander,
Street Carnivals
And
Narrow alleys. They are no home to me.

A brief glance, lights
Somersault by the windows, a horn,
Suddenly, a shout, a radio-
Falls away reflection on reflection.
An abrupt hand gesture,
Gone.

The street lamps flicker over head
Beating hearts beating wings
To accompany me through this night.
Early morning,
Dark windows icily reflect my passing.

Will she remember me?

On that highway
Corridors of darkness
Open lonely beaches
Rolling tires
Whining road
Sing together to make a dream:
Hold close the road that
Pulls you on,
Sometimes
Swerves
To avoid your grasp.

Gone for a moment in its song,
I remember her scent, her scent after sex,
The high notes and the low.
I said a bit of freedom but could not forget
The glow of the lamp on her body,
Her breasts, her hands, her parted legs,
Air pours over my outstretched palm like the sea.

Ahead, the road continues unrolling,
Unevenly,
Sometimes,
Bunching into ribbon candy.
And the sun again
Eases, retiring behind a peaked roof
It is dark.

O Lord,
Take me back to those airier,
Earlier days
When the bursting sun could be explained
With bones and shells,
Teacups and magnets. Simple then.

 

Buildings,
Walls angrily
Ripped away leaving the raw
Skin so close to blood
Tender and vulnerable
Now, facing the wind sun
Rain.

The poet moans in loud, sometimes angry,
Doldrums
Blindly dropping each word, like sweat,
Refuse. His voice, a
Monotone of sorrow.

Broken bones,
Walls, machine gray
Mortars of old replicas, old fortifications, old lies
Now stand visible and repulsive. A Day,
A simple day gone past.

And I cannot see beyond
The bitter, bitter sun persimmon.
Just another whisky and off it is to the woods
Where I had been the night before and
The night before that

But all that is left is the campfire,
That burnt out campfire and peat moss.
A damp forest and
A figure where once a woman lay.
She carried a lantern,
A bouncing light in the distant wood.

O free me from this expansion of time
That holds, in a single breath, my body floating
Above the complex doom of Hades’
Stars and scars, infinite remorse and pain.
Give me the peace to lie down at last and be free.

I am Cold

And the chair resists, scuds across the linoleum grunting and barking,
then it is silent again, cold and lonely.

I look around my apartment.
Things don’t want to move because they will only become more conscious of the cold,

I know that and yet I watch for a moment longer.
Motionless and empty.

But the coffee is black, hot and aromatic,
starting me to get back to work.

I watched the door close,

heard its soft click.

Now, my eyes sear,

I see

as the wind feels.

 

My friends speak to me

Using words bent,

Screwed and

Wound through

Steel forming machines.

 

I answer with

Doorknobs,

Tire nuts and

Spaghetti ladles;

Sounds I cannot explain.

One of us gets our drink

and the other of us drinks it.

One of us thinks our thoughts

and the other of us lives them.

 

One of us loves her

the other of us drinks her blood.

One of us cannot live without her

the other of us plans her death.

 

One of us is she

and so is the other.

Lamps spread vacant light on the empty pavement
And the cracked sidewalk where washboard weeds grow.

Trees, stolid Napoleons of darkness, silently abide.
Occasional headlights skate the streets.
Pass this cold detent pass it if you can,
To start again the day.

Eggs, butter and piercing yellow light,
A fixed cloud of gnats, tearful tulips, a red-hot ladybug and a wood bee peck at the bay-window.
Day comes, it comes.
Ministers, proselytizes, begs to differ, screams patent medicine and sells gasoline,
Opens like a flower but calls to war.

Always,

Just out of reach, up ahead,

Down the street,

around the corner.

Picture remains,

you do not.

Yesterday, after a brief rain, I was standing at my bedroom window looking at
the brook that appeared when the trees shed their autumn leaves and left the
forest floor looking like a gypsy’s scarf,

When a sudden wind blew those leaves into the air.

I heard a sharp crack that I thought came from me and watched,
As a tall white speckled birch broke open near the root

And fell through the branches of the trees around out it to lie across my newfound stream.

The moon accedes

Unspooling glimmering trails of light on the rippling ocean; it is

A ballroom of luminous twisting squeaks and broken glass jangles.

 

The waters of the sea heave, roll and yawn,

Towering swells sink into hushed pools, tides swing like pendula,

Flaring lights and deep black water rattle like thunder

Wave tips sparkle with aluminum fire.

 

But in a quiet harbor, there is only the

Dream of watercolor sailing ships drifting on an ocean quiet,

Save for the purling tones of water on the pier, the boats, the shore.

And laughter among the rocks where kids make love on beach towels for all to see.

The small forest behind our home has gone from gorged green
to tipsy yellow and fiery red to a stand of naked and defiant
sweetgum and birch bearing rain, wind and cold.

 

Now, we can see a small stream winding through the floor of the forest
And fallen trees, recent and years past, littering the new mud
and leaves freshly fallen.

 

And, to our surprise, a white slate house with a gray roof, we
Did not know existed, appeared among the trees,
just a short distance from our bedroom window.