arf
the dog of summer
hanging around
scratching fleas
wagging his tail
articulate hesitations
sitting there
with a slipper
in his mouth
airport calls
planes answer
sit there
good boy
sun like butter
smooth yellow warm
Labels: poetry, sonnet
Judy
your name stays with me
I am a suitcase of dreams
night is for hunting sleepers
it depends on dreams
as a day is a long dream
eyes see what they are thinking about
nightmares rise with the sun
your name has no words in it
is a sigh uttered in sleep
where arms flinch empty
I am insubstantial
I float through you
an unanswered question
I have dreamed myself
and you dreamed me
those lost forms float
through each other
never meeting
hands have no meaning
I can touch myself
only when the dream
becomes bright and wistful
intense and strangely sad
I can feel us
me having a body and a life
and then it goes pale
like a thief
prisoner of the future
and the past
a ghost that still knows
forty yeas of gray
cannot take one satin night away
Labels: free verse, love, poetry
Spring haikus (2)
1.
a lost pleasure is
tucked in the folds of darkness
birds sing to sunrise
2.
the apricot tree
long bare suddenly flowers
at which spring smiles back
Labels: haiku, poetry, Spring
Ion
undershirt overcoat in the vale little not big glade cut from the town with a blade run through by the train not on the vale but in it or under is better for worse far worse is than eyeless is the dirt like the worms making new friends at the funeral . that , is enough they welcome him in friends make a fence with their bodies won’t let him out ! this is your hole , forever like a door open like I’m sorry like I miss you like the lid closing with the smack of a kiss that sounds underground a subway somewhere simpers )
Let me add a few words about this strange new prose poem thing I have been playing with lately. This is a poem for Ion (pronounced yawn) Drimba, my friend and coach. He died in Brazil in 2006 and is much missed. I have attempted to (with the exception of internal punctuation such as contractions) use punctuation only as a verbalized part of the poem. So when you encounter one sitting strangely separated off from the phrases, please say what it is (for instance ! exclamation point , comma and the like). They have no other function in this poem, in reality. There are some natural rhythms here and some caesura that is unavoidable and I’m confident you will find them as you read this out loud. That, unfortunately is the only way this strange poem will make any sense at all. It might seem a little confusing (strange rhymes lost without the perspective that lines and stanzas provide, alliterative phrases that are inherently awkward) at first but let the parsimony principle be your guiding light and all will be delightfully murky. Enjoy!
These are the Friday Five words used:
kiss
train
fence
vale
simper
Labels: poetics, poetry, prose poem
place
town of my dreams
streets slick with night
green spring sunny days
time
to sit
and write
breakfast
and lunch on the terrace
sparkling sea water
peaceful
walks along the beach
talks with friends
colleagues students
artists
sunny day
convertible drives
top down
along a coastal highway
trips to mountains
picnics in meadows
music at the symphony hall
ballet and opera
at the theater
cocktails on the boat
in evening
cathedrals
cool large and hushed
outdoor cafes in the afternoon
people walking by
us sitting talking laughing
snorkeling
in quiet coves
of afternoon sun
barbeques
with friends
kids and grandkids
and time
precious time
Labels: free verse, poetry
lovelight
leave the light on
we will see you
Beethoven is home
the madman
is this your game
who is winning
conquest Mozart
coming home from
miles away
undertone
to radio
key in a lock
understand
pastisse is a
midnight game
you didn’t win
it isn’t finished
Labels: free verse, poetry
femme
she felt happiness
in her mouth eyes
chocolate endures
it tastes long deep
burning her mind
an itch
daylight hides her thoughts
a feeling inside
what she should do
doing without finding words
my sense of completion context
feet feel floor
as dancing
TO ALL WOMEN: HAPPY WOMAN'S DAY!!!!!
8 MARCH 2008Labels: free verse, poetry, Woman's Day
string
from the bureau of words
in the drawer of my mind
looking through the mess
for order
looking at morning’s mural
painted on energetic flesh
in my eye my yard
my neighbors
migration dilated
made larger in parking places
to morning movement
seen and heard
and understood
without speech words
which aren’t even kempt
in dictionaries
found but confused
contemptuous
under alphabetical tyranny
never understanding silent order
of string to fingers
and vinegar to nose
Labels: free verse, poetry
migration
with the sun’s infliction
watching gathering lines
searching for the
words of waiting
as well as music
from the margins
of afternoon
which were agitated
and in that agitation
crows called to their hue
the colorlessness creeping
up from the roots
of Soviet style apartment buildings
down from Lenin
all the way up
to the language
darkness speaks with
black mitigating wings
scudding on the
ebb tide of sunset
to the land of closed eyes
that dance with black
that bleeds from every
corner crack
taking away all
but the sunny frosty afternoon
I still carry inside
Labels: free verse, poetry
lighted
light falls on the sidewalk
lit rooms behind curtains
look like eyes in the dark
listening watching laughing
lives like that so near by
lonely figures passing
longing by the street light
Labels: Pleiades, poetry
poetry
post on the internet
poet friends will come read
put a comment or two
places frequented less
perhaps someone listens
probably no one new
preaching to choir again
Labels: Pleiades, poetry
valentine
again today no new snow
to cover up our sins
the world comes
seeping through
the black ice
harder and more dangerous
the ghost carriers scurry
across the solid sea
of brown stained white
how many times must I see it
before I can say it is true
they spend their ghost faces
on dreams they may have
while waking
some of their dreams are of you
some of your dreams flow back
that is a more fluid ocean
than the sky
with its racing thin water
sailing faster than any ship
trapped narrowly between
freezing cold and frozen solid
this water doesn’t betray our water
this water sends its love
without the tyranny of feeling
every day is valentine’s day
Labels: free verse, poetry, valentine
eve
it is not today it is tomorrow
assertions of discomfort
accusations instead of requests
the lonely litany of proving others wrong
domestic pain on the half shell
the full fury of a bite
dissected in mid-air
the vampire as a victorian silhouette
the vasectomy of life
the herodotus of failure
in leather volumes
with blood running down their backs
the piles of lazy dishes
the lilting halo of cupidity
numerical as sin
but well grounded in
ever-shifting theology
and prismatic light
glancing off the scales
of unbalanced philosophy from discussions
held by the apple tree
when the end has come
I’ll take the dishrag
releasing all the brown halos
purging to the core
the earthly sins
that have trapped you here
and bid your soul
song along the skyline
and speed exceeding
God knowing what you have prayed for
Labels: free verse, poetry
Stones
(for Paul Auster)
Because quarry stones
don’t have to tell – secrets are
hard, patient, quiet.
Labels: haiku, poetry
thing and not again
i dream battles
dozens of opponents
i am the army of me
beaten
killed nightly
but my task
starts again
i want to say
i am but
it is not me
i keep thinking
i was
but that
is only a memory
that is so
often forgotten
like my desk
when watching tv
like my dog
when im teaching
these things
come back to me
in times and places
and go away again
but every night
again i fight
and it won t end
until
i stop believing
learning is the goal
of education
until i can
resent my students
enough to do
what i am told
but then
what will i dream
Labels: free verse, poetry
bar canon
the poor
are so full
of how bad
their lives are
the rich
are full of
stories about
how much
fun they are having
i sit
at the bar
and listen
and struggle
anxious about one
embarrassed about the other
having been both
to believe
any of it
i m scared
to say it
but glad to be
alive
too bad
buk can t
be here
to enjoy this
confusion
so well sorted
Labels: bar poem, free verse, poetry
as we danced
the stuttering thought
struggled through my mind
desperate to finish
and in itself
be smooth as
orator pebbles
in the mouth
of forced disability
was there a sense
that time was answering
its own questions
about dark and light
and lonely
that this great solitude
born in the shadows
of stones
or the fatally blanched
moonlit shadows
of trees
where lurked betrayal
that was the last answer
to the first question
about the third law of thermodynamics
echoing in the shadow
of the solid things
and dancing the dance
of duplicity
with tidal vapors
of emotion
made real by gravity
in the pale night
Labels: free verse, poetry
eclipse
word wash waste water
bright day without sun
shadows dreaming darkly
dish dark dirty dragging
the moon will come
between me and the sun
mid day stars shine as
birds land beside me
surrounded by a flock
with their heads tucked
under their wings in the dark
as if it would help
as if sleep would save them
with dreams of bright and blue
Labels: natural events, poetry, sonnet
to winter
wasted days gather
the same as piles of leaves
on a crisp fall day
if something drops
you won t find it again
in those bleak piles
Labels: free verse, poetry, winter
samolote
soon i will take to the skies
my face – in muted cabin light
a pale offering upturned and spent
on bad things and duty free
the silence hiss and rumbling
is kept away
with headphones
and personal screens
talking and singing arms
wrap around me tightly
hold the lonely
and the bored
have embraced me away
and have brought me back
Labels: poetry, sonnet, traveling
Lament for David “chip” Reese’s last hand
maybe this is the some other time
business school at stanford can wait
forever
calm and quiet like chip
who was a lousy businessman
according to his partner
poker kings but business suckers
of the worst sort
true gamblers
lost outside the realm
of million dollar bets
easy come easy go
sitting now across the table
from the one with all the cards
Labels: gambler, lament, Russell Sonnet, sonnet
short list
here is my schedule for today
check room for final presentations
set film study exam schedule
grade papers
post grades
pick up papers at administration
teach class
it doesn t say anything
about staring at the corner
answering phone calls
reading e mails
finding no letter from you
looking at full pages
that are blank
and empty pages that are full
it doesn t say anything about them
we are too eager
she can hear her blood rushing through her ears
a river of raucous song
she fashions sugarplums from her eyebrows
and sends them off to dance on their toes
in the gaze of handsome eyes
the thrill is to dance with a good looking stranger
her quiet looks of desire
are thoughts so loud
they overcome the music
rotating the room in circles
swirling to the center of disorientation
anticipation not knowing what it is looking for
what if a rustling shroud was a dance partner
and dying a dance
Labels: poetry, Russell Sonnet, sonnet
night flight
she rides the rocket ship of mumbling in her sleep
monologs that once were conversations
we are aware of her as if she was dead
mostly asleep always waiting for the ice to melt
visible only as a spot in center glacier
we have no choice but to consider her
she cannot leave her world of solid ice
we know she is always there
asking questions in permafrost thought
she haunts the nights
a rumor in the hall - an allegation
that the dead can be hungry at three a m
lunch in orbit – who cares what the time -
with a final lay-over in the rocket-port of cigarette smoke
Labels: poetry, Russell Sonnet, sonnet
anguish
night hollered
its last rainstorm
and the drunken man
slid below the surface
while the other watched
short gasping breath
leads to sleep
death confidently visits the face of the drowned
like an over-welcomed guest
dreaming breathing - mother -
whose eyes smother small children
with death defying control
wetly punishes – especially herself –
the weak who are too strong
Labels: love gone wrong, Russell Sonnet, sonnet
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