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 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stones

(for Paul Auster)

Because quarry stones
don’t have to tell – secrets are
hard, patient, quiet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A MEME ON POETRY -- tagged by Tiel

Tagged (by Tiel at Knocking From Inside) and feeling somehow a bit naked these days, so the meme is like this: list at least four things each you think a beginning poet should and shouldn't do: tag someone else.

Ok let’s start with the DO’s:

1. Get in touch with the passion inside of you that most people bury and only give expression to obliquely at cocktail parties disguised as envy, prejudice, jealousy, provincialism and lust. When you get your passion uncovered and able to honestly express itself, mobilize it – give it your legs, arms, mind and time to use in whatever way it requires. You must believe in it blindly because it is invisible but, when you do, you will start finding physical things like clues that show it has passed this way.
2. Put on your Matrix sunglasses. The world, as it appears to most of the people you know, is an illusion created just for the purpose of keeping them amused and letting them pretend everything is going pretty much as they expect. Discover the splinter in your mind that will keep you from hiding from the world that is truly all around you. Open your eyes to the secret world; you may be the only chance somebody you love has to even get a hint of what is real.
3. Read, searching every word for proof that others have seen the secret world and are willing to bring us their dictations. Read until your head blows up with all the people who have penetrated the mysterious and have brought back what was shared with them as if it was somewhere very far away, which is how it seems to most people. Read until your mind becomes a roadmap written on water and fog and you begin to understand where you are.
4. Write so that your hands get used to holding the truth as if it was a present and you were happy to be at your best friend’s birthday party. Write until your hands are accustomed to holding that present, until they have learned how to hold a gift.


Now let’s talk about DON’T:

1. Don’t expect that it will be easy; in fact there is a bag full of expectations about comfort, recognition, money, fame, love, admiration, acceptance that must be disposed of immediately. What you are trying to do is too difficult (or else everybody would be doing it) and, with that bag of expectations it becomes impossibly disappointing.
2. Don’t be patient. You have to find your muse when you think she is lost. You must write when you think you are too tired or, in the middle of the night when you’re sure you should be sleeping. When you can’t find your manuscript, you must wipe your eyes and sit down to write it again.
3. Don’t give up. You must be an army. You must view the objective before you in an unswerving way. You must send yourself as a soldier to take that objective. If you are killed and fail, you must send yourself as another soldier to continue the attack. Keep sending your army until the objective is yours at last.
4. Don’t forget God! You must believe in yourself so blindly that no one can dissuade you. If God has given this to you (and talent is truly a gift), there is no one who can stop you, as long as you persevere. Also don’t forget that God is the only source of true beauty. Ask and you will be shown all that you are missing.



If you haven’t been tagged yet, CONSIDER YOURSELVES TAGGED: Katy, Ashraf, and Shubhodeep!

trees in fall

many have retreated from flesh to bare bones
clearly the hunger is in the crisp air

how the others eat that hunger
and are fed to fat with vibrant color
is the endless question of clear blue sky by day

and stars at night that also crisply crouch
like insect eyes of
a wise and very old
darkness that is nodding knowingly

answering that question like a whisper
when the wind remembers the branches
and tells them to the sky

but oh the rustling of that brilliant fabric
such a glorious flower for the season of departure

cartoon

if i could put this night in a cartoon
maybe we could have a good laugh
sad and lonely faces
drawn as if in some other places
in cars and trucks
down some dark streets
in the illusion of motion
campy as someone else’s sorrow
who can only be painted
or drawn
a geometric form
long on the floor
motionless
as a vodka bottle
a discarded cap
a small stain
a stubbed out cigarette
in an empty sardine can
a puzzling circumstance
bags packed
the phone
scratched in pencil strokes
always silent
like a clown face
the phone
broad like
a clown’s frown
not capable of tragedy

plane

there was a night of waiting
which took its toll
scrolling down a long list of words
putting the name of doggerel
on what the morning would recall

all superficial wishes come true
the substance of what matters still
far away on long carpets in short walks
to the cupcake of a toilet
and trudging from curtain to curtain
on the path above the clouds
as if there were wings

to carry the mythical beast of the impatient heart
back to the magic kingdom of long ago day

About a comment

I had left a comment on a wonderful post by Tiel Aisha Ansari on being a Professional Poet. It is on her blog Knocking from Inside. I really find her a remarkable young poet. Also, like she mentions, thank God we love our day jobs. ‘Nuff said, you can go and read all that for yourselves. This is the additional comment I sat down to write after writing the first one. I decided to post it on my blog, rather than muck up her comment box:

Tiel, I wanted to add another couple of thoughts to my first comment. First, I would like to thank you for being such a part of the group of contemporary poets that one finds via the internet. I am honored by your presence in the life of my writing as are many others, I’m sure. The internet has been a real resource for contemporary poetry to grow in skill, community, enjoyment and, most of all, commitment among those who take this art seriously. That is indeed a great thing.

I remember when I left the writing program many years ago at the university. Those programs are so full of all the resources necessary for young poets. The contact and support structures are so busy with people trying to help that I was really unprepared to leave it for the loneliness of the print oriented environment it was supposed to be preparing us to enter. Afterward, I joked for years that I had finally found the obscurity I had been seeking. Eventually I stopped publishing poetry and then I stopped writing it.

This brings me back talking about the internet. It was my savior. My poetry found a raison d’etre here. The internet probably saved my life, in reality. The contemporary poets I have become acquainted with here are friends and colleagues whom I treasure. We share a lot and I am looking forward to continuing to do so for the rest of my life. I am about ready to publish a book now and have had the honor to be included in some fine e-zines as well as printed media and enjoy the encouragement of some wonderful editors. I woke up and started living again.

Lately however, the legalistic world has started to invade poetry on the internet. More and more we are told, if your poems have appeared on your blog then legally they have already been published and cannot appear in our magazine. I am now holding poems back to publish elsewhere before I put them on my blog. More and more I see poets who earlier were prolific on their blogs but have now become practically mute. This is a trend that worries me. I am not sure it is a good thing for the good poets out there to stop giving us the opportunity to come read their work and learn from them. I am not sure it will be a good thing for us who aspire to be afraid to practice and share our efforts with the group of readers we enjoy. I understand the value of the things Tiel and others have assembled as exercises and places to practice the art of poetry but that is only part of the richness we have all shared on the internet. It is the loss of that original and rather free environment that I find scary. I am not sure quite what we should do about it and would like to open this discussion with all of you out there who are equally affected. Tell me how you are reacting to these new changes in our precious electronic community. Please give us your comments!

moments

can we find the grace
of little meaningless hours
that pass carrying no burden
greater than a trace of pleasantness
no countries saved
no great heroism
no answer to sciences main questions

the carousel of mindless time
that takes us up and down
with equal gravity
and for all the turning wheel
leaves us where we came from

refreshed
and smiling