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

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

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

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