self-taught poet
flexing the muscles in your tongue
suppressing the gag
the toothbrush grinds away the malodorous coffee stain
a necessary affliction
the price of an existence between
the quiet hour, stinging-eye, sticky-palm, poetic creationism
and university business
as if what you do isn’t business
let them keep their busyness, anyway
Assayer
that if we look through flames at people,
quite plainly we shall see
(between eye and some star):
–
the comet’s flame is like our flames,
with the same nature:
the star’s blaze is a candle’s fire—
both can and we’ll be snuffed.
–
though the blaze be brief
and the fire steady
and because of a day of sunshine
breaking the night better
than overcast years,
be one of the stars,
give not to the fears.
–
we are now only ourselves
—never photographs—
—nor dreams—
—(isolated in time)—
so why look to sea
if ruffled hair
and disorders are all there will be?
instead leave it to others to look on our cowlicked Sundays
for though some stars somewhere are already dark, they burn brightly here.
Ashes
It shatters into ice-tray chips
That melt to ashes in the atmosphere,
Softly floating down to you.
Flakes landing in your front yard
Like the burning leaves of autumn,
But then blowing elsewhere
Caught in the breath of heaven’s air.
Can a child collect
The ashes of a heart
And roll a snowman on the lawn?
No answer is certain,
Not even the coming dawn,
And my wanderings, like the ash,
Wonder on and on.
From the west
the sky changes from (filthy) yellow to (antiseptic) blue (littered with rose-colored crumpled Kleenex clouds, their dark bellies half hidden, facing away from solid ground, upturned like poisoned fish) some hospital floor of the dying
the death of the day
hand in hand with death of the
self, to be reviewed
the sick phoenix sky
consumed with an actor’s woes
bites the glass pill tonight
Becoming Attune
5
Two stags warring snag
Their antlers and begin
Negotiations.
4
Forever ago
All Stars went out … now we watch
Infinity die
3
Rippling water
Reflections, Nature’s static,
Only beautiful
2
When do you go from
Your Home in the world-Mother
Little dying Bird?
1
Seven Ravens hold
A vigil in the Moon’s Light—
The Fallen lookéd on
0
Is this how
Memory of Heaven Smells?
Fresh Pine
Modern Empiricism
For Public Broadcast: A Biography of a Fanatic Who Found the Edge:
—Stumbled off an ignorant ledge.
—Waved the sign: Forget Knowledge.
—Planted sixty-six trees in an apple orchard.
—Squatted a field of brimstone shard.
—Preached that living life ought to be hard.
—Shouted the words of a red-faced preamble.
—From door to door did amble.
—A fount of fate, hold the humble.
Biographer Critiqued: If nothing more—they will say—the heretical dog was American,
The author did his best to conduct—nose notably not in air—a hopeful skeptic’s recon,
Separating empirical truth from mystical ordinance, and judged which best to stand on.
The What If Game
On the couch next to her, in a thoughtful lull,
(Her eyes—brown, warm: they were like that, indeed,
But amplified by an amiable lens:
Or friendship, that unexamined window
Which I feared to dirty with greasy doubts sown
In a dream of opposite things from
What is.) I suppose I looked far away. She
Asked me: What are you thinking of? I
Thought some and then said: What if I were just a
Ghost? What proof do you have that I am real?
Well what proof have you? Perhaps I’m a ghost too.
It’s Funny, I said. What, said she. I only thought…
Are not ghosts supposed to be see-through?
Ω
you fancy yourself a sidewalk daisy,
you compare yourself to the grass,
you’re a pen on the ground, alive with ink—
but deadened by your past
in the teeth marks
and the broken clip.
–
this seen together
(a mosaic of recycled glass) and
forgetting your spectacles
(Heineken green integrated with)
curling your first finger
(Red Stripe brown embraced by)
and peering through the pin hole
(Budweiser blue)
it’s a starry night over the Rhone.
–
Running together like water
(or wolves)
–
But
apart from the well-written résumés,
–
a child of
Cain…
seeking a salve for the pangs of loneliness and you’re noticeable different,
caused you to raid the mead hall,
or society,
your ill-suited cocktail manner,
shuffling around the room,
trying to make the toothpick cheese cubes last…
–
Who will stay to
stoke the fire keeping
night away while
you sleep and
dream of
day?
I changed a bit of the poem from what I originally circled, and the punctuation is different, but I tried to keep it close.
Hide the Stars
a poem found in Galileo’s “Assayer”
by William Abernathy
that if we look through flames at people,
we shall see
quite plainly. Did it never enter your head
a flame between the eye and some star…
Surely there is no lack of
a skillful and prudent ex-
perimentalist?
the comet’s flame is like our flames,
a different natre,
our flames are not conclusive.
look at stars
and left out candle-snuffs,
You are obliged to kindle
and to make us see:
I shall be
much less. far away
I am satisfied
In place of the thickness.
to be seen gains an advantage–
let it be one of the stars
through the tail of the comet
brighter than any flame.
And now,
make the star visible
among the most prudent,
But if you fail:
silence, by which
I hope will now take place.
