The Art of Poetry

What are we after here

But the subliminal alteration

Of the universe

By way of whispered suggestions

To the grass?

What more do we trace

Than an immortal pair of feet

Running through the world

Leaving a trail

Of broken twigs?

And what better way to do it,

But by proving things

By not proving things,

As in a nightingale's argument?

A Hamlet in Paradise

Here in Arcadia I, again

Stand,

Ready against my unready spirit,

Not doing what I would,

But not doing.

I stand here-

Arcadia-

Sylvan, lush, uncertain,

And solid,

Still grappling with myself,

As Jacob must have seemed

When the angel tried

To knock him down.

Advice to the Yet Younger Poet

I have been asked,

"How do you live your life?"

I say, "Keep your shoelaces tied

And your nose clean."

Who am I to flaunt

The wisdom of the ages?

By opposing,

End the lies and misconceptions

Of an outrageous history?

A file clerk against the alphabet?

A metaphysician claiming

The universe is sick?

Not me.

That would disturb the universe,

And I don't dare.

To offer a new perspective? Why,

That is the job of a genius,

And I was never one of those.

I shall tell the truth

And I shall lie,

And you would be wise to do

The same.

The State of Things

Every wound

Is ultimately mortal,

And every scar-

Permanent,

And every passion-

Endless,

And every breath-

Final,

For right now I can tell you

Just what wounds I am dying of;

And every scar I have had,

Though unseen, I can show you

I can conjure any passion,

Once fresh, into life again,

And every breath I take stops-before I take another.

As It Is

Time is not a fugitive

Running along like an insomniac river

Along an unsmooth bed.

Time does not fly.

That fluttering that you hear

Is the stirring of calendar pages

Ripped out in succession,

Disturbed by the passing of heels.

Time waits for all men,

Sitting like Wednesday

on its hump.

Time does not march on,

Solemn as a month of Sundays.

Time is not money;

You can not change it

Time

Brings

Nothing

To pass.

It bears nothing away.

And you can not kill it.

Under a Different Oak

(for D.H.L.)

The dread of night is wonderful-sacred

As sunlight, forceful as wind.

Standing under the black sky, my essence

Is distilled-like a Druid,

I walk steadily on earth I cannot see,

Secure within the dark Nature.

Beneath this powerful tree, the fluid

Of my soul receives rejuvenation,

Drinking in the vital stream of a growing

Thing. I tell you I grow strong.

How do stand before me,

Sapped, your life running out?

What have you to do with the night,

You, trembling under this mistletoe,

Unkissed, whining under an oak?

I tell you the night is wonderful.

This night has a place in your histories;

This common, ageless night,

Beneath this ancient tree;

This dread-inspiring night

Has time and space enough for me-

Time enough to curse those mysteries,

Bleeding through your head,

Filling you with dread.

The dread of you and me.

Grassy Fortitude

There is grass in me;

An unkind whisper repeats

On the wind on me.

I have a grassy tendency

To lay in the wind

And to wave and wave.

There is grass in me,

A thing like a carpet;

An underfoot thing,

But every inch alive.

I cover things and spread

To cover more and spread

Over defects and dirt

And I grow.

There is grass in me.

And weeds in the grass.

It is green, very green, to me,

To be so grass-full,

Expansive, flexing, bending,

And always changed.

Recessional, Obviously Different

Light

Down, decaying, dying down

Receding like a wave

Down decaying, dying down

Behind my closed eyes

Down

Dying

Down

The red of the black of a closed eye

The hum of the pounding of a pulse

Down, decaying, dying down

A body receding like a wave

Down

Dying

Down

The body at rest losing heat

And the heart slows

Down, decaying, dying down

And time is liquid, pouring slow

Down

Dying

Down

This is the very best of moments

Down, decaying, dying down

This is the very truest of moments

Down, decaying, dying down

It can only last forever

Down

Dying

Down

And end.

Age of a Woman

I don't feel young to myself (or just right, either.)

I feel old, unspeakably old, unbearably old, old!

I'm so old, I've seen great mountains fall,

Toppling into eternal, self-renewing seas

As volcanoes erupted red and white hot

Becoming cold and ancient mountains themselves.

I've seen the scum of stagnant pools give birth,

Bringing forth a dreadful flow of life

In terrible and awe-inspiring variety,

And I have seen that pageant of life

Decay into stagnant pools of muck and filth.

I'm so old, I threw the acorn of the

Great-great-grandaddy of the tallest oak in the world

Into the ground,

And watered it with my tears at the so-called fall of man.

I'm so old I was Rahab's madam.

My toenail clippings are older than your deepest fear.

I had a scarab farm and a pet dodo and the first wheel.

I am so old that I spoke the first word ever

Spoken in the first language ever known to the

First person ever to hear something and

Not understand.

I am old, do you hear me? Ancient.

But you, now, you're a new wrinkle.

Brazen Serpent

Turning,

Turning in all your coils

Feel God is fire

And know

The way up is the way down.

To deny motion is death.

These things happen

To the best of us.

And it is a hard thing

To drown by this anchor,

To be cast aside

By these deaf stones,

To take on the weight

Of so much dust.

And you were always

The best of us.

Turning,

Bitterness fills your mouth,

But here is sweetness.

There is no way that is not,

You would understand.

It shall be

As written

But it will be hard

For the rest of us.

And you will not be broken,

Not you, the stronger vessel,

Not broken though pierced

Again by the raven

Again by the thorns

Again by the mistletoe

And shot with light.

And darkness fell

Across the best of us.

When it is finished,

Dying is finished,

But motion is eternal

And cannot be denied.

I have remembered you of old

And my heel

Still stings.

Return to your Mother.

A Curse (A Promise)

I was subdued with kisses

And bound hand to hand

My paradise destroyed

By words that made a hell

Of greeness.

The blood of the evildoer,

Thick on the blade,

Cried out to you:

Make evil.

The old ways are not to be

Forsaken,

By mine,

Though you forbid them,

But yet live on in you.

And our names,

Immortal as our days,

Will be sung,

And she will walk among you,

With eyes like a dove

That mourns.

Ramses

It is a sickness with him to remain beautiful

And exude human warmth.

He sits beside me like a museum statue

And insists on being a man.

I cannot take his brilliance;

It makes me too happy.

He is dead to me.

He is foremost in my memory.

I can't even be unhappy about him.

Jazz Hymn: To Repeat until

We feel Blued-

Out

My dark mood cast a shadow so heavy

It leaves cracks in the sidewalk

You can fall into and die.

My dark mood is the same exact color

Of the pupil of the eye of a cyclone

Headed for a packed church

When a wedding is going on.

My dark mood is invisible by night

Ugly by day, therefore

Chiefly nocturnal.

My dark mood sounds

Like a playerless saxophone

With a cool hot wail

Only the desperate hear.

My dark mood is like

Satan's day off

When we got no one to blame

But our own damn selves.

And my dark mood

Goes on and on

Like a fire's damp remains,

When the sizzle has gone cold.

Conversation

The fear that never leaves-

That communication is impossible.

That we're reaching-never touching.

The gap is never bridged.

Confident voices soar

Answered by questioning eyes.

The poet is not only unheard,

But inaudible.

Touching my own skin,

Kissing my own lips,

Reading my own words alone-

Understanding them, never again.

The moment is broken by the next.

The realization that you are alone-

That you are one thing

With a beginning, a being,

A question-

Lifts you from the earth

And throws you back,

Still finite, still contingent,

Brutally zen and not the

Better enlightened.

You can explain it to no one.

Communication is impossible.

I can say you've felt this,

Because I have.

You can agree,

But we can never know-

Was it the same?

Are our souls of a size?

Do we have the same gods?

No Sin is Terribly

Original

The sin comes from the dirty old fact

That we are not always feeling creatures.

We think-

Animals don't, nor sin, nor laugh,

Nor realize that they can die.

If thinking so, makes us so,

Sinning is part of the old pact.

Contemplate that and have a nice day.

Historical Reflection

Here are the tracks of the dying gods, note them well, now students, and recall the lesson to yourselves-

Flesh is tragic.

See, we follow these mud traces back through the cavern and into darkness.

Shout out a name, any one.

There, that echo is your answer.

Remember, flesh is tragic.

You don't see anything, do you? Shout again-hear that?

These walls reverberated with the echoes of our ancestors.

This way, now. Let's see where we end up. Mind you, don't trip. You might break something important.

Here it is, Nature's belly button-watch it, damn you!

The source of all mankind. These are the bones of their sacrifices. Over there is some trash-probably nothing special. You think they'd be more careful.

Primitives!

This way now, you've had enough.

Don't leave anything behind you, keep an eye on the person in front of you, and don't trip over the mess.

And Still What?

(Having thought over an uncomfortable conversation)

Worrying over it is pointless,

Hating it, stupid,

Violence is sheer impossibility;

There is only awe,

Understanding, then love.

It isn't God's fault.

Did you believe when you first hated,

Or see him in the gun sights

When you learned life was not fair?

And why do you feel there is no justice,

When every man Jack dies?

Perhaps it was those fairy tales

They tell the sleepy mind-

But I was never lulled with lies.

No one taught me this-

As sure as blood runs through my veins,

My blood is my own.

So long as I hunger, the hunger is my own.

So long as I breathe, my fate is my own,

And my blame is my own.

There is nothing not in these hands,

And I see it as a gift,

That there is no father that betrays,

Nor mother that can't love,

Nor son to leave in your old age,

Nor daughter that sleeps in the street.

Wisdom is none of those.

When were you mislead?

We live our lives, and suffer-

If we choose. Not others.

And what of other's burdens?

You can not know their weight,

Nor measure justice by their scale,

Or measure mercy by God's.

You can only know they suffer,

And like you, they die.

Men may wrestle with angels,

But all men lose to time.

And hopefully unfold fists

Curled like baby fingers

And spread them out in awe,

Understanding, then love.

But most don't. No, they clench their fists

Right to the grave,

Holding nothing in them,

Not even love.

And of those that live,

Most are scarred, even by being born.

We all have seen the horrors,

Or worse, the blandness,

And all have seen injustice

Of man against man-

The struggle of the mediocre

Against the pathetic,

The striving and loss.

The waste.

To be morally outraged is to guess

There is some place for being moral.

Perhaps.

But that alone won't save a soul.

You can be whatever you like.

The world was made by doing.

We could beat this ass all day

And never hear it speak.

I see the imperfection of the world

But can't contain my hope

That there is still nobility,

Warmth and possibility.

I can not show it-I failed.

There is no justification-

Only awe, understanding,

Then love.

The ways of God to man?

Hell, explain yourself to me.

On a Bathroom Wall

My posture is a pose that saves me from the proof.

The thing that I am not is the thing that I most seem

So that what I hint at neatly escapes the truth.

I am a timid whisper drowning out a scream.

No ideas you say?

Still no things yet, only poems

And nothings that just materialize,

And inventions of the tired mind,

But alas, no things, themselves,

You see, only ideas.

For somewhere an ideal flower

(which does not exist,

for I just said so)

opens and reveals to me

the fragile nature of-

something.

I could pick it, or tear it to shreds-

But I make a poem of it.

Now, it is immortal-

And still does not exist.

A Little Modern Love Regret-Thing

The odor of sugar, tobacco, and

Sex

Lingered in the room,

Large enough to inhabit

The whole of the building

And spread out to the block-

That was your scent-

And I have never been a kink for stink,

Being more visual than olfactory

In orientation, but it's your scent I recall,

Like a dog scenting out the same prey,

Hunting season coming round after

A year (that's a long, long seven to a dog).

Not the sight of you,

Though I studied that face.

It was so something,

So obvious-

In your face, a child, a man-older,

All you.

Not the touch of you,

Though how I cried

When I was shut of your

Muscular solidity,

And my arms felt empty

And my whole soul bare,

And didn't I compare

Other bodies to yours-

So hard and yet gentle

And packed with determined grace.

(Oh, but you were not the greatest lover,

I'll have you know,

Now that I lay myself bare.

You were too deliberate,

Fixated on my pointless orgasms and your own.

Even I knew better than to say that.

Then.)

I wasted time, thinking on you.

I thought of chance encounters

Never to be had,

On my own redemption,

As if I had sinned-

But all I did was love

And accept that I was one long

One-nighter

And when dawn at last came,

You slipped out of the window

And into the day.

But so you know-

Here's me-

Older, wiser, better-

My love could put you away,

And I belong to no one now,

In the way you never belonged to me,

And I once belonged to you.

And maybe you still belong to no one,

Or maybe a little bit of you,

To more women than you can count.

Maybe other women you knew

Think of you that way,

Wondering where you are

Beyond the bridges you burned.

But they can't put it into the words

I do.

But they must realize,

Like I do,

There is no you to hold,

To belong to.

You are a scent on the air,

Or a deliberate touch,

Or a theme in a story

You don't hear

Every day.

You are a romantic, and a cynic,

And a constant judge.

I loved you once.

I think of you still,

Like a mystery I never got

And never will.

You are gone, and I'm still here.

Settling Things

Last night, dreams that wracked my rest

Like stranger's advances

Brought thoughts of you,

Who had always believed in portents.

I judged at once from whence they came-

They came from you,

For you would dare

Disturb my rest-

Even sell your blood to do it.

But I made a spell

By my bright lady-

And this I pled,

You'd have such a dream of me,

As would scare you silly

And make you leave my bed alone.

Short Observation

Sometimes the night is like

A phone about to ring

With a world of bad news

At the other end.

I wish I could sleep through it

And hear the news second hand.

A Remembered Fortune Cookie Conversation

I think he meant it wasn't fair

That we all grow old and die

Spending most of our lives

Between hating and fearing

A god so far away we

Don't even see the lines of his face.

At least, I hope that was

What he meant by

"There is no justice in the world."

I almost understood.

But of course I wasn't like that.

I argued.

Believing the world isn't just,

Or isn't fair, is to say there are good people

And bad people.

And some people should be punished,

And others should get good things.

To say the world is unfair is to judge-

It can't be done.

Before I call the world unfair, I look at me.

I'm unfair.

Or at least, it was unfair of me

To argue with him.

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