The Flood
Proud monument:
this City we’ve created.
A little lee against the cold.
How its aerie flag,
lit up with heart-swelling lights,
ripples hypnotically in the winter heights.
Estranged river,
moved by the same currents
as this flag on high,
how you tolerate your feigned taming
by these brash, befouling mites
unaware they emerged from you.
Stretching out from the greater sea,
rippling with cool unrest, a potential energy
unleashed effortlessly,
you solemnly observe these deepening infractions,
as yet assuaged by how quickly they dissipate.
And brother air, stretching out to void,
suffers the giddy metal insects
congesting his blowing emptiness.
Proud species,
spreading their electric grid over
the course of the earth,
even claiming the sky, the water.
Faces of laughter, faces of mirth,
faces of sorrow, faces of woe,
as they skate around and around blindly—
buoyed in love like angels in stasis,
rapt in hate like uncontrollable wildfire,
each mental landscape a world entire:
the infinite in the particular—
unknowingly forming art
whose patterns reveal
Nature frowns
as it reclaims
these lost, insatiable
vessels.
‘They’ve grown unaccountably
headstrong.
They don’t see I in them
or them in I.
Their blind longing
for the realization of my Mystery
is commendable,
and needfully—
beyond me.
But that which enlarges them
also makes them shackle me,
and forget me, and condemn me.
And so: they’ve had their fun.
Their frissons. . . copulations
and decimations.
The promise deferred.
Inexorably, the deal
A tiny manmade light flickering
in the black emptiness
of space,
a caltrop island,
stretching outwards,
Breath dissolving on a windowpane.
Proud City,
standing on a foundation
of impossible achievement, tears,
and ignorance.
How you passed, for a moment,
through the repeating dream.
∆ Appeared in Wild Poets: Magazine No. 5 “Arson” (Seattle)
∆ Appeared in Wild Poets: ‘best of’ (Seattle)
A Poem Lost
After climaxing for the first time three times in quick succession and learning that lovemaking can really be the sweaty primal holy blessing of trashy romance novels and exalted DH Lawrence poems, and after the fourth, which began as successively and seemed to move in infinite awesome strides beyond measure, in a hypnotic give and take, a pitter and patter of exultation and disbelief, illumination and death
I lay face down in a sheen of sweat in the cool world outside the blanket as she stroked my back in the most delicate sweeping gestures with slight fingers that till this day the thought of makes me tremble
I thought of the last solemn day of my journey across America after college: San Diego: the inexplicable old western town on the city’s edge where Mexican blankets in red yellow and white flare in the sun and the smells of dust, dried wood, tobacco and hot peppers pleasantly commingle, where I held on to my solitude while it pained and lashed out, like the adolescence of man, or the first throes of springtime, and everyone seemed as distant and inexplicable as the gestures of pacing speaking adults to a child, yet holy and dear
I thought of those solitary moments that seemed graceful and simple then, and now in a tunnel of nostalgia acquire an even fonder and more cherished quality: purchasing rolling papers, two bags of tobacco and a corn cob pipe from the infinitely distant and dear sales clerk with the antiquated visor and striped shirt in the oldtime tobacco shop unchanged since the days of DH Lawrence, sitting on the bench in the dust outside in the sun, rolling a cigarette while two Texan businessmen with large belt buckles on the bench beside strike up a conversation about how they, too, in youth rolled cigarettes like these, fine tobacco, and now in their old age have grown to smoking cigars: and Ah! how lonely I was, and how I marveled and exulted in my loneliness, and how one can so enjoy, can suffuse oneself in so much untainted pleasure from the simple act of rolling cigarettes in the sun, or watching a bird and eating an ice cream cone, or walking among the dust of the alleys of the antiquated western shops on the outskirts of San Diego, reading dubious passages from a Charles Bukowski collection, about Hemingway, and DH Lawrence, and thinking, that Bukowski! sometimes he’s full of shit, but you gotta hand it to him, simultaneously watching the red of the women’s scarves flash in the sun
I might have made a poem of this
but her touch was
too much
A Night of Sulphur
A night of sulphur
in the garden
with winding trees
exquisite breeze
but sulphur ling’ring
in the air
and in the blue heather
I heard
a girl’s voice
clear as the moon
follow me down
she sang, she cried
follow me down
down
down
to the riverside
so I left my bench
and jumped the trail
which
hov’ring on
that perfect
voice
made its way
to southern shores
the voice called on
away, anon
follow me down
it sang, it cried
follow me down
down
down
down to the riverside
and at that river
silent shore
all voices converge
in quiet waves
had it been I
who’d dreamt
that voice,
the last
of fading
childhood
days?
∆ Appeared in FIRE: No. 18 (Oxford, UK)
And Silent Silent Silent Go
And silent silent silent go
the last footsteps
of falling day
and silent silent silent fall
the glor’ious stars
of our decay
I stood nearby
affixed
in thought
as you peered through
the spying glass
to southern shores
dark blue
beneath
the fields
and rolling
hills of grass
I said to you
my friend
my love
one day these shores
will cease
to be
but you looked on
adrift
in thought
as the waves
rolled forward
silently
∆ Appeared in FIRE: No. 18 (Oxford, UK)
The Path
Down the path
still water
the fallen birch
like a charm
encased in black glass
moonlight
soft glow of
hidden cabin
∆ Appeared in FIRE: No. 14 (Oxford, UK)
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