by
Ashes to Ashes
I watch the hollowed out building burn.
Sections of roof collapse into the flames.
Smoke occludes the sky like a prayer.
I am complicit.
Smoke and ash smudge my hands and face,
a negligent guilt through willful ignorance.
I am at a loss: I call, I write, I vote;
I make signs for marches.
The flames burn hotter.
They buy more gasoline and matches,
then dance unimpeded down the road
to sing gleefully around the next bonfire.
(April 15, 2025)
I wake from the night into memory.
Nearby, I am here again, a soft footstep
in the hall, muffled behind a closed door.
A silence forms like an intake of breath.
Dawn waits darkly along the horizon.
It is hard to differentiate the difference
between what I see and what I knew.
One changes the other like the rising sun.
It is as if I have lived here before,
perhaps, in a novel I once half-read,
or when lulled by repetitive motion
of an ocean wave adrift far at sea.
I’m present in overlapping visions
within each one, I’m lost and discontent.
(April 14, 2025)
by
hope will become a noose
Book of Job, trans. by Stephen Mitchell
1
Spring! Symbol of life!
There’s a rabbit in the yard—
The dogs mark its scent.
2
Damn! There’s a rabbit!
So close to Easter Sunday—
No resurrection.
(April 13, 2025)
by
time fills the day with nothing
but pre-occupations
something planned randomly
to give an appearance of order
for the orderly to follow before
time runs out leaving no time
for what could have been done instead:
a slow walk about the garden for example
(April 12, 2025)
by
I have a Spring cold,
my chest thick with congestion.
Still, I go outside.
One must be at work,
they say, for inspiration
to find room to breathe.
Oxalis from mom’s
house in Victoria grows
beneath the iris.
Our yard is chaos
planned out from the beginning;
nature is random.
The roses need to be pruned.
A hummingbird whirrs nearby.
(April 11, 2025)
I have been reading Williams since I was in high school when his selected poems was one of the texts in a creative writing class I had received a scholarship to attend. He has been one of the recurring poetic presences in my literary life. Over the last week I have read from start to finish his last book of poetry, for which he won posthumously the Pulitzer Prize, Pictures from Brueghel and other Poems. I have read the Brueghel series multiple times over the years, teaching several of them, like the Fall of Icarus, in my classes. Additionally I have read most of the others in the book, opening it casually over the years, or have read them in anthologies of his work, or modernist anthologies. But I don’t think I have ever sat down and read the volume cover to cover, even if I have had this copy for at least 40 years. I really enjoyed reading the longer poems: The Desert Music, and Asphodel, That Greeny Flower again. Williams unique, rhythm and voice— what he called the variable foot— are a delight of the American idiom. I felt as if I could hear his calm voice speaking in the room. I think I will go back and read his complete works again, taking advantage of the chronological order of those works, as well as being grouped together with the poems originally published in volumes of poetry. (A side note: in grad school at Bread Loaf I took a class on the Modern long poem with Walt Litz, the editor of the first volume of the Collected Works).
(April 10, 2025)
by
“You seem quite normal. Can you tell me? Why
does one want to write a poem?
Because it is there to be written.“
—William Carlos Williams
somewhere
for decades now
it has been there
in this sequence
of unlined sketch books
waiting
unwritten as I write
out of a present
necessity
never knowing the why or how
anxious each moment
it will not
trusting
it will be
(April 10, 2025)
by
The rabbit nibbles
fresh clover through the spring day.
The dog’s ears prick up.
(April 9, 2025)
by
“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”
—-Henri Matisse
we called them
by different names
the wrong names
confusing one
for some other
as if language
changed them
from what they are—
fields of flowers:
blue bonnets butter cups
primrose mexican hats
from early spring
into summer
nameless not unknown
(April 8, 2025)
Finished the RFB book for this upcoming Sunday’s meeting. A fairly long (161 pages, seemed longer) rant from the point of view of a working class bloke (oppressed like Caliban in The Tempest by powers greater than him). Each chapter focuses on another aspect of his oppression.The main take away is the old adage: the more things change the more they stay the same. The powers that be (church, military, education, government, labor unions, etc) all contribute, if not conspire, to exploit, control, and oppress the working class. Much of what he shrieked about is pretty much still in play in our contemporary politics. So, it was not that I disagree with most of what he screams about, i simply found the writing to be over-wrought and turgid. The book cover claims it is a rediscovered classic. I am not sure a book can be called a classic if it had to be rediscovered. Isn’t a classic— a book that people have continued to read over the years? Not one, forgotten and unread, that some editor found in a book stall, then reprinted. But I quibble.
In that moment, she danced,
as in a snow globe:
the late afternoon sun dazzled
the air in raindrops
still slowly falling from the walk way
overhangs of the ornate railings
on the buildings in the French Quarter
near the St. Louis Cathedral
where the wet streets reflected
the now unrelenting blue sky.
(April 7, 2025)
by
Despite the despots,
despite the collapse
of oceans’ currents,
despite the anger
flowing through the streets,
the iris push up
though the garden mulch,
and roses burst into bloom.
(April 6, 2025)
“What shall I say, because talk I must?”
-William Carlos Williams
Perhaps if I gnaw
off my tongue,
I could drown
in unvoiced blood.
I have no insight,
no words as balm
beyond my silence.
It’s easier, safer,
to be polite
to watch the end
and say nothing.
I am dumb-founded,
when I should scream
against all decorum.
(April 5, 2025)
by
I wake. The puppy needs to go outside.
The older dog comes along as well
hoping to roust a nervous rabbit.
It’s close enough to six by this time
to feed them, and take my daily meds.
I am tired, and worried about the world.
They finish their ration of kibble
and head happily back up the stairs.
I turn off the light, and follow along.
In the hazy half-minute it takes
for me to crawl under the sheets,
they’ve both tightly curled in bed.
I lay there unable to return to sleep,
and listen to the dogs’ soft snores.
(April 4, 2025)
by
At which closed door
does it no longer matter
if it remains a closed door?
Does a story I’ve never heard,
because never told, become
more than my own
through implied genetic hints
and stale romantic longings?
Hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of years, and miles of oceans between
allow one to co-opt, create, and project
a nameless European hero (with a face like mine?)
to pillage and fuck their way into a future
through the tangled heath and ruins of time.
(April 3, 2025)
subtext 