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My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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  • Often Too Much Becomes Ambiguous

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    “how do we not go all out in a line”
                            –Clark Coolidge
    to risk rejection thickens
    blood in the reduction words
    mean until they explode out
    the base of our skulls like fear
    of the knife edge slicing my
    eye or how laughter during
    sex extends the aura around
    the opened moment until
    each second rattles a snake’s
    hiss as I trace each line I
    try to write you yes you who
    refuses to acknowledge
    the honesty the horror
    of the answers I confess
    ambiguously to you
    (March 2013)

  • from "Primogenitive Folly" 23

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                                     Confluence
    a distinction
    like the jet stream
    air through  air
    the  priest chants
    speaking  of  one  thing
    i hear another
    the one voice
    a multiplicity
    the clamor a harmony
    a monophonic polyphony
    the drummer departs
    tripping lightly  from the bass
    each swerves momentarily
    apart before returning



    (April 2001-April 2003)


  • Trinity

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    this is my body and my words
    I speak as I come before you
    as if before an altar to sacrifice
    all I have of my body and my words
    for you who wait like a baby bird
    to take the offering on your tongue
    then mouth it back as your own as in
    a ritualistic reading of the Eucharist
    until we are transformed from individual
    meanings of reader writer and poem
    into a transcendent embodiment of grace
    which flows a wine-dark blood through our veins
    caressing each of our feather-like capillaries
    until we disappear into beatific ecstasy
    (March 2013)

  • Doors Don’t Exist

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    to enter one room
    we pass through
    a space defined
    by what it’s not
    too often we are
    the same I fear
    we forget one
    room from another
    the there to here
    what we were
    when we started
    our thought’s lost
    in our passage
    through then into
    nothing else
    like what we are
    (March 2013)

  • Don’t Need a Weatherman

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    A storm rages outside;
    trees flail their limbs:
    tempestuous, yet oblivious,
    the rain continues undeterred.
    Safe inside, I watch
    the storm from a distance.
    The television weatherman
    breathlessly tracks the violent
    progress lurking
    outside my window.
    I don’t understand the rain
    pelting my tomato plants;
    the sky is dark, the clouds
    impenetrable.  It comes
    without comprehension.
    The wind slashes the rain
    down the street like whips
    across the backs of dying
    slaves.  Lightning explodes.
    Thunder laughs low.
    All the signs are present,
    but I can’t read,
    or won’t take the time
    to sift through the bits
    of information flowering
    from air, then vanishing.
    Now, there is a clue, and here
    another, but any danger
    it portends remains
    unacknowledged by me.
    From this window
    I peer through the curtains
    of water.  The drops fold
    the light into itself,
    reflecting finally
    only darkness.
    The television provides
    a comforting glow
    like the soft flicker
    of  a candle flame.
    I sit in this light
    unable to see with any clarity
    what is closest to me:
    the ground is saturated,
    the water rises up the bank.
    The river washes dead cows
    through the city’s streets.
    Rats float by on the bodies
    of drowning rats, fur glistening.
    I stare unblinking into the dark.
    I see nothing.
    The ubiquitous is of no concern;
    the mantis looks like a leaf
    to the unsuspecting fly:
    no danger in the commonplace.
    The rain on the window
    lulls me into deeper sleep.
    Yet, even when awake
    doing my best to pay
    close attention, a mist settles
    in, like a fog creeping
    suddenly across the hills,
    blurring all details
    into a dull gray. 
    The lines separating one
    from the other, shake
    then fragment before
    they can be discerned.
    When close, my hand
    traces their shape lightly.
    I can imagine the size
    and the implications; yet,
    when I step back in an effort
    to take in the magnitude,
    the insidiousness,
    so easy to see in the minutia,
    vanishes:  all is benign.
    Am I too vague in my ramblings?
    It is like walking through a fog,
    no need for any umbrella, but
    before too long your clothes
    are soaked through; a chill
    shakes your bones like chimes.
    Wherever I turn, whatever
    I see or hear, turns about
    upon itself and laughs
    through sharpened teeth.
    I’d cry for fear, but for fear
    I cannot add to the storm
    serrating the air.
    So I remain ignorant
    to remain contented.
    These things cannot be  – –
    No, it is
    only my imagination
    caught in the allusions,
    the centuries of fear
    that have brought me to this:
    cowering beneath my ignorance
    afraid of the first signs of rain.
    (Summer 1997, from “an ambiguous demarcation”)

  • The Dance of Masks: A Fugue for Voices (1982-1983)

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    Three Movements with a Coda
    I
    Homeward Bound
    We hear them preaching in our own language about the marvels of God. . .
    What are you saying?
    What, What?
    Repeat,
    Refrain.
    Talk to me.
    Speak, Speak
    Like a dog
    I lick your hand;
    Like a dog
    I deserve the hand.
    Yes, Yes, tell me more;
    allow me the privilege
    to believe what you tell
    me are lies, or truth,
    or whatever you desire:
    Smell the wind that curls
    around your nostrils;
    Listen to the wind
    that glances your shoulder
    as you turn in expectation.
    Teeth hang like knives
    from hard jaws
    as he speaks:
    Approach Me
    then picks his teeth with his tail,
    smiling after such a good meal.
    Hallelujah, Hallelujah
    O God please come to me
    O god please come to me
    O God please speak to me
    O let me sing
    sing in supplication
    sing for me supper
    sing for me daily bread
    Ahh, just do what you’re told child;
    run blind.
    Do not look around.
    There is nothing to see.
    Just feel the wind touch your ear;
    Run with it!
    Run!
    The wind blows wherever it pleases;
    you hear its sound
    but cannot tell where it comes from
    or where it is going.
    But we do move with it,
    with the madness,
    with the passion of a Christ.
    What self there is folds
    back like flesh,
    exposing bone
    to air:
    Blow
    wind, take us
    take us home.
    The messages are in the air;
    the messages weave into our hair:
    “Hello, KVIC request line!”
    Play my song.
    Play my song for me.
    I want to dance.
    I want to be real.
    Won’t you play my song for me?
    The shout echoes.
    Voices whisper.
    Tongues of flame dance
    a dervish into the sky.
    I wail, gnashing my teeth.
    Locking his forearm
    in my pleading paws;
    I thought I was dying
    but I just lost my voice.
    You just won’t listen.
    That’s your problem, sonny.
    You just won’t listen.
    And the serpent hissed
    so pleasantly, like the angel
    he was, that Eve bit down
    with no reason to doubt.
    And a voice whispers
    over the edge of your ear:
    No.
    (Joan listened to voices
    only to be burned by the English.)
    And the bush blazed,
    in the middle of the desert,
    the bush blazed:
    Approach me.
    Hallelujah, Brothers and Sisters, Hallelujah!
    Now
    I want all of you
    sick brothersandsisters out there
    to hold your hands up to the radio. . .
    Are you holding your hands up?
    Hold them up and feel the power.
    Hold them up, brothersandsisters!
    Can you feel the power?
    Can you feel the glory of God
    coming through the airwaves?
    Rise Up:
    Your faith deserves it
    Rise Up:
    So let this be done
    Rise Up.
    Look over here,
    entwined in ivy,
    are signs pointing
    somewhere, pointing
    home?  
    Again?
    And my side hurts.
    I never was a runner.
    I breathe in gasps;
    like a dog panting
    my tongue trails the ground.
    Rocks cut my voice.
    Blood pounds in my ears
    like a drum dominating a wind
    that whispers:
    Live, there is no sword of flames;
    Live, you are almost home. 
    Just listen.
    Just live.
    II
    Wine, Sin, and Civilization
    This is the covenant in my blood, which will be poured out for you.
    1
    Stored berries fermented,
    but we had to eat;
    there’s no time to forage
    when you’re building a city.
    So, the berries were passed around;
    then the priests explained
    the visions into ziggurats.
                        NO- – – JUST DRUNK!
    So we all lost our tongue,
    and God pulled down the tower,
    before the vision solidified.
    The Euphrates rose
    to meet the Tigris
    and the wines of the city
    were washed down,
    forcing the people to wander.
    2
    Noah was the first to till the vine;
    he got plastered ,
    tore off his clothes,
    and dropped drunk to the floor.
    His youngest paid for that round:
    forever his brothers’ meanest slave.
    3
    O, Moses led the exodus.
    Moses took his people back.
    Moses left the building city.
    Moses wandered forty years.
    Moses took his people back.
    O, Moses led the exodus.
    Stopping short of heaven,
    the buildings rise slowly
    beneath the pirouetting cranes.
    More towers in the center of town:
    More guards in the center of town:
    the derelicts are chased away,
    forced to wander once again;
    forced to shuffle down streets
    they were forced from before.
    4
    Yes, there is a line between
    the vision and the dream;
    the homeless sleep in alleys
    where walls crumble.  No
    mattress but paving stones
    cracked and uneven.
    The wine eases into sleep
    those still caught in wandering,
    littered against the city wall:
    This is my blood, the blood of the covenant,
    which is to be poured out for many.
    I tell you solemnly, I shall not drink
    anymore wine until the day I drink
    the new wine in the kingdom of God.
    5
    The priests drink the most.
    Ostrich plumes, toucan feathers
    flow down the back in waterfalls.
    The slaves make them;
    the artists make them;
    the priests wear them,
    and worship God.
    This is the blood I pour out for you.
    The hand around the heart.;
    The heart beats hard,
    forcing light still into death;
    the life flows into the bowl.
    This is the blood I pour out for you.
    The temples rise above the jungles.
    The blood flows into the bowl.
    The empire rises above the jungle.
    The covenant flows into the bowl.
    This is the wine I pour out for you.
    6
    A drunk on a barstool:
    Eden is so far away;
    hell’s just over here.
    It’s so much easier,
    don’t you think?
    Of course you do.
    Have some wine for your thirst,
    talk to me awhile,
    and then be on your way.
    You have to rest sometime;
    Eden is so far away.
    I went to Eden once myself.
    Nice place?  Yes, It is nice
    all year long.  Not much changes
    in Eden, but your attitudes.
    And then it’s time to leave.
    At least that’s what happened to me.
    But here, don’t leave quite yet.
    Have another glass, the sun’s still out.
    You have plenty of time.  Did I tell you
    I went to Eden once myself.
    I like it right here.
    You meet all kinds of people.
    Some, like you, on their way to Eden.
    I even met one who went all the way,
    or so I’ve heard from others
    who he got the word back to.
    But then there are so many lies
    running about wild these days.
    You won’t see me believing anything, besides,
    I like it right here.
    7
    An old man nods over a baby’s crib:
    “The truth is small, it’s the lie that is big.”
    A true believer doesn’t think.
    You can’t think a belief.
    You can’t think when you drink.
    Keep the peasants drunk for belief,
    and the empire will stand:
    Just another drunken conspiracy theory?
    So they say; they say
    it could be little else,
    but they never quite say
    what could be larger.
    8
    The hand on the glass,
    itches like a cat’s back,
    then arches tightly
    around the wine:
    “To your health,” he laughs
    then swallows the poison
    socratically.
    A strange ritual indeed.
    III
    Confronting Masks
    Let the Masque begin:
                The trumpet player on the bar’s stage
                cleans his spit valve, smiles
                then blows across the age;
                marrow dissolves in shadow.
    Today is a day of fear:
                Our thoughts echo the silence.
                Bats plunge past, shrouded
                in their high lyric cries,
                justifying the walls around them.
    In the beginning was the word
    and the word was God.
                I think “sprightly” is God
                            Bullshit, Bullshit!
                            The Word is Marine.
    And so they carry on throughout time,
    insidious gossips of being- – –
    Today is a day of fear:
                            There are little events
                            throughout the day:
                            conversations, newscasts,
                            they wrap themselves around us
                            like flesh forms to bone.
                            The word defined
                            is not the word
                            that breathes with
                            comfort in context.
                Don’t you lecture me, Kiddo- – –
                I knew what’s what before
                you were even a thought.
    The wind blows us where it pleases.
    It rips up then around- – –
    Walls form from air
    to seal silence at the center.
    Today is a day of fear:
                            But the wind never stops.
                            We dance around ourselves.
                            We dance around each other.
                            We dance to the throb
                            of the wind, which dances
                            with a passion around the center.
    Today is a day of fear:
                            The buildings collapse
                            beneath the twirling ball;
                            so more buildings can rise
                            below the pirouetting cranes.
                            The music plays on:
                            changing our position,
                            changing our minds,
                            changing the context,
                            changing the language:
                                        Coming up next,
                                        After theses messages,
                                        The CBS Evening News
                                        and the Wall Street Journal
                                        Business Report.
    Today is a day of fear:
                            Too many masks from which to choose,
                            too few lives with too many desires,
                            forces us fully into the myth.
    Today is a day of fear:
                            Our hands reach out
                            through the wind.
                            I call to you;
                            yet, the language is not mine.
                            The words collapse.
                OK, OK- – –
                What’s it to be, Mac.
                Come on, come on,
                there’s others waitin too.
                            There is an answer.
                            It’s the question that’s caught
                            between the laughter of our soul
                            in stasis and the primal desire
                            for motion.
    What are you saying?
    What, what:
    Repeat, refrain.
    Speak, speak – – –
                            But the wind!
                Never mind that- – –
                just listen,
                            listen.
                The wind never stops,
                so listen- – –
                            someone is speaking, a voice
                            that rumbles amidst its own echoes,
                            like cars between buildings
                            late at night, lost in the wind;
                            but, the language is not mine- – –
    Today is a day- – –
                Sound the last note.
                Let the walls collapse.
                The masque is over.
                Stop the dance.
                Stop.  Stop.
    But the wind never stops,
    for fear- – –
    Today:
                After the bat’s cry comes the avalanche.
                Beneath the last stone is the earth.
                At the center is silence:
               
                Masked in fear by the wind.
    Coda
    The parchment cracks by touch;
    the words whisper into dust.
    fragments fall into light
    to be exclaimed and deified.

  • Clishmaclaver

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    I
    I remember a story I once heard laughing out
    around the tree like rings glistening upon the lake;
    It told a tale, a sad tale, a timely tale about a boy
    or perhaps a girl, I remember it was about a child,
    either will do to pull this tale through the morass.
    A swamp it was with crickets and frogs a cappella;
    the language sang between the creek’s high giggles.
    I stood night still:  no moon to number the shadows,
    no omphalos filtered sun to steel me against the dark.
    The cacophony cocooned me, sealing in the story’s maze.
    Where was I?  With the child upon a trail? Trees green
    the hills.  The trail canopied by leaves loses the sky.
    Were bread crumbs dropped?  The child was lost, but
    singing.  The song stretched out before, a bubble of the
    familiar. The child wandered the way; becoming old.
    A moral was told but forgotten.  The fire burned
    low like eyes slipping toward sleep.  Leaves glistened
    the forest floor.  The story slid from me, a snake 
    sloughing skin.  Infrequently embers flashed
    scattering light, sparkling my eyes with stars.
    What was woven?  What warmth washed over me
    as the teller told his tale?  The world dissolved as 
    did myself with the whispered words.  A waterfall
    slipped over stone, snaked between trees that held 
    the night safe about me like life atremble with fire.
    Somewhere the story struck flint on stone stirring
    my thoughts like a winter bear beneath the snow.
    I floated up with the last of the circling smoke; the 
    now silent syllables curled their signals along 
    convoluted synapses:  the outstretched hand of God.
    Each thought outleaped the last like frost casting crystal
    fractals across a window.  I wandered lost above the 
    trees, like the child upon the trail, singing the wind.
    The words sang me and the world widened like eyes
    lost in wonder. I was alone with the trees, laughing.
    II
    Stop!  
    Something’s amiss.  
    This was someone else’s story;
    the telling tangles with others’ chit-chatter, 
    with others’ noises. My noises?  
    Possibly. 
    The pieces interchange, clash, then meld. 
    The song discordant, yet still
    controlled. 
    Beyond measure: 
    I lose my thoughts in clishmaclaver.
    III
    I start to speak, but truth 
    cloaked with cliches- – a panther
    among the rocks- – eludes expression.
    My language not my language enfolds.
    What can be said does not express,
    but allows the thought to form
    to follow the metaphor- -the ossified 
    remains of the words cold trail.
    Each word, a cliche- – steps worn by
    supplicants unrelenting feet, direct 
    the way the words can be taken,
    which in turn twist to bend again
    into familiar passages that are not- –
    the panther crouches upon the rock,
    my language not my language- – a labyrinth
    closed, but infinite leads through turns.
    IV
    I trust in understanding, yet trust conceals
    the hold I have is tenuous- – each morning, 
    the sun rises to comfort with continuity.
    The familiar disappears, a mental white noise;
    a maelstrom of activity whirls and whirls
    from coffee cup to car to career to bed
    like straw caught in dust devils first trapped,
    tightly twirled, then dropped to land 
    without sign of movement or change. 
    The string unwinds behind me, but I 
    go forward trusting in the sun, my language 
    not my language, to lead, not lure, through, 
    not in- – the walls grow high, the path leads 
    down,  a panther leaps like water over rock.
    (Fall 1990-Spring 1991)

  • Blazing New Trails

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    “The carefulness was wearing us out.”
                            -Jeanette Winterson, Written On the Body
    Each step is difficult,
    at least for me,
    along this closed trail.
    The rocks, sharp and loose,
    could cause me to stumble
    then fall forever toward
    the broken boulders below.
    So, we pick our way slowly,
    testing each half-step
    for a solidity to base a belief:
    in the direction we follow;
    in the next turn of phrase;
    in the next switch-back
    lifting our conversations.

  • I Wake to You

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    I reach for you across the night
    through darkness and dreams
    to stretch the full length of me
    skin against skin around you
    until all the trouble and tribulations
    of the day dissipate like waves
    then ebb slowly back into sleep
    (March 2013)

  • Blur

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    I am
    not
    so much
    undelineated
    as
    a vague absence
    a smudge
    (each
    morning
    early
    fog dances
    along
    borders
    between
    trees
    shapeless
    without
    intent)
    and or
    (light
    explodes
    cross-hatched
    across
    a cold
    mountain
    pond)
    one and
    or the
    other
    me and
    or you
    a blur
    I am
    lost with
    in with
    out your
    love
    (March 2013)

  • Interrogatory

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    What is odd about writing is that ultimately one writes for oneself: some way to explain the world and oneself to oneself and the world.  Yet, there is an underlying desire, narcissistic, for someone else to read what one writes. Listen to me, the writer screams into the void. I exist. As if a reader’s response justifies, like a typesetter, or a bat, the world one writes into. I pretend a disdain: who really cares who reads my writing, yet I obsess over who could be reading. Befuddled by the number of visitors to my blog, the growth over the years: who are these people? Lisa pointed out that no writer ever knows who is reading the work; sales (or hits ) are just numbers. I read once in one of his biographies that William Carlos Williams at a reading was given one of his books to sign. The book was from an edition that had come out decades before the reading. He was overwhelmed that someone had actually bought his work decades before. He did not have a copy of it anymore, so he tried to buy it.  What is the force that drives a writer to find his audience? Who am I talking to?
    (March 2013)

  • Tailor-Made

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    What becomes of these remnants lying here
    depends on the time given to piece together
    a semblance of order with an apparent grace.
    I walk about the room sifting the detritus
    of the cumulative turns and half-decisions
    I’ve stumbled, befuddled, through to this end.
    Not that where I sit shuffling through my patterns
    can be such a burden to cause my back to snap
    as if I’m some worn pack animal becoming glue;
    it becomes tiresome to pick up pieces I’ve seen before,
    or seem to remember, yet am not sure where they belong
    in the catalog of meanings which make up this life.
    So I continue on obsessively fingering each tired scrap,
    stitching and re-stitching until my cloak is in tatters.
    (February-March 2013)

  • Un-school

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    “We learn to live without passion
    to be reasonable”
                            –Jack Gilbert
    I desire
    to be stupid
    to be careless
    to fall in love
    with my life
    to strip the staid
    anger from my chest
    and sing a song
    before my voice
    gags on expectations
    to be someone else
    (March 2013)

  • Waltz

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    I write the words I believe you’ll believe
    to be true or want to believe as true
    as I believe them to be true for you
    as I want to believe them to be true
    somewhere between these interlaced desires
    we dance a Viennese waltz together
    the rhythms of our conversation turn
    within vague formalities of the day
    my thoughts echo like heels across marble
    distorting the intentions of each step
    until all I can know returns confirmed
    by the dubious language of silence
    I speak the words I want to hear in turn
    as I trust I say what you want to hear
    (March 2013)

  • routine

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                “Chop wood, carry water, everyday”
                                        -zen saying
    The bed is warm;
    you hate the cold;
    yet, still you wake
    and go downstairs.
    Thus runs the pattern
    ‘til you grow old;
    even dying wolves
    must leave the lair.
    (march 2013)