he holds out his hand
to uninterrupted blue
no blemish of rain
(July 2011)
-
Arid Supplicant
-
Caught in a Trap, a Wolf Will Often Gnaw Off Its Leg
I wonder quite often how these poets get away with their rambles
Pickup an off the cuff kind of élan slip it on like a watch band
Twist the strap with a self-deprecating smirk just to let you know
Mon frere with a wink that the façade is still within your grasp if not those
Others so self aware to catch the irony a simple twist of fate
As it were even if allusions are passé modern in this post after world
We live in if not then at least around in a peripheral bourgeois manner
For god knows since no one else can that we have to have something
To react toward and the rich don’t care anymore if ever and the poor often
Are such a bore what with having to explain all of the jokes
It’s easier to talk to yourself or in this case myself when no one understands
How cruelty can be funny especially when gnawing on your own flesh(started circa 2006, completed July 2011)
-
At This Point Always on Edge
Early in the evening
On edge as usual
I walk in the park
A partial moon risingI lift my arms
A simple dance
My edges dissolve
Into the night skyNo center point
Just fractured centers
All equidistant
From an expanding edge(July 2011, extracted from notes circa 2006)
-
Rose Petals
soft beneath my touch
the petals almost slick
as I run my fingers
across their surfacei bury my nose into
their scent drinking in
the odor like a balm
to my tired sensesi wish that I too
like the hummingbird
could flutter my tongue
deep into the flower’s heartand be enveloped in
the primal fury of love(June 2011)
-
Adrift
I’m drowning in metaphor, the words flow
Like water breaching tightly-packed sandbags
Flooding my thoughts with too much to say and
Not enough talent to make them cohere.Beneath these words I hide myself from you
Too embarrassed or bashful to speak plain
I float up yet another abstraction
Praying for a transformative response.When I finally break through the surface,
Breathe in the cool life in great gasping gulps,
Coughing out my silent lungs to the air,
my focus follows the flow of your mind.In waves I am lifted enough to see
The momentary salvation of land.(June 2011)
-
Enclitic: a Short Wren Goes Through a Drought
the heat whips the trees
shade pants crisply beneath leaves
not much chance of changea sharp demarcation
between me and youas if a copula
is enough of a word
to engender a metaphorthis is not this
but yet it isgrammatically independent
but phonologically dependent
on another wordmy meaning depends
upon you(June 2011)
-
No response, No Echo, Only Silence
by
“Wow, I felt like I just entered a black hole,” she said.In open air beneath the sun
I open my mouth and speak
What words I can into silenceStripped of small talk and idle chatter
My speech forms its own horizon
Abutting up against your silenceBetween all the stances I can take
Amid the ambiguity of reception
Falls a monolithic silenceAll my lonely lamentations
All my whispered secrets
Mean nothing to the silenceAll my words and talk
All my confessions of love
Mean nothing to the silence(June 2011)
-
walls
I desire to dance
arms raised
to the stars
praising the night;
instead,
I talk to walls:
my voice
echoes the space
I pace between.(June 2011)
-
apples
by
orderly rows of trees
lie fallow
after the harvestapples full-red and crisp
fell alongside others
some green some gnarledi tend to the trees
lopping old limbs
a necessary pruningthere is always more
than the season allows
the trees are here nowthe fruit will grow
despite ourselves
the work remains(June 2011)
-
Talking to Myself, Yet Again, After a Conversation at Lunch
“a responsibility to the trace of the other”
–Gayatri Chakravorty Spivakyou move through your day,
like a bird through branches
bending between the briars,
oblivious to the consternations
of others as they talk around you
you remain caught up in
the net of your abstractions
“the absolute alterity” of everything:
colleagues, clients, trees,
squirrels, clouds shaped and
dispersed across an endless sky,
the reduction of the world
to your purview, the horror
that what you see is you(May 2011)
-
Wisps
Last night I dreamed of making love to you
I awoke and could still feel your smooth back
And soft brown hair between my fingertipsDuring the day your soft smile from the couch
The way your smooth hair falls framing your eyes
Makes me desire to press my lips to yoursThis vision as much a dream as at night
Slips away among the constant tumult
Of the separate lives we lead aloneSo I write yet another poem for you
A soft lament for possibilities
That hover on the verge of my wakingThoughts of you interlace my days and nights
Softly like spider’s silk upon the wind
(May 2011)
-
from Primogenitive folly (40)
If what I have to say is of so little import that I have to say it repeatedly, like an ad blaring from a newspaper or television, then it is worthless enough to write down so that it may, possibly, be read more than once. Is it fear of being misunderstood that drives me to scratch my cramped hand across the page with such diligence? Or an obsessive desire to control the message, if any, or to exert my will upon the text? And what about all those metaphors embedded in the words: scratch, cramped, desire, control, exert, embedded? The message, if any, takes on a meaning of its own like the darkness a thief cloaks himself in after slipping out the door. Yet now as I paused to read back what I wrote – – I stumbled on the stairs, thinking: That’s it, that’s the point! – – So I missed a step, (both literally and metaphorically) as it were, and wound up on another tangent without hope of reconnection to my original,yet banal, thought.
(August 2001-April 2003)
-
Where Was the Son?
by
I have a student’s father who wishes for his son to pass the year. His son never comes to class. If he does come to class he comes 20 minutes late, so he is technically absent. When he does come to class he does not bother to find out what the class is doing; instead, he plays with his phone, or puts his head on the desk. I have talked to the father repeatedly, both in person and through email. The father, at the end of each six weeks, comes and gets work for the son to make up. The son does not do it, or does not do enough of it to pass. I am meeting with the father tomorrow, the father wants his son to be able to make up the work for the the six weeks that have already passed by. I feel it is an insult to my class and my students; they have worked all year, coming to class, reading books, writing essays. They are passing. He is not.
subtext 