false starts
with tired thoughts
begin
in faltered steps
then end
off trail
vaguely muttering
lost
alone
in the dark
like Gretel
without crumbs
to follow home
or a Hansel
to hold on to
(June 7 2024)
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-
Central Texas, Early June
by
Summer’s heat hangs thick.
Doves coo through a slow afternoon,
hotter earlier each day.
Beyond shade’s cooler edge,
lizards hunt their prey.
Doves coo through a slow afternoon—
the long heat’s mourning.
(June 8, 2024)
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rationalizations
i fear i’ve used time
as an excuse to fail
telling myself for years
if i only had time
then i would be enough
yet now that i have time
i fear it is too late
to take time to write
today for exampleinstead i took a nap
read watched tv
then finally felt guilty
because i had failed
to walk the dogs
(June 3, 2024)
-
Nothing More than Everything
by
Clearing to a light blue sky,
an early morning wind storm
blows away the humidity
that has hung thick
and foreboding in the air
these last few days of May.
Nearby, a humming bird hovers
quickly about the red canna lilies,
then flits away on a new mission
across the Indian Paintbrushes
and Bee Balm swaying casually
in the meadow out back.
Oblivious, the dogs sleep in the sun.
While softly above their heads,
honey bees and bumble bees
float along the pinkish white
flowers of the Chaste tree
which bloomed overnight.
(May 28, 2024)
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Paul Celan—glottal stop
Paul Celan—glottal stop, translated by Nikolai Popov and Heather McHugh
I finished re-reading glottal stop, 101 poems by Paul Celan this morning. I cannot say with any honesty that I understand the majority of the poems. At most I see a handful as a totality, and then hints and short glimpses inside the others. (Despite the thirty pages of notes at the end of the volume). I have been reading at Celan for years now. There is always something there that intrigues me and causes me to return again and again, reading multiple translations and volumes of his work over the decades. I first came in contact with him through his poem “Death Fugue.” A horrifying and tragic poem coming out of his experience in the Nazi death camps. A poem I understand he refuted later in his life. But then, how much control does an artist have over their work’s reception once it is released into the world? I will, no doubt, return to him again. He is worth the effort.
-
Drinking to Myself
by
“Skoal! with the dregs if the clear be gone.
“wineing the ghosts of yester year.”
—Ezra Pound
Last night conversation flowed
freely between wit and wisdom
as easily as comfortable privilege
protects the occasional faux pas.
What wisdom lacks is the bitterness
left with the dregs at the bottle’s end.
Alone this morning, I slowly collect
the mostly empty bottles scattered
about the house like an archeologist
sifting for hints of a civilization
in the shards of broken pottery.
I wash the dishes, slipping my hand
over the soapy crystal, careful not
to shatter the glass against the sink.
Last night’s Malbec has turned slightly.
I pour a glass, and sip a bit anyway.
Skoal! I am the only one still here.
I swirl the glass ruefully, as ghosts rise
from memory to confirm my sour mood.
Memory, after all, can only reflect
the present. Like the glass, it distorts
any clarity dispersed, any veritas
the wine might once have whispered
like a former lover years after the affair:
a version of reality dependent on what
had been said, and how much confirms
what was suspected, and how much must
be forgotten as a form of forgiveness.
(May 26, 2024)
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Vanishing Point
by
I arrive early at nothing, no door,
no prison wall to climb, a vast unknown.
Like time standing still in an open fieldwith an infinite empty perspective,
all direction the same grey hollowness,the same vacant stare into cold distance.
There’s no point in looking back for a road;it too slowly vanished into nothing.
The foreground is without prior contextand smudges vaguely into the background,
as if a charcoal sketch had been erasedhaphazardly and without proper care
leaving bits of paper and eraserdebris scattered across an empty page.
(May 21, 2024)
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What Brings Bits of Happiness
after Fanny Howe
Lisa’s voice and laughter
Lisa singing by herself
The dogs sleeping nearby
Music playing while I cook
Food with friends’ conversation
Wine whiskey and poetry
Reading and writing
Books where sentences shimmer
Fields of flowers
A single rose in a vase
My children grown into their lives
Autumn and Spring blue skies
Slow walks in art museums
My grandchildren’s laughter
(May 9, 2024)
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Quick Take
by
Finished this today. A diary by a very conservative (monarchist) German from 1936-1944. Very pointed criticism of the Nazis while living through the regime in Bavaria. “It (Germany) is now completely drugged on its own lies. The cure will be more awful than anything seen before in history.” His monarchist tendencies cause him to blame hitler and the Nazis on the petite bourgeoisie grasping above their station, as well as Nationalism which spread after the French Revolution in 1789. Short enough to maintain interest over its 200 pages.
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Stoic
Time slurs and thoughts elide undistracted
from light’s rhythms across the cottonwoods
out back. As if on cue, Death rises unencumbered
with trivial fluff, waves, then vaguely walks away.
I could rage forward slashing through obstacles
like a petulant child scattering piles of dead leaves
without resistance to thought. Or, I could stop,
at least for a moment, and sit on the boulder
that waits where it has sat longer than the road
it sits next to has existed. Instead, I chip away
the crust encasing my skin like a sarcophagus,
pick up a few pebbles, drop them casually
into my pocket, then wander off whistling.
(May 5, 2024)
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love’s denouement
tell me i am a story you knew
as ubiquitous as the sun
that hangs like Kali’s necklace
across your translucent skin
i am but a remnant of your dreamthe splash after the rings vanish
or Muttley’s mocking sniggers
echoes within echoes within echoes
outside the sun blasts the earthi thought safety was you
once in a lifetime
(April 29, 2024)
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We Tell Ourselves
It is
present, alive.
The terror rips
through growls and screams
too fast to understand,
then death.Friends’, prey’s bloods mix
beneath our feet.
Gasping for air,
we sit stunned to silence.
The fear,tangled in guilt,
lingers nearby,
waiting like god,
palpable and prescient.
We eatand mourn the dead,
the flesh still warm
with heart’s thick blood;
then pray to be absolved.
Up latewhile the rest sleep,
I paint dark walls
to tell the tale,
so others might survive.
But thenwho will take time,
somewhere from here
to learn to read
marks scratched upon a wall?
The dustfrom the cave wall’s
crude sketches mix
with ash and bone
across the rocky ground.
(April 26, 2024)
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Old Doubts and Dreams
by
“—Hypocrite lecteur,— mon semblable,—mon frère!”
—Charles Baudelaire
O, Baudelaire, My Brother!
Is it easier to drink bourbon
than to get drunk on poetry?
What Dionysian folly must I
indulge to feel your ecstasy
in an old whore’s tit?
You condone each ecstatic
moments’s origin anywhere
in a romantic equivocation
of a syphilitic vision with
ennui on a Sunday afternoon
if Eternity is called to frenzy.
Some days the light ignites
the sycamore’s broad leaves
with an electric green glow.
I am debauched in wonder.
The moment passes without
an augury, other than doubt.
The fleeting vision fades
into the deepening night.
I begin to believe the lie
revealed itself as a dream,
and I am too old to dream
beyond the rumbling hearse.
A prayer exists inside the dance.
The day to day slow rhythms
weave through bees and flowers
to entrance, blinding all
we could know if only open
to what the moment shows.
Is a lifetime enough to fill
my hands in that moment?
My vision blurs if I bend
to the garden too long,
the world’s weight whorls
forcing me to my knees.
(April 19, 2024)
-
on time
by
i see so little,
in the time I’ve been given,
if i think too much
the chinquapin wavesshadows about the back yard:
such a bright spring day
actuary chartspredict my death in ten years;
a rose bloomed today
i wish i knew moreabout the vicissitudes
of time and of love.
tonight, a new moon rises;the tower clock chimes the hour
(April 17, 2024)
-
Venn Diagram
I am a mirror to myself
a reflection from some other
who sees himself in part of me
(April 16, 2024)
