Poem of the Week - 3
Gloria 1961
I'm looking at you.
The oaks trees
above your head
the pointed pumps
on your feet.
I can almost
smell your perfume
and your hair
burnt from your curlers.
Time comes and goes
on a drunken spree,
sunshine spilling down
the gullet of age.
Giddy afternoons chased
by uneasy
nights.
Dreams bayonets
changing scenes
pierce restless sleep
until sharp hammers
pound dullness into dawn.
Outside my window
they're building a damn condo.
The old house
that held my friend
has been torn down
like her man,
crumbled
by too much whiskey.
My world still includes you
at a distance,
then, in my hand
a snapshot
a fading Polaroid
from the old days.
As they churn the earth
haul in the lumber
hammer the sawn trees
the noise fills my universe
like the roaring waves of time.
I turn the photograph over,
it says in faded pencil,
Gloria 1961.
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Formation
Birds crossing
an open azure sky
pass over my winter
like an abstract painting
rich with metaphors
of leaving.
Transcendent in flight
one following another
day into night
ice light bodies
floating
open-ended triangles
easily leaving,
these weighty
dark days.
Heavy in my chair,
ponderous
beneath tomorrow’s
uncertain roof,
my arms spread
momentarily wide
full of longing
to join those wings
and rise
from the pile
of my life.
I watch them sail
toward the purple horizon,
iron hard with purpose
their journey certain
toward a future
which for me
is a lonely boat
on a bitter green,
wave tossed ocean.
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Water/Glass
When we speak of broken
hearts
is it this?
My hands, shards of glass
on your shoulders, feel as
oars in trembling waters
in a wasteland of water weeds.
I'm lost near the rocky shore
your eyes are no longer bright,
nor your body
a shining beacon
guiding me home.
Pieces of the ocean
fall from your eyes
remnants
of feelings
stored to make
another heart
a patchwork quilt
to keep it warm
a while.
Your thread of sorrow
winds its way around
my heart
a fist tightening
on a fragile
chalice.
Your threadbare chair
straining with ghosts
is a boat in the living
room carpet.
The silent
door knob, too
is frighteningly
full of dead
memories
and turns me
to a frantic
albatross,
smashing
against closed
windows
blindly attempting
to return to a familiar
sea.
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Safe Harbor
I
Why write of a white heron
when the sky is falling
why tell a story to a spider
the spider is a terrorist
or spare his life
when the towers have fallen
the heron is beauty
with no place in the narrative
but a poem is dancing
on the tip of my pen
when I turn from the terrorist
network, it is the bird
not the smoke
that rises to the sky.
II
There is a woman on fire
who walks up and down Irving street
her mouth a smear of bright pink lipstick
her hair a halo of electric gray
she talks to herself or yells
at the sky, of the injustices of the earth
you give her money and she gives you advice
"invest in the ships" she says
"they carry the cargo"
"you will make much money"
I give her as much as I can
wonder where she sleeps
and if the spider I have spared
keeps her company.
III
A homeless woman is my hero
she sleeps in streets I often
lack the courage to face
my shapeless fears bind
me to a room in the house
of strangers
who watch the antics
of world leaders on in their little box
while I cast shadows in my room
surrounded by items
I have collected over the years
my candles and lamps
guitars and books
pen and paper
cups, clothes, blankets
and my cold glass bird,
holy icons of safe harbor.
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Decision
In a remote corner of my body’s universe
on an island somewhere in my Atlantic
there is a house made of musty bamboo
surrounded by pregnant guava trees and waxy orchids
and somewhere down the path, a toothy tool shed
keeps the equipment I will use
to sever that part of you from me
your hands on my belly, my ass
your lips on my cheeks, and neck
you, permeating my secret, selfish places.
With surgeon like precision I will
make the incision, cell by cell until I
feel the release of your finger-like tumor
from my deepest places.
So I can enjoy my fruit and flowers
in peace.
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In Distance
You are
So soluble
In moonlight
Washed in its
Absence of constancy
Your substance
Unfetters willingly
Your bright
Designs dissolve
So dissipated
You will have time
To remember me
In distance
Changing in the sky
A constellation you once
Whirled within
When my hair turns
From crimson
To white
As a dying star
Filling the sky with its brilliance
Or a morphing moon
Reveling in its roundness
You will understand
That the further the fire
The more it burns
Us with its love
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Big Man
What do you see when you look
the form and color of the thing
its life where its dreams live
even in a stone
a small stone.
Or might you kick it for soccer practice and
later, dump your ashtray out your window
blare your music from behind your glass
believing the bigger bass
the bigger you.
If you could see the beauty of the sparkling stone
turn it over and over in your hand
if you could see the color in an infinitesimal flower
and leave it there for another to enjoy
this smallness
would be bigger than you.
If you would whisper in the afternoon
while others shout, meditate in quiet,
while others run about
keep your own counsel, there is no question
you will find a preciousness, something
bigger than you
bigger than you.
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Looking For Green
The streets are filled with many colors
some muted brown garbage over there
some multihued water puddles here
rainbow colored people everywhere
walking near signs in noisy neon
or painted to tell what path they’re on
Is there another soul
looking for a green
somewhere in the seam
not of the festooned street
but that spill between worlds
like the emperor’s folds
naked yet variegated in imagination
Where is the place of serenity
where no barking dogs
honking horns, jackhammers
or bass boomers dwell
Where is the wide abode
filled with windy whispers
singing the swimming
of the quietly flowing
streams, of wonderful quiet
Excuse me -
I’m looking for green
have you seen any?
Yes. Over there, there is
A hermetically sealed tree.
I see it sways, straining
toward freedom
like me
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Her Lover
wondered about the reasons
his muse nearby, was scribbling
something about gods and leather
he did not understand her purpose
or why she would rather write
than love him with his shoes on
and while she would have
rather made love
than write of it
she sought the sky
tired by humanity
and its filthy boots
as the juices flew from her
to the page and below
to the earth, and below
what, she thought
has poetry, like love,
to do with reason
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Why Do I
Why do I go away from your sweet, smoky edges
scorn myself to the knife blades of the road to
the long rainy ride home on streets of shattered glass?
I say your name, like a soft curse, against the blaring
of the horns, the beating drums that come
from the throbbing lights screaming by me
into the empty night.
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Silent Night
He tried to feel his heart
knowing that it must
have been there all the time.
He tried to feel less selfish
took the prescribed curative
but still could not feel his pulse.
He strove to empty his head
of things he did not understand
and tried smiling profusely.
And found himself eventually
propped up against a rock by the sea
giving himself, to the pounding of the waves.
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To The Edge
His fierce fluttering
renders her mindless
as prismatic wings
stroke her softly
and seek a shaking center
the nexus to her paradise.
He drapes her in
powdery moonlight
then suddenly rises
and hovers just
out of reach while his
luminously stippled trails
entice her like a child.
She follows to the edge
of the dark precipice
stands trembling at the lip
and feels the gravity
of her earthbound essence.
This shivering Persephone sways
forward, feeling his fire shuddering
ashily away through
the soft dusky spaces
between them,
toward another light.
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Home
I teach a class four nights a week
I hear the news everyday
I drive the highway everynight
I would like different kinds of colors.
So I am going home someday
where I will have red and yellow
flowers in my room
like a thanksgiving holiday
full of fall weather
and the expectation of wonderful.
When I look out my window
I will see trees and birds.
When I open my window
I will hear only the singing of birds
and wind in trees.
When I leave my door open
I will feel safe
and there, I will forget
the many papers
on my desk.
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Poet Master
Inhaling the scent
of sweaty memories
the salty taste
of tender exertions
the compelling feel
of human flesh panting
as if after vigorous chase.
She's feeling the swelling
tides dreaming inside her
while breathless kisses
caress her senses,
her shores which feel
these undertows
drawing them closer
to the sea.
The poet's mind roves
stroking bodies
strangely distant
smoothing papers
like flannel blankets
arranging candles
and memories.
Writing the moment
of imagination
watching the moon
through an open window
the alabaster master
of her night.
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Narcissus' Kiss
Beneath the glittering surface
observing darkly from the deep
amid so many ardent, darting
shapes - she is hiding,
from humanity's scorching
fires, and jagged treacheries.
Above, the shifting likeness
of Narcissus
is bent to self reflection,
while below, she gazes up
swaying like seaweed
moved, by currents
beyond her control.
Returning the obscure observation
of the Other he barely knows,
he kisses the stippled surface
which caressed by his
breath's blows, barely stirs
in a torpid wind which
never impresses
her cool, green depths.
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Your Tragedy
has taken enough time
gray old you, softy
shopping for youthful exuberance
you carry the gravity of need
when you say
"you're simply amazing"
over and over and
your tragic
cash built strut
might attract a vapid
lovely youth
you old suit,
your veil of ardent appeals
are not appealing
but pathetic
like your swollen face
face it, all your
worship is a bore
and your promises
are false harbingers
of easy living.
So now, it's time
for me to slide
away
into memory,
I cannot join you
otherwise
I'd have to see you
and every morning
pretend at breakfast
that I'm still interested in
your thickening moods
and your tagged toe.
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Delete the familiar
the odious surplus
the spiritless obvious
the profuse unessential
and this horrific upholstery.
Separate the physical
and metaphysical levels
manufacture simplicity.
Though a direct statement
such as this
most likely deprives
itself of its effectiveness,
and might intellect
have a dehydrating
effect on experience?
Furthermore,
what might all this have
to do, with anything at all
like laundry, and oil changes.
Yet, an enlivened essence cannot sleep
nor shut the doors on how it feels
ungratified
it hesitates for a bit at what
it has now come to know
the house and husband
the comfortable familiar
attempting to separate
to separate
the insatiate skin
from the need
for a fevered touch
it quells the urge to flee
toward brilliance
toward freedom
by justifying
by intellectualizing
the spiritless necessities
of a humdrum existence.
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Years I Have Walked
How many shining twilights have we lost
fiestas of red and gold in the darkening glimmer
How many years have I walked with out your hand in mine
with only a dream of warm lips caressing
A stone in my hand is like a burning sun
my heart squeezes like my fist around a stone
Burning with the heat of a million yearned for memories
stinging like a bee, broken and drunk with honey
Silent one, you fill my world with empty echoes
who is with you now and are they kind
For you are forever on my mind
a song repeating the sad chorus
How many simmering twilights have we
how many years have I walked without your hand in mine
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Jim
A Eulogy for Lupe
I knew him well
from Lupe's eyes
when she spoke his name
Jim
by this I'll remember him
A twinkle that said
I love him
all of him
even the rough places
especially those,
for I know where they're from
I know how come
and come what may -
always, I love.
A tender look
that spoke
of an ample man
with a large voice
and generous arms
wrapped twice and
lovingly around
her slender life.
Yet his vast chest
held a heart, to fragile
to hold the plentiful
appetite for life
which dwelt within
the hunger for travel
for food
for the day
for giving love -
to friends
to family
to Lupe
who now
will float free a while
cradled within
her family's abundant embrace
for now, just touching
the edges of a pain
to huge to comprehend
while clasping tightly
but tenderly, her own
tattered heart.
Jim' Waffles
Jim's ample hands
made tremendous waffles
piled high
delicate and delicious.
I'll remember them
and I'll never eat them again
without a smile
and a thought for him.
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Shark Bait
A man not made for love
this is who she will choose
for the challenge
the pleasures of hunting
the play of the line
let him run
reel him in
let him run
till exhausted
it is landed
brought on board
and sliced
from stem to stern.
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Luna
She would not pin his wings
nor dissect his secret places
yet, craving more colors, she
indulges herself, imagining
him wriggling with pleasure
while she, blossoming above
wonders what lights might hold
enthralled his enigmatic eyes.
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