Saturday, December 12, 2009

I know more wrote than read that book which is the self I am

When I had my vision
like the dark structures
of communication
turning somewhat lucid
I thought these
borrowed breaths
could picnic
for a century
and that distance
could allow the windmills
to stall and dry
into an afternoon's landscape.
And my dear child
will you ever know
how I saw the great
ohio ember
the rain move
like a hand with its palms
raised
the admission of the strange
the fuzz
that one sees
looking across the impermanent shore.
This is the mystery
that I am doing to myself.




Wednesday, December 9, 2009






And sometimes we hear
the tree run, the water erode
the stone grow

Leaving Home

Some of
us,
remember leaving
home in the morning,
exploring
the bayous,
fishing with bread,
catching hermit crabs
catching a fly
to put into
venus-flytraps
growing wild
in the meadow
eating sour weed.

Sunday, November 15, 2009


How careless one must become
To know the pleasant promise
And solitary expedition
Of a tiny boy thinking.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

:ove :oem

I'm late
I understand that
And I'm not interested
in the unusual ways
bugs mate
I don't think
that necessarily
makes good
poetry
But I do think
if I could touch
your hand right
now that would be
good enough
You see
I am very far away
from you
I don't
fully understand
that you could hear me
I am as a
lonely house
without windows
without floors
still
I am missing
I don't know why
our birth dates
are on everything
I touch
I think you
were trying to be
funny by giving me
a hard time
I got that later
I do love
you much
more

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Targets Hit by Accident

And are we not just fragments
Sappho on the street corner
with a girl from Las Vegas
an empty room freshly painted
a mirror in the reflection of a lake
the dream of history reversing
out onto a funereal landscape
the water drop constellations
but I am not going to imagine you anymore
than I have to. One goes back to old sources
the ebb and flow of different species
of trees, the green moons of sleep
the endless fragrance of darkness
Are we not risking the next chapter
the abandoned lap, the fine result
that had easily come to us
O my dear nothing
your voice turned out to be
the same phantom
a tidal pool of words within earshot
It doesn't matter we've forgotten
the submerging months among
the fleeting absorptions
the loose daylight texture
the happy secrecy
the lucid cheerful insight
showing how much you know
etched into a cloud bank
against the ordinary eternity


Sunday, October 18, 2009

The explanation will be better than the poem itself

The difficulty has been extended
out from what it needs to be.
And there has been no special
isolation. There has been no
quite walks out in the autumn.
No trying to get at it
as if with the absence of life
brings one closer to it, and then
to what has gone on further
down the road because of a sound
you thought you were being beckoned by.
But we find we are only trying
to keep as a surprise for ourselves,
the buzzing uneaten colors
of fall, the water necklace, and fish streams
a couple of page turning episodes
that is probably a good lesson
for artists of all kind. A peripheral
text draining out of an accordion
like glint off the bay. The possibility
of illuminating the witness
as though everything in her has been left out.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

(sic)

Believe me bunny
I never meant to use the soap
and the toothpaste...yes
but only once.
I left the room
and the young their milk.
The fire pleases infinitesimally
and the ruddy nomadic geese
of course are a great instrument
and the dandilions poking
up their yup-yups
through the flagstones
help to measure the symmetry
I think I will eventually break
your heart like apple blossoms.
But now that you
are here in the flesh,
let me touch you.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Rain

When I had my visionlike the dark structures of communicationturning somewhat lucid I thought these borrowed breaths could picnicfor a century and that distancewould allow the windmillsto stall and dryinto an afternoon landscape and my dear childwill you ever knowhow I saw the greatohio emberrain movelike a hand with its palmsraisedthe admission of the strangethe rainfloating acrossthe impermanent shore another
sunwhere darknessdecays

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Mother with Daughter


There is an interruption being built within the poememptying my bookto drown the addictionthe clean
daypacked a lunchkeeps more of the work in the presentcontinuious presentround mouthneither
the color of wine or waterorators, lovers, and funeralsrain in a dreamhands love youautotelic
The child is a little youyou holding her legs raisedcoupled under your armsroundedoutside of youher
headnestledunder your chinlong locks of hairone backcurvedback
and you will become someone completely foreign to your self

Echoing

Last century
when the stars cried out their addresses
you slipped off your dresses
the two flowered ones
when the stars cried out their addresses
What were you wearing?
the two flowered ones
the lights dimmed close
What were you wearing
to the earth and whole arms?
the lights dimmed close
were back logging their questions
to the earth and whole arms
and the few like dramas
were back logging their questions
and exaggerated loves
and a few like dramas
blue from the curtains
and exaggerated loves
closing and covered in shadows
blue from the curtains
last century
closing and covered in shadows
you slipped off your dresses

Saturday, September 19, 2009

I am in a Tremendous Dog Fight

It shines
suffices to say
and is done well
like the soon
to be cut lawns
the terrible gravity
of how we place
our ornaments
drifting seeds
without the mailman's
communicable ginseng
with out the men
who fancied my mother
who said this can happen
from the burning streets
and coffee poured cities
and the sense to picnic
like crumbs about your feet
the famous drop cloth
with the occasional factory bell
ringing against a spiraling background.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

New Poem for People Who like New Poems

The boat sails
in a sea of grass
under the May
air eve ocean.
And Clouds
a single wake of
further
after mooring noons.
Midnight. Cleansing
the cheerful dream
of the constant love
dropping the dissipated
anchor becoming atmosphere
of our fortunes.

Searching for Traces

No posts
No signs
No sonnets
No ocean
No gloom
No turning
No meaning
No story
No land
No loom
No present
No sleep
No secret
No business
No order
No breeze
No standing
No knowing
No dreaming
No sequel
No echo
No moon


Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Compositional History

Today we find ourselves in a very novelistic world.
As in foot note (1)

What do you have to think the poem is
indicates the source

anything beyond that
you find there is a lot better poetry

decourous certainly
double removed

it is in the letters these figures
write to each other.


1. No one is left behind on earth


Sunday, August 16, 2009

Notes From Narragansett



The painter worked into evening
and ended up creating night.

"You see the moon is shinning on the ocean,
and a woman is carrying in the laundry
over her tumbled arms."

It began to rain on the ocean.
I said, I see nothing
but nothing I said
said to him there
was no ocean, no woman, no laundry, no moon.

World as Voyeur

waves slapping like jello
vanished noises
swinging our naked arms
like the dead
laid down on their pillars
living at the back of the orchard
and called and sent home
and bled
a cadence behind the eyes
voices like bombed out homes
reading the train schedules
reading the hotel menu
reading Ulysses for the first time
at 36. Life happens
in a few fine years
and nothing but doing it all
over again will suffice.
I'm wondering when the river
its course, is a bad thing
when it changes
and the fish all die out
or a good reason.
I practice being still.
I practice
and practice.
I think the poem has changed.
Even though I didn't want to show you that.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Poem Without Revisions

He issued the definition
like a hand coming out of the sunlight,
like the universe was suppose to fill up.
He said, "There is more importance
leaving the white carnations of our world."
There was a parade turning down our street.
There were trucks and very shiny automobiles.
There were people throwing candy.
For a moment I felt that I might be coming home
to my dear wife.
And I hoped for a long time.
The summer was almost over in the tomatoes.
There was only one window in which the swallows could leave.
We walked to the field where no horse was.
I could not sing.
I could not say anything.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Not Responding to Things Directly

The few lines of your neck wear you down

like the sodden robe of your last miscarriage.

I am undulant and endeavoring your inner tube delicacies.

On 7th Avenue the cat thinks it must be in heaven

or else why would it be smiling?

Why would it be pawing the suburban subconscious?

And since we are alone, Love,

in our dreams, your contumely umbrella

has hidden you amid the vast oceanic waves.

I’ve flagged you down so we could shake hands.

Like an unhealthy child or a shallow reservoir,

I’ve swam a bit unsteady over the shoals,

squandered my stocking stuffers,

losing a little luster, but also the debris of doubt.

I won’t be much longer in this crawl space.

My landscape, mostly the curve along your chin line

up to your rhododendron eyeliner.

But it is late, it is almost night fall,

and in the sad demure of rain we raise the toasting glass

to speak anecdotally of this young prince.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Saying it so it might happen

We were told to sit on the pavement,

it was ordinary pavement. As if we needed marmoreal

protection from the loiters and people shopping.

The branches shook above the nasturtiums, which

were shaking their rebuttals at the ice cream

pamphlets. This was some college town

someone shouted. That this would be, "a good novel

some day." And in that way we looked at each

other in disgust. Once making love my mind was thinking

that in a hundred years I would never think

as I do now, nor shift my seat in peradventure.

The structure of the bricks was

a kitchen floating over the roof

tops. We were eating our cotton

sweaters. We were trying to acclimate

to our extremeties. We were having a good time.

This was the way we thought about the world.

Friday, February 13, 2009

In Search of Popsun

The Alps Go out from here. We dropped our baskets And went out hunting. There was incredulous Love making. We heard things from the hereafter. We commandeered safe passage Out through the rolling Atlantic. We heard of an attractive hand at the firing range that drew in the pack of hyenas, A few of us responded with a Map of the constellations Others began to desire Brilliant foliage And a few bills in their bill fold. We were waiting for it to get cold, For it to snow, to go out looking through the snowy streets of New England, And find that This is not such a crazy place For a famous hat, In Hartford.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Regular Poetry


 

The coffee was steaming when Doc took off his wig

we didn’t even know he was wearing.

We found a hat within a hat.

Two years before, Lorca shredded me

with a flower stinking like an overripe melon.

That was for I thought I knew better.

Another hat emerges and someone kicks it.

It hurts, like reading a poem with an understanding,

an oar passing over the water, dripping in an orbit

only a few astronomers can comprehend.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Finally You

Last night we finally got wind of the new greeting card. It sounded like shrimp head or lunch pail. But those are things of profound sadness and we decided to rename it, like houseboat or inscribed straggle. It now appears under your pillow like air pocket or  willful sample of a lonely tooth. We suppose it is like wine wasted on the telephone. But we are similarly misled, and it is like the Indian Ocean. Hint it is written like leaf with a passion or long yellow Septembers. From the window we look out onto the slipperless streets. The mailman uses his telescope as an alias. He carries the mail like a deceased brother at a New Year’s Eve party. We don’t take it personally, but are happy when he’s gone. He is a normal letter carrier. Like shag over the ballpark, or nightgown obviously not stitched, funny simple novel or two smiles playing, nothing is heavier than a nickel but the sweet fronds of thought melting like butter between a sandwich, Japanese blooms in fall or hints not unlike statutes left in the rain. In words a thank you letter finds you amid the postcards, taxidermied pigeons, napkin notes. 

All Life is like this Afteroon

All life is like this afternoon on your young sandy face the weight of the stars the body tasting like snow a slipcover of communic...