Poem of Beginnings

This is the first line of this poem

It had greater intension than this line

but really never lives up to it

Very few live up to their intentions

And this poem is already drying up

That is why this poem is going to begin again

here and be written on fine Chinese paper

to enhance its imagery of someone

who has found it crinkled and stuffed

into a hole in the attic. But that is not

better than the imagination of someone

who wonders about how it got there

being written by a robed monk

and stuffed into the shirt sleeve of his lover

as he was sailing to America

fleeing a revolution in the red hot night sky

and sailing across the expanse of a dark green ocean

This is where the poem is lost

and then hidden for no one ever to see

in a hole of a dry hot attic

until someone like you finds it

and begins to read and

seeing the stars in a clear blue night

thinks that this is a good place to start.

Jobless

She said, "We have no home."

So I said, "Let's go."

And we left to go our separate ways.

Things were getting darker

because night was coming on

or lingering in its darkness

started to come out in the open.

I was getting tired

because it was getting late,

because I had walked most of the way

and still had no home.

As I passed, the prairie was mispelled

like lagoonal or lacunal.

I crossed half the country and

stopped in a town

that looked similarly like my home town

only that it was twenty years later

and there were hints of revitalization projects

scattered willy-nilly throughout

I was already sort of feeling settled

so I settled down

in a home that looked similarly like my own

only it was lighter and had a new roof.

I spent my days reading the paper and going online

Watched my mother die

When I finally got an interview

for a job I prepared all night but still

did not know what to expect

I decided I would act like Ghandi

but the job was for people who

hit the ground running

and the world didn't need another

leader, you know, we

all want to be leaders.

So, I wondered why I believed

in Ghandi, so, I bought a gun.

And bought another

because the first one I didn't

want to use.

There were a few televisions

like in the old days

in the window

of a electronic shop.

There were several

people clearing their throats

so I walked in.

A lot of things were happening

If only I had some money

I could be happening

right along side of them

but I sort of felt good

even though I wasn't being

included. I took out my gun

the one that I wasn't going to use

and raised it in the air

like in the old days

or in my remembrance

of the old days on TV

where the cowboys

in their exuberance

would raise up their guns

and shoot up the place

all in good fun.

Today they consider this a crime.

But I was thinking of Ghandi

and how he didn't mean that

much to me anymore.

I was thinking that they

were going to call me.

To tell me that I had gotten the job.

That we were going our separate ways

our separate ways

leading us home.

Stop When We Do

Here vapor

may your faded

dungarees

suffer

as I have done

in my amputations

roll up the absent

pantaloon

and feel

for the sun-cloud

river basin

in the dark morning

ghost color.

Knowing now

how mud clothed

and fleeting the rain

the snow and clear days

have turned the discs

of the apple

fall into the light

like the first

conscious streak

of Chinese yellow.

Through which

I have made

my many visitations.

Boat in the Rain

Like the estuaries of sleep

yawning to the warm moon

that breaks the

seal of confession's wax

like the shining, the praise

the deep, the mutual transpiring

the lolling water veins

the hyacinth's leash

like being sought for pain

like the sand of subtle Junes

like flame

like a sea of dunes

an afternoon

like the arms that know no wings

the losing track, the consolings

the whisperings of love soon

and the blue tangents resume

the bays brown

like a wet gown

the threads of names

like the comings and goings

the looking through the frames

a boat in the rain.

The Pond

So what now

And for quite a long time

So what now

I was listening to music

being held up by the air

and then thinking farther out

where there might have been an end

to the place where forms share

And still I could not change or send

not even a ripple

that would not eventually flare

And I grew tired and simple

from taking life out of the world

and its mysterious unrepeated

loss

until my own face

scattered out into the trees

and lifted out up into the mountain

And then I turned

as if there was somewhere I had to go

and walked away from the reflection.

Rubble

Rattling in the peace less almost/afternoon

spangle the bodies and their engines

card/boarding patches blind

the intricacies of promise/downward causing

a stalled control/abstraction unsaid collapse

journey shocks\ paraded invisible

rubble surfaces \and at last forever

welcomes the beached atmosphere

Turn Here

First, I had forgotten

I was shouting over

the sun shower. Forgotten

that all the while I had

donated my heat to

an impregnable argument.

The stripper loved the way

I peeled an orange.

I’m sure that upset some.

But the downpour went unnoticed over the mimosas.

A relatively exotic weather pattern.

Soon, we knew, life would return

to its pre-shoplifting days.

And we would return to work

astray, and knee-capped in torrentials.

Words play out like catnip from a damp mouse.

A telephone rings and someone says the soggiest

goodbye. There is a dictionary and a word

in that dictionary, but the speaker

postpones its tintinnabulations.

Simply refuses to make a sound.

Another ampersand and observers

Like buoys on the shore, after paddling,

dry like canoes tipped toward the hot sun.

Magnificent droplets bead

everywhere in the background

of an argument being quietly

lightly repaired.

I Never Wanted To

As I divvied up the stars

ripening in the landscape

it hurt. And that’s why I

started writing down my

dreams or any thought

I might have on dreaming.

What I thought was a moth

clinging to your ankle was

really a clover. You were

showing me around even

though you we dead

and still I called you

something I regretted.

When I found out I was

flying someone sat me

down by my arms.

I replaced every reply

I ever made with a bowl

of tulips. To freshen them

up a bit. O lonely

breakfast star! I lack

what smoke lacks—

How horribly brittle

the paint on the swing

set is. This evening

is an overlooked cupola.

And figures fish with their

toes for a stone at the

bottom of a stream

amid the ruins of a

bilingual tomorrow

manana I mean.

It’s very simple.

At last we grow into

another person. Someone

completely foreign

to ourselves. I have this

thought every time I

revise the rhymes out

of my poems. Somehow

it is here you mysteriously

fade. You turn into

something runny.

And I awake with less

of an ability to love you.

The Light Changes Just Like That

A background without stars, without kinescope,

Without trappings, like a parade with lots of confetti

Parachuting into an argument that blows up

Into what we really hate about each other.

With my good hand I trail off a solitary letter.

It’s nothing phonetically, not even a whole bicycle.

Just a monsoon of leaflets I asthmatically perfected

Over a cup of grapes.

I write, “Go far away and be beautiful.”

So something beautiful will be far away.

A Wave

Nylon thoughts firmly prosper

no words fettle for answers

over the sea in some waded shadow

everything jagged, shadowed, leaded

one remarks like a timid first lover

confused, a memory at its corners

like many colored snow falls

your tongue between the gulf

of reflection and suffering

the quality of a country

called the land of petals

not the vain weather

nor that the compost queen

called to the beautiful preordained

impassible ruffian

"Thou hast managed

a wave."

Lines Written in Snow

You begin beginning

flowers and mountains

land, lakes, and streams

shoulders shrugging

off the loss of understanding

I punctuate the coming

just in case

the details that one may pick up

sounds like kissing wax paper

Wheels perfectly imitating,

even the sun the light house reflections

The singer singing the words

You begin beginning.

Little Photo

All life is like this afternoon

on your young sandy face

the weight of the stars

the body tasting like snow

the slipcover of communication

fleeting through the geography

of twilight paintings

firecracker mysteries

calm hurricane

sandwiches

and the intricacies of the days

before you knew they

even existed.