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Plain poems of experience, with a twist of eloquence
by
Gregg Glory
Published by
BLAST PRESS
THE FROG
What's wrong
with this picture?
Scads
of lilies raised
above the muck the scum
floating
on golden
pond
--sheer light--
on one
a fat frog croaks--
Bhudda! Bhudda!
to the
weeds and sky
eternally
his eyes
are old-fashioned
key-holes--
under sticky webs
lilies crimp-edged deep
ceramic green
pie-plates--
above each waves
a streaked pink-white
blossom
held up by nothing
save love
and in that no sense
of error
ever
TO BED
Such tenderness!
turning the lamp
red with a shell
shade
down to a darkness
so complete I see
the moon
untouched
stars beginning where
the shadow of her hair
no longer
glows
DETAIL
To love--to that
intimate measure
alone
my life, monklike
is dedicated.
How long has it been?
Too long.
No more long hairs stuck
in the vacuum.
THE RAIN
Especially
because the blue ipod
randomly zeroes
in on
our song, a Belle and
Sebastian number,
my tears
roll hot and rainlike down
the window
as if outside
a Florida hurricane continues,
blurring all
THE LIE
And so there
is a lie a very
damnable
lie
--so what!?--it's all
one lie
after another
and then a muddy
grave--
heavy boots
of the mourners
thick
with grief--
while still a week later
daisies
grow right
where her face
had been
TWO SOLDIERS
Look beyond these
stick trees
just past their
thorny bramble see
a jet
investigates heaven
pristine
blue like the dome
blown apart--
so blue with the one
swollen
chalky marr
where human curiosity
has so
amply intruded
THE COMPANIONS
to Dan Weeks
Two dogs
mangy manes a-shake
follow this river
for frogs.
First one then the other
stops
the friendly lips
serious a moment, long black
and still
a line
of fresh paint hastily
applied below
the snowcapped teeth.
Ah! rings in the water
declare something
a few feet out.
Is it? No matter--leap!
The froth
around them
ecstatic! snapping! and then
slow to drink . . . .
They return poised
to the riverbank as if they
chased every raindrop.
The river
continues and they continue
to follow it.
THE THAW
Brow of snow
on the small hill
melting
Thoughts come and go
shadows on the brow
seasonless
And sooner or later
more sooner it will be
summer
And night and moonlight
on the small hill
whiten
IN SPRING
there are the soggy remains
of winter
buckets
tipped over and then
lost to us this
world in the
first deep rush of snow
that now, like an
impossible
sweat has returned to the
moss & soil
pores
so that bloated the earth begins
to relax sink down
and decay
THE CAMP-OUT
Burnt dirt
charred where
the cherry fire
exploded
Irish whiskey
dancing around the bonfire
shoes off shirts
untucked!
Bratwurst dripping
greasy brown sweat
into baked beans
in an iron pot
Unpacking,
the car doors up
like beetles' wings
our hands by accident
on the same
latch
touch
!
2 WATERCOLORS OF 4 BIRDS
Jade-smooth the green
head a mallards defines
itself its limits
against the frayed edge
of a faded
paper sky
as together with her he
climbs upon her
blue wing
foot to feather foot
to feather to
escape with their bodies
from
a scattering
of just exploded cattails
II THE PINTAILS IN SPRING
Black and yellow
the
segmented stalks
show the winds
to be
against them as frozen
they beat on
to
turn the page
EXCAVATION
Nothing expands
until the whole sky
is loneliness
Into this (nothing)
a palmtree leaf forlornly
unfurls
Heraldic
if you will have it
be so
important
NEW WALL
Concrete the
blocks carried
hod by hod
and form-molded until
they will bear it
stiffened are stronger
but less
impressionable
--To what purpose?
Paint them if you must
tropic pink
and tawdry blue
VIRGINAL
Somehow again
she is here!
White upon the white
sheets, she is here!
Praises are tepid
when she coils before me
speechless
beckoning
upon the white sheets
with a heat--so strong!
THE AIRMAN
bends
and
ties his shoes
loop-
de-loop
THE BOX TURTLE
christlike waits
for death
on the open road
loving the open sun
and hot asphalt
by the empty sidewalk
no one watches his toes
curl and uncurl
in the pink heat--
repeated in the orange stamp
on his back
and his hard tooth-yellow belly
his small ancient eyes
close in ecstasy
as the sun engulfs his shell
--from the furtive
culvert
below
a galvanized safety rail
he stepped slowly
slowly
a million years or so each
step nothing
in his mind but the sun
FARMER ED
Early the fields
are broken and turned--
early from Lakewood
Sanchez' bus
Before obscure faces
breath steams blue
--and white
coffee steams
Seen things
need feeding if later
they are to be
sold
Already farmer Ed
is cursing
--the whole sit-
uation is fucked
Dawn pales--
spreading stalk
by stalk
the least color
Neatly the trowel
goes in again
and
again neatly
Ice skims
the dented pail--
too,
the brown furrows
THE BATTERED TREE
Once evergreen
a firm cypress
vitally upright
as living flame
storm after storm
housing grackles
quick woodthrush
and inquisitive cats
now shows golden
brown branches some
soft as age spots
amid deep greens
and lower a bare
dead wing of sticks
one child yanks
to attack another
in the sunny yard
so hard the whole
tree shakes.
MATED PHEASANTS
Their carriages are upright
in a dry green. They stand
at once passionate and familiar.
His beak is respectful, level,
rather than diffident in uptilt,
his tail a downward sloping tube
like a story. His face is bright
and remembers everything, one formidable claw
hangs, while flat the other holds him
steady to the earth, hangs gloved
in dust immeasurably. While she
in straight grass stands
popped-up from an unexpected bush.
RURAL CAPE HATTERAS
Here, among the deep
sea-sway, a continuance
of the thin green pines
reaches to the shore
and lets
its spiny promptings dip
and lash into the salt.
It was the horizoning storms
that were to be watched
and mostly underneath
our soaking shirts
to fear.
Then the often creaking
cells of the resilient
bending boughs
would snap. Such times
a man couldn't dream for the
quaking of his bowels.
Such times a man can't
think of his wife
for fear of his children.
THE ONSET
trees creak
in the winds' rebuff
birds
go to ground
obediently as choristers
in feathered robes--
a storm
encircles the house slate
sky-slats close
in until
the horizon is only a
wet cat
shivering
under the dull porch
--she looks out--
her world
like a lover in love
is only big
as her skin
DAWN IS IT
From a
basement crack
at the back
of the condo
a suede
head emerges--
an orange cat
yawning
PICKING AFTER RAIN
In rubbers on the wet
grass carelessly
soaked dungarees
we shove through the
heavy bushes
for blackberries
--how under heaven
do they grow
gravid and ripe?
What fills the cells full
of some inner
wolfish night
with a vintage juice?
What grips
our bones and stretches them
long with a bitterness we
can no longer
hide from our wives?
Perhaps
it is our old
friend Sun
a cloud as if
on cue
discloses
THE HOLLY TREE
The holly tree
as a figure
not
of dance (since
that is too gross--
too many
arms like tentacles
hanging their appeals
straight out)
instead as each leaf
green against the sharp frost
equally
an equation
it is conceived perfectly
divisible
by that love
which makes the berries
hard small
and almost
exactly round
grow red
4 SNOWFALLS
1.
The snowfence strains
with the big blizzard
strangely large
2.
Rounded by snow
the church steeple
gives up pointing
stridently
3.
On bare stalk
sideways above
thick drifts
a chickadee chitters:
green fields were here
4.
Down out of midnight--
first flakes
through the black window
--Starfall
THE BREEZE
new sweat
breaks
you open
so pityingly
you notice it
the breeze
PEOPLE
It's interesting
--
somehow
so often
they show
up just to
unhelp
PISSING IN THE SNOW
one finds among
the melting crystals
the impartial
pattern common
to any
work of art
THE CRAZY LADIES OF NEW JERSEY
make love
on the usual
mattress
wedged
between the
parkinglot and the
parkway
THE SUSPENSION
bridge being
by its nature
incomplete
at either end
without anchors
heavily laden
and the wide
context of connection
of place
to place
like a man webbed
to his life
birth to death
pegged feeling
traffic
tickle across him
as he sways daily
going nowhere--
Watch the wind
now playfully
wake it
singing!
THE HUMMINGBIRD
A clear
windless day
appears
the field
all large yellows
save for
2 deep lilies
near
a black puddle
doubling
their sourceless white
in darkness
deep within
clear nectar
puddles
curiously fragrant
the day
golds
--What wind?
a ruby hummingbird
sucks (sips)
here is the
effort
of stillness
THE GIFT
thank you CPH
In the flower box
Kalanchoe and Kordana rose--
one a cluster
of honey bulbs
succulent leaves
low
round and open
as a cut thumb
The rose a rose
in miniature
armed to the teeth
with pink beauty
again and again
I say it--
to the teeth!
a bundle of pink torches--
A funeral procession
in a cedar box
borne darkly
to the sea's brink
lay down that box
lay down I say
by the iron palings
open to air--
Word by word
the gift unfurls
and here we are
dancing again
with Gertrude Stein--
the dirt, now sotted
black with the tears
of many women
and many men too
who have died
to make this day happen
THE WIND
strikes whites
whistles stiff
at corners
beats windows
shut-
ters flapping
back black
and white
a piston's hiss--
no female
to this
striving ever
bitter prison-
break
toward light
toward dark
desperate finger-
ing each crack
freez-
ing-
ly
until, almost, a
word is in it
avarice
INDIA
An idol
tall as three big men
curving lines
bridge
of the great green nose
to the still arches
drawn without motion
above the poignant half-sad
lips with the same
memory of
decayed gardens princes
lazy about the
common grounds smiling
at the women to the women the women only
faintly portrayed
by the best artists
linens
close about their bodies thin
unfraying silks
on them about them
unconsciously
as the air itself
or breathing
lightly
the final descending lines
of the chin
raising
the ogling eyes
of visitors here gathered
strangers to the courtly
past lust
back upwards thereby
putting
the whole
face into focus assembled
block by block
MENDEL’S GARDEN
Ordained by necessity
--the necessity
of mathematics--
the blossoming sweet pea plants lie
red pink white
in rows
orderly by a neat man well
placed and spaced
but not
overly so the sex
fused in them
in
the modest veiny petals
center of the
display
there are those tall short and
ones round and wrinkled
the peas
themselves encased the ovum
grown fat with potential
the seeds
dangling cocooned in green
from the stalks
the stems
the sepals dried up out
of the attracting
juices
a withering
revealing
the fruit
near these over a few
feet a simple step
bending
ready at hand to put in the seed
in his quiet black
suit white
collar strapping his
neck hiked up
to the jaw
to put the seed
to bed the
man
a cleric who named the traits
himself dominant
and recessive
THE EELS
make an art of it swollen lonely and old
finding the Sargasso Sea after many changes
chasing sex at last a last gasp of lust
propelling them many-bodied to the hot waters
eyes engorged against the sea-slime writhe
wriggle rictus of bodies black ropes dropped
to boil in the water-weeds no tract left
for digestion every wet ounce straining
in one direction one only folding and unfolding
until to the observer they compose a single
mass a tangle urging forth from chaos
an egg--they make an art of it.
THE HORSESHOE CRAB
moves so that
among myriad
fast foams
she creeps leaving
a perforated trail
behind
sleepily in gravid
sand back
to the leaping sea
Humped above
the scumline she halts
squats lays
her hidden egg-clutch
--Gulls
bugs at a bonfire
dive and feast
upon them as she retreats
echo by echo
to the sea--
Believe it or not
like an old pair
of crossed shoes
casually deliberately thrown
away they
mate in the surf!
one
atop the other
lovers
full of blue
bloods
THE DARK ROOTS
Hugeappletree
appetite big enough
to eat
all your own
fruit--
The sun
circular on the leaves
and echoed
in the production--
the
dangerous droplet
An apple,--
it will suffice
in one bite
to dissuade you
thinking of the sun
INSTRUCTION
Hair slicked, ties clipped
my brothers and I stepped
past the open church door
into the cool basement
Sunday school taught us
about camels, pasted stars
and songs sung while picking
our noses furtively
Standing for our parents,
small bellies out, breathing,
prayers came to silence while
we waited at the white steps
We peered toward the pulpit
dim among purple shadows
where one day mother would lie
dead and straight
PIANO MOON
The old upright
in the empty gym
distils moonlight
on its keys
She played
slowly eyes shut
a lunar tune
while I stayed
OLD DAYS
This day, ravaged
by blue memories lined up, blue
bottles above the kitchen cabinets
collected and dusted and empty.
What connects these transparent
vessels, old days inverted and emptied
of their content? For what, patiently
are they waiting? Spring is gone
that had me drunk with optimism.
Now the summer light, stagnant,
humid with stale drink, comes
rolling through the screen crowded
with gnats from the yellow fields
laid out like pats of bad butter
churning with dirty life, new life,
pushy, crashing the glass out,
upsetting the aesthetics, summer comes
boldly kissing!
AUGUST
Unscreened weatherworn
the doorjamb melts
into what I remember
was our private yard:
the flowers on the tree
(some red, some white)
have blossomed into leaves
sung green.
The chickadees
twitch among trunks
searching for pebbles.
The young birds eat them up
and eat whatever else they find
which pleases them.
--By some hidden wind
they ruffle to walls
in the usual hollows together
with a few early leaves.
Yellow and sun-white predominate.
These are the colors
of fullness and wait. --But
somehow my shrill eyes
are missing you among
all
August sways on
the stem because it is warm
as flowers go.
SEASONAL
There sidewise from the
breasting prow between
the hushed and vertical
bob and weave of
whitest icebergs there is
the winter sea beneath it all
still green.
HO-HEY!
Ho-hey! the wind is blowing in
sweetly before the rain--
A tuberculosis of dust
lines the shelved books heavily, heavily.
Too long have I crouched among them humming,
and I only come to my summer years!
The swaying trees face the wind and sway.
Ho-hey! the retriever's nose is aptly lifted.
My fingertips are grey with the grey dust.
What is this bitterness that fills my lungs?
The smutted screen rattles for attention,
and the strong old trees' new greens
shudder for what is coming.
--The wind is blowing sweetly in:
still it is all just Ho-hey!
THE GREEN ACORN
The cocked rock which
now is stiffened
was once, believe me,
supple mud--
jeweled dragonflies
sipped at it ferns
lifted intricate fans
in the paleozoic breeze
just as, all elbows once,
I had played in mud
puddles with my prized
avocado-colored ball.
How then came the rock to
crack, condense
and become this
crumb of death
held slightingly aloft,
the breeze still biffing fresh,
(slightingly, slightingly)
in the agile boy's sling-
shot--dead-aimed at
a grey unstirring squirrel
creasing his teeth
on a green acorn?
I INSIST
Write a poem, Buckaroo!
It's only Levinworth, hard
labor if you don't. Break the big
rocks into smaller rocks day
by day filling your lungs with stone
dust until you can't sing--at first
you get stronger straining
your back like a trout arching
homeward uppa waterfall until
after awhile the rhythm beguiles
you you don't notice how numb
your hands are how the sun has made
you old in one afternoon and
all the water isn't enough to slake
what thirst arises!
Now who put
a moon in my sky and why
am I standing on this high mound
of small stones--tears of the moon?
THE MIRROR
Why must I stand up and goddammit yawn
Tossing sheet to sheet between sleeps
Smell of bad breath and hollowed pillows
Drooling facebunched saltsand crusty-eyed
Cloud fragments of dreams real as echoes
Arm-in-arm the taste of your hair floating
Only birds and broken made-up music
In each ear nose snugged to an elbow
Somewhere outer a foot dangles cold
No matter how much I love you darling
My honeyeyed life-partnered dearest
Life was much better not looking at it
SNOWFALL WALKERS
As in this post-dusk dark we talk and wander
Along a lonely path half-silver in the gloaming,
I notice all the glitter that we gather
Concentrates along the hard edge of the frost
The softening sky let drop, and lost,
And which shines tonight like a fallen ladder
Through confused woods,--and on, toward a sadder
Moon alone aloft who stays a stranger
No matter how deep or dark our ranging.
ELEGY
Old man Mike grieves his cats.
Cat-catchers nabbed the strays
from the condo quadrangle.
His saved one, Baby, orange behind
the sliding glass door silently
meows an air-conditioned meow.
With pious solicitude Mike politely
guides me to the near ally, shows
how coarse wind draws strong
between the calico bricks, how
his flowered sun-chair unfolds.
His white hair lifts and frets.
--I'm tired now. I want to sit.
Who'll tell the moon about Mike now
the cats no longer loll and yeowl
all hours in the grassgreen yard?
ACADIA
The stars saw it happen, the sea
doesn't care--O-gape mouth
always roaring: More! More!
Here in Acadia the sea is cold
that was boiling. Black as a chou's
tongue, scarves of volcanic rock
flowed burning--a silent heat!
Prehistoric birds circle in the updraft
for killed trilobites--a cookout--
All the land made death's; the near sea, too,
dead, her back turned away riverlike.
No white grains of beach among the granite.
Cool eons until lichen like stars began
to dot it, winking pink, yellow, dull
grey-green in death's despite, in death's
despite gripping the naked tongue
whispering: More! More!
LAMENT
It's very easy going
too far--and the regrets
after, dragging a dead stick
through silt until the stirrings
make opaque what had been.
Bucket after bucket I pour
into my garden gullies still all
just black dirt till here and
there weird ears of new leaves
stick up. I expect to wait out
the spring after all what else
am I doing, what else have done?
After all he was worth it once
wasn't he--and perennials come back
year after year the same way
as if they forgot.
THE GARDENER’S LOT
This blade of land
engendered by the sun
dances round and around
like everything--
like you! exact
and supercilious
of all forms, even
flowers, for christ's
sake, bluebells
hollyhock, clover
goldenrod, sprints
of purple something
and, of course, the
wild carrot, even
the wild carrot, how
do you manage it?
Were not all things
in some measure
constructed (with
welds of cells in this
case, perhaps) you
could not overbear
them so with your
tweedling eyebrows
--agh! how
can you stand
yourself! mirrorwise--
look at it! looking
at you. Wont you
splash, red-handed,
into it? Won't you
break a cracker
and make it flesh?
Turn the pool to wine!
The way it stares!
Well, then, stand
there (ox/ ox/
pool) dirty and
locally misshaven you
ugly cuss!--and
get stabbed by the
rust-colored sun
increasing on the
hill's edge.
THE APPROACH
I am not
a cat in
slipstream motion
step pause
balance as if
born untippable
on this tableful
of bright jars--
I am a ghost
or less, all eye
and no mind
of Emerson despite
my oneness of
un. Speak nothing.
Again it is
there, the green
emperor beetle
exact shape of
my mouth.
THE WEED
Behold me! Spiky leaves foist off
the importunate poor with sour milk.
Burly through the concrete
I crack!
Dowdy, dull and living alone,
I have no zest for aesthetics.
My talons pinch the earth, suck deep,
choke those tenderer comers,
the pansy pink and their fellows frail.
Strong, strange, my own, I am.
THE EMPEROR BEETLE
Love this rotten wood as I
love it--stick your whole head
in the stink, be all jaw
to eat of it, forelegs anchors
to keep hunger from sliding
out of range. Gorgeous! a grub
has been worming woozily and's
fallen asleep so sweetly it is
delicious, an unspoiled blossom
of the rot. Caw!--Get off,
crow! I own this boggy log.
You are not so big yet; yet
I imagine other woodpiles leaning
just short of collapse nearby nearly
teeming with grubs.
Caw! Caw!--Come on, you,
break open your back and fly.
CATFISH HOLLA
Be mud with me--
Asleep in the hot muck
except for our gills purring
heated curls of water, in, and, out, --
Reeds will brush your whiskers
infinitely endless bamboo screens--
Here and there in the dim stir
a crawfish begging for it or small
snail with shells too soft
to resist!--glory it is
to loaf in the mud, swim
in the blood of the sun forever
and ever and ever amen
WILD ONIONS
Rounder than grass, higher, tufted tribes--
Green in a field of green, my root
fattens to bitterness
--Bitter, ha-ha!
Even without kissing, you are bitter
--Love's loser, you!
--No hand comes
to pick me
--Cow-teeth piss on your meat!--
Oh, I am lonely!
--Look at my mop, long
and green, green
--Blend and bend with us--
No time to be sorry for yourself
--in this wind
--whoo-ooo!
--Oh, poop, I never liked
my stink
--No? Me neither, yours--
Small, white, and underground, my secret
heart--For me myself, these thoughts--
I'm not sharing
--Selfish prig
--Shut-mouth
snob, that one--Aloof
--Still, she smells
--Same as the rest of us, strong garlic
--Pssst!
I can read her mind--(She kissed me once,
hee-hee)
--Who wants to be dull grass? --
Dust-seeds, every face the same--Bleh--
I am strong, plump, an innertube tuber!
--Night carries our scent far
--Lovers sneeze
who lie with me
--Cow-pats rot scentless here--
Eat of me and breathe fire!
--I am whiskey,
wild, free and writhing!--Ha-ha!
--Bite!
or be bitten!
--Let's take the field toward
the house and spoil the laundry with our B.O.
--Get yer sprout off'n me
--I am withered,
high on a dry dirt-lump
--I see the wood's edge,
a gauzy screen of birches
--Feel that wind!
--That dust!
--Spritzy as a spring shower,
ahh-ooo-ooooo…..
--I am not like these
other wild onions
--I am sweet, meaty,
and friendless
--I am lonely
--I am quiet
--I keep to myself among everyone--
but, shhhh… I don't want to
--Ooooo, wind!
--An earthworm tickles me
--Err-sorry,
I grew too boldly
--Take that, misery!--
Don't shove, I'll shove!
--Love, don't shove--
Har-harr
--You, you've pushed me into
the shade!
--Hah hah nah nah-nah--
I'll get you
--As if they mattered
--Oh, look
a damn cloud found us
--Rain, rain go-away
--La-la lah la la-la!
--I won't
--I won't
--I won't--
Be able to raise
--my voice
--my voice
--my voice--
Scattered drop drabs
--bip bip blip
--rain--
Now, louder!
THE CRY
Listen if you will care to
how the whippoorwill goes on
whistling irresolutely
yet distinctly.
So close to us
this foreigner
stranger than an enemy
alien
living half his life
in the sky!
Yet in his bone mouth
and thorough throat
twists
a shadow of our speech.
Whippoorwill!
When I was a kid, an old Indian
carving flutes
at the county fair
played the whippoorwill's song
to a tee
and told me as well
how the song could hold a departing soul
steadfast to the earth.
Listen!
A ghost of sorrow
is haunting our woods
even now
as the whippoorwill collects
bugs as well as souls
for its young,
moon or no moon.
Even so
I am tempted
to believe the old Indian
to believe
his black eyes
and braided hands so good
at finding the flute's voice
in the wood
with his sharp
thumb's-length
of blade
parting the grain
impartially,
and his exact
imitation of the whippoorwill,
so alien
and so close.
Whippoorwill, I, too
would know you
just as if
your song mattered.
I, too,
am listening.
FORGET-ME-NOT
There is something hard
in the world,
unkind,
stubborn,
blasted black
as a broken fingernail placed
in danger
of a too-great
thwack!
Every pebble is a pain
worn smooth
by lovely water
waiting only for its
proper shoe
its hidden niche
to strike!
Pain . . . pain is greater
than the imagination.
Pain defeats
the flow of poetry,
rills its lyric surface,
squats in its depths
unperturbed
by beauty.
Sweetly the poem
pretends otherwise,
ineffectually
but sweetly
singing against the stone's grain
just as though
no sob would come.
But the stone is there,
hard.
Death
is a measure
and settles it all
at last.
No hand, no voice
defeats death.
At least it is a cease
from pain.
If imagination then could speak . . .
but then,
it cannot.
So it is only
with broken voice
with breath inswept
between
everlasting griefs
the poem is known.
Remember me,
with all your troubles,
remember me--
that's how most of ‘em
begin
sprinting sprained
until the flowering baton is passed
hand to hand
and voice to voice
and you and I are left
in our pain sweetly
with nothing of our own
to sing but
"Remember me."
THE CONDUCTOR
There is no time
to tell all
the tongue trembles
to tell.
One feels full,--
a milk-weed pod
ripened
to bursting!
Through each throat courses
a cataract.
Words logjam
one to the other
perpendicular,
locked in puzzlement
but tumbling on
anyhow . . . .
There is no time
to decipher all
the mysteries
words bring us
every day.
No time, no time
to find the
tune inwound
in every utterance.
Still, it persists,
a pressure
seeking pleasure
in the onrush of words.
No conductor's baton
tapping, tapping
can resist.
On, on!
Words wheeling
about like birds
shotgun-scattered;
like notes displayed
against a grey
random sky.
If only there were time
to decode the order
and make the heart
--imperiled by the pushing--
slow down and
unravel
the rhythm.
If only
there were time
for rhythm:
the mind's pace
slackened
open
for the vowels and consonants of speech--
a speech of the mind
that only
in retrospect perhaps
discerns the
glottal stop.
Time in the mind
minding time
to slow or hasten
each action
at will
allowing rhythm to begin
and begin
again and again
until
there is only
time.
THE CLIFF-HANGER
Spreadeagled
on a cliff cemented
in limbo clouds
about him his waist
wading in air
on the rock's face-
to-face with what
holds on in this
vertical world where
fierce eagles nest with ease
and low weeds wave
without sweat
finger by finger inching up-
wards his breath backed
into his nostrils
gored dank bull-like
no flower of the body
no vista for eyes only
effort, exhausting, forward
hands aching red
into their grip solely
hanging in the air sheet
lightning riveting his back
pain by pain a spine
made of pain the fetid
anchor here always
alone always
sonless and fatherless both
treading toward what
plateau trapped
above by quiet acres
of sky, sky
translucent, impenetrable.
THE SEA
female
in her largesse
unfinished in her striving
yet sure, assured, assuring
wave upon wave
as wave upon wave
she comes on--
no mere dram of the divine
but drowning gallons
of godhood, every day:
action upon action
multiform-in-unity
she throws garbage
all day every day
at the immaculate beach!
Blue pails, red shovels
tarballs coughed up--
wanderlust wastage
shoved home from the sea;
she is no respecter
of persons or property.
What shards we have for her
come back softened and frosted
all their brightness now
turned inward
as cathedral glass can do
haunting darkened pews.
What has she shown them?
Themselves
a glorious wastage of light
tumbled in a green breast
whose furious love
undoes them.
See how they fail
shape after shape thrown in
to change her.
The sea allows
no options.
Love her and submit
until you yourself are
shapeless as seaweed--
survive if you will
by kissing her hem,
an appurtenance to her
permanence.
The sea! a girl
eternal as all girls are,
wall upon wall
she curls at her edges
smilelike or sneerlike, a face
that is always, to us,
indifferent.
Lay your naked keel
upon her fertile flank
or sail unknown regions
swelling between her breasts
in trumpeting discovery!
Always, you will be
flotsam to her surfaces
glassy and drenching,
an appurtenance to her vivid is
floating fathomless as scum unless
by your death you may
a moment
beautify her majesty.
The ageless exuberance
of the sea!
Beached, I observe
nothing.
Trash comes to me
in the skittering surf
utterly transformed!
I must surrender, I must love
this morning, at once, before
my nerve fails
and my survival mind reminds me
not to kiss too deeply
her salty mouth.
Insatiably
I want to kiss you,
dying of thirst
as I drink, drink
from your polluted brim!
But the sea is not mine,
she is her own
insatiably.
No embrace, however loose,
may manacle her manyness,
no arms, however loving,
can grasp what she is
or how she is
or anything
in the sessions of her sighing.
Only surrender, surrender,
can have any part
of the surge and lapse
that arrives
dissolving at my feet.
Immodest, immeasurable
the motion of the sea whose only
partner in the dance
invisibly
is the stone sea of the moon
tide upon tide
they pull and they press
until whitecaps witness
the consummation and breakage
of their betrothal.
To this ceremony
we may only bring
everything, may only
throw everything away
again and again,
effectless flowers
tossed into the surf!
The bouquets adding nothing
to the bride's beauty.
A child on a rock,
a stranger to the dance
as yet,
like a moron is crying
"O, o, o"
again and again
wordlessly
to pass the time.
And yet, what has he lost?
This is the ogre
and the image of the ogre
that lives in all men wordlessly.
Men can create, truly,
nothing
and we are, truly,
nothing.
But in our anger, roused,
we make ourselves tall,
stalwart and ostrichlike
in a pretense of bravery
to outface the eternal
grind and grit of the sea
who loves us not--
our ugly heads
tucked in the sand.
This is all men
and many women too,
though fewer.
The ogre groans
to know his true stature
miniscule before the sea.
"O, o, o, o."
After this wreckage of hopes
what remains?
Is love possible?
Can an ogre even know love?
What, after all, remains?
If something persists
if a possible love persists
then it is not
the love an ogre imagines--
it is not a love that receives
anything at all.
It is, if it is
a love like that which prayer opens
to us,
giving over all
to the suck and agony
of this great wetness.
Throw yourself in! you pray.
Surrender to the dazzle
hold back nothing
no particle of all you have
pretended
to be yourself.
Drown in the dazzle, if you must.
There is only the pulse
push and wash
of the sea.
Only her eternal grinding
and gnashing
persuades one of either
heaven or hell.
Only she may tell
which,--and whichever it is
we may only love.
Having given all,
we have given up nothing.
Our shards
in her embrace
are not possessed untouched
but transformed
smoothed and redeemed
released from our intentions
to manifest what
we could not have
imagined.
THE LIVING MUSCLE
The song
I cannot yet write
bites my tongue
till I taste iron.
My song, my sound
waits in my dumb tongue
unsinging, unsaying
. . . .
Like the sound of the sea
inside a seashell
still too full
of living muscle.