Saturday, January 30, 2010
exists
as this body
of quarrels between
frenetic intimacy and molten
aversion; between high rise hugging
and green space separation. A city walks
forever on the cusp of copulation; a bipolar
blindness driving all effort down the autobahn
of unrestrained creation. Concrete is its only aphrodisiac.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Blue Heron Over August Stream
Focus is imperative; there exists
a depth of reality
equivalent to wingspan,
to the neck's curvature,
to what dark pupils can cradle,
then comprehend.
The primaries, dipped to gravity,
caress hydrogen molecules,
straddle colour frequencies,
imprint a perfect trail
of avian desire upon
compressed atmosphere.
Flight demands this unconscious ideal,
this faith in the unseen,
unlike the constructions
of sentences, which are
malleable clay –
prone to cataclysmic events,
to immolation by misadventure,
to sending forth the pilgrim
on a fool's gold pilgrimage.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Who knows why shopping carts
gravitate into alleyways,
hump curbs, luxuriate
in rain, and rust to
burnished sandstone shades.
I’ve seen them dance
to inner-city gridlock madrigals —
frantic partners of vagabonds,
suburban leaves evicted
from row-house boulevard trees.
I’ve observed their bent bars,
sensual in sunlit waltzes
with chickadees, playmate
to summer-stained children,
last confidant of the dying homeless.
After Listening to Creeley Read
When I listen to
poets read, I hear
words severed from
the alternate universe
of white paper and think —
Oh God, who are
these beggars, what
is this road between
a voice and a pen —
how have they managed
to articulate so much
of the lives
of the social elementals,
yet sound so scared,
as though they’re caught
halfway, trapped in a door
that can’t decide
if it’s opening or closing,
a universe of unresolved
lunches with gin, loves
forever cast adrift — carrion
for vultures to savage —
these poor polemics for
the cause of angst
and redemption, Charon
and salvation, manicured lawns
for the moon and nights
in day when the only light
comes from that moody fire,
burning at the speed of doubt.
There are always open doorways,
road signs leading in Aqua Velva progression,
photographs being snapped by tourists
stunned that even this exists —
the ‘lost and found’ fantasy.
There are stray cats
and wandering sheep deferring
to cows switch-backed
on a lonely country road,
red brick taverns courting
white tables just where
the alley ends — and in summer,
wedding parties, because
the limestone walls,
which fall into the eddies
of a slow river — those walls
are weathered into
the expected style of permanence
every marriage seeks to possess;
an eagle high in November wind,
playing dodge-ball with irascible
clouds which slowly transform
into the hand of man.
Security Shift
For an arbitrary set
of circumstances, respond
and ponder why the door
is held open much too long,
a sneeze can attain
the same frequency
as shattering glass,
the motion sensor senses
no motion when a body
passes near and why doors
are unsecured by
more phantoms than employees
hard at scurrying
late reports between
the walls of rising floors.
The aging truck driver
in receiving, with a compress
against his scarred forehead
is real, as are
his complaints to EMS
concerning a sore neck
and waves of dizziness.
Real as well,
as I go to my car
at four this afternoon,
is his truck in the lane,
where I parked it —
waiting, like a faithful dog,
for its master to return.
Winter Heart
Dear Jane,
The house is quiet
at eleven this evening.
I’m writing you
a letter on the piano.
The key is A minor,
the perfect pitch
for sunsets, red wine
and fog slowly dancing
across hollow waves.
My eyesight is hollow
these days. The house
is ill-kept. It tends
to ramble as though
it’s an old man,
or old woman and life
is divided between
the universes of porch
and bedroom window.
There’s always division.
It creeps slowly
in the fibres of subtraction
and addition. It haunts
every equation.
Perhaps I should pray
for sums. I dream
of summations and
conclusions. I long
to see a pier,
a dead end sign,
the terminus of a valley,
where dolomite is
a hundred-foot step.
I need a reason to
come to a complete stop.
With B flat, icicles
form in my memory.
Long talons hang
from the eaves of events.
Yesterday is
a Royal Dolton scene
on red velvet.
Last month lumbers into view
and I’m stopped
at a red light.
Diane laughs beside me.
The world crumbles
into snowstorm.
The key of C is summer.
It doesn’t exist
on this piano. I can
play a song in A minor.
Love, Carol.
Bound around fingers, a twisted ligature emerges
under March light. You bring your palms ashore —
prow cleaving a settling tide —
accept the cradle, commence
weaving alterations. I detect metamorphosis,
as though orange-flaked caterpillar
has scaled the milkweed leaf,
or sun crept determinedly to naturalize
the dusk in leaf-clogged eaves.
An ennui entraps me then
and stretched white yarn becomes
a snow-stopped plain, an enervating slap
of leaden waves, seagulls screeched over carrion,
dust on the sofa’s dark arms.
Clock drags the sun along,
shadows are a deceptive place, with stuffed corners
and secured doors, hidden chairs and alley cats —
smiles tooled to razor blades.
I slowly furrow my lands — uncertain terrain —
acknowledge your incorporated cities against mine —
carefully resift structure, lest the cradle should fall.