Lost Children

This is an ingrown toenail.
Something from the end of the universe,
somewhere in the arc of the belly flop
back, separated from the handholds
of the expected. Somehow cobbled together,
an old leather shoe with distance scrawled
across the sole, in an almost illegible hand,
with a dull pencil and a duller intent.
Something that presses against
a queue of events, with runaway emotions
looking for a destination, a track. Somewhere
after the canal through trees, past
streets languid with dawn. Stretching
in a jagged curve with a painful moan.
Somewhat lost and somewhat compressed
with an unknown fear. A band of words,
a camaraderie of phrases, the ping-pong path
of an atom through atoms, a foghorn
during a storm, trying to articulate a message
that must be relayed.

Cinquain

Life is

like colliding

atoms — you never hit

the same atom every time

you try.

Anniversaries

God sells tacos at that corner place —
the one I passed each weekday last winter,
snow falling like Mexican jumping beans —
falling onto La Cucaracha traffic.

It was the season of the living snowman,
appearing in front yards, brazen in
his bravado, his lack of understanding
that time is transient, not a local fixture.

Spring arrived jazz blues — warmer days
cut into frozen snow nights, crocuses rousing,
stretching their arms — supplicants
to the returning warmth of Eden.

This is a year now and leaves fall, scratch
across sidewalks and yards, obliterate
the green and gray — those days which
stretch through the heart of will.

I no longer understand the difference
between heaven and hell, the difference
between you here and gone, or whether
I purchase tacos from God, or just walk on.

Imagination

The morning. The flower. The clouds.
Hand on railing, flesh. On flesh.
A drapery of skin, then river.
And flight. Soaring flight.

Into the weakness of words and vision.
The erupting peneplain of perception.
And small tracks across memory.
A place on park bench.

Trees which speak in foreign.
The office tower bowing. To concrete.
Cool concrete. And a hint of roses.
A pinch of quarrel.

An answer of writers' consensus.
The murder of crow carries.
Aloft. The precision of doors.
Open, close, open, open, close.

A code. And nothing sustains.
Means. Because dissonance exists.
A hair falling across a sentence.
A perception dissolving.

And rain falls forever. On beliefs.

Image #005

mendicant in the strip mall,
by the bike rack, with a dog,
carrying three plastic
grocery bags, dressed in ripped
pants, ripped jacket,
on Sunday, at closing,
people a blur of activity,
hardly recognized you — truth,
isn't it, you strange kid.

Image #004

know time the moment when
(latch sound)
the moment is, know time,
latched against when
the moment is
time (know) the moment
listing with meaning,
know latched moments
listed when the moment
was time picture perfect,
a perfect picture of time

Image #003

The grackles have returned to strut
the back yard lawn, to chide me
for my presence there, I sawing industriously
at the limbs of the Cortland tree

until it is down and wood-burning stove sized
on thawing ground. One launching pad as they glide
into the cedars with food for the nests
is now gone. Tomorrow, I begin on the Red Delicious,

a larger mass, with more intricate limbs
and memories. It's age, you know, this desire
to level the topography around until
only a peneplain of effort remains;

and what needs to be accomplished mimics
transcendental meditation; nothing to stir
the heart. The side yard pine tree is safe
for now, haven for robins, harsh xenophobics,

who last summer swarmed a wayward grackle. I don't
need this war zone, which is something the chipmunks
digging under the back deck should understand.
There is a place for wildlife and for man.

Image #002

between (here and/and there
and the conceptions memory stores
in the front corridors of stories)
here and on St Lucia, Soufriere,
Soufriere, saxophone in St Louis
cemetery number one, Lofoten
leaking clouds out of north Atlantic
ocean (here and/and) at
the bus stop where I wait,
where I wait, where I remember
where I was and having been there,
between, untouched and touched,
between understanding and a brush stroke
in any colour of lady-slipper,
there should be understanding
and conclusion, resolution, but
there isn't/there is
just wind, an alley, an open
window, a cat, street signs
covered with graffiti, twelve
commandments stapled to a telephone post,
a photo album of pictures taken
while trying to misunderstand.

Image #001

Never imagine life linear;
never perceive a spiderweb world,
strings running everywhere,
roads bunged with snow,
awash in June rain —

never, never, never expect
anything but the misty froth
of memories bumping against you
like distracted shoppers
in an overcrowded mall,
where direction is
as aimless as electrons,
photons, a half-second after
the big bang, twenty minutes
before closing time, a thought
before the open door blast of.

Time

Because you're here,

then is problematic,

the way doors in motion

might be...either-or,

open-closed,

exposed or persona

clamped tight,

a death-lock on time.

Three urns beneath windowsill
in this house, sun set bottom
left, east/west, west/east....

Perhaps by attire, how dishes
hap-hazard write the kitchen table, time....
Conversations surface, dive, dive, dive!

Forty years are strobed onto
smoke screen, each moment falling
from the imperfect linear —

and these arms (one in shadow)
are feathered into empty/full —
sunlight through an open window.

Capricious woodlot vine
slices light windershin —

passionate drama with
bluejay chorale.

Dusk diminishes and jells —
the innocent leaves.

After Abstracts (edit)

Death departs
hand in hand with love. 
Sensing abandonment
time abdicates.

In the corners
of this room —
restless memory.

I ride my bike north on Weber Street. 
Afternoon sun
wears a tu-tu of clouds —
sambas with soul. 

Art

Typography becomes art;
words migrate from meaning
to the esthetic of existence.

Graphics, architecture, sculpture —
a line which commences on the Parkway wall —
skid mark ten feet from the ground.

Aural vision extrapolates, builds pages
of script into histories; the mind documents
with experience pen and speculation ink.

Random Conversation  

Sun smudged the Cortland, just beyond the deck
and I, turned away from you, witnessing how brick
can exist more steadfast than theology, enquired:  

Is there really such a thing as a poetic voice?  

Open a bottle of Petrus, you replied. Let it evolve 
tides across your tongue, then tell me what you experience.

A City

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.

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.

The Mystery of Shopping Carts

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.

no point of departure is alien

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.