Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The rock upon adventure.

What I love might as well have been shaped after you:

A particle of Nature: Adventurous enough to disrupt the rock

While the rest sang out.


Thursday, January 26, 2012

Fools.


Henri Matisse - 'Madras Rouge' (French 1907)

Nothing is happening while

The yoke wrests.

It is, let there be no doubt, a world of shoulders;
Some are light, while some sink.

We stop to celebrate,
Our brakes weak and wet.



Sunday, January 22, 2012

Where the color of the wood is lost.

The traveler is bound for an unexpected brink,
Where the color of the wood is lost,
And the sun is sunk.

He will not cross the snow.
He will not kiss the woman;

Here, unwarned,
He must wait and resist his own
Silent voice--

The rumble where black lines go.


Tuesday, January 17, 2012

"The hushing lawns."

The book of our bones can be read
In the thinnest of moonlight.

Its grass is black and dampened, and

Printed in bold letters even a child could read.

But there are no children here today.

Over time the crease of the spine
No longer creates a sound.

Shhh, it all says. The words are quietly singing.


Friday, January 13, 2012

Science fiction.


J. James Audubon - 'Crane' (French American 1832)


Perhaps we were alive when everything happened--
But maybe not.

This dust that settles on all we live to see,
May in fact be the expulsion of another world--

The venom of their snakes, the wind sweet with cold
And coyotes howling.

Rub your fingers together once they've run through it all.
It is a kind of novel

--cursed with a future.

Love songs for the moon.

The shepherds have gone too far into the field.
Their perspiration is flooded with moonlight--

But the flock they share is far away,

Asking one another 'where to next?' and


'What if all our lives we've been riveted to the stars,
eating and falling in love here

Incorrectly?'

Nearby poetry stumbles from a singing boozehound--
His flock was abandoned yesterday,

And the moon, yesterday.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Stand.


Joan Mitchell - 'Blue Territory' (American 1972)


I have heard you carrying on while I slept.

There is a way of expression that comes from an
Old place--some of it is laughing and some of it is

Listening to you.

Such a duty it is to gather up these crooked toys
And busted things.

As if from behind a thick, cold curtain i see the playful edge of the sun.

This play pen, this Parthenon, will rot,
And some of it will stand.

Over delivered flowers.

Seeing, as if smelling, is engaged with belief.

So soon must you rise on this surface of
Plight, as if bred against its purposes and

In favor of your own,

Choosing the blushing grasp you like with neither caring hand

Nor roaming eye.

(What an audacious thing to do: To choose.)

Readership.

Collige virgo rosas
-adage from Latin

It behooves us to last.
The autochthon who prevailed upon us
In books

Tends to a wayfaring herd.

untitled poem.

If they must then children will be falling into the ocean.

I've watched them grow up golden as the light all around them diminishes.
It is similar to a chessboard.

I set it,
I set forth. Here
Is where I lie--

In a dominion where the infantry falls upon the jade surf
In the diminishing light.


untitled

You were born to steal more.

Make room in your slim treasury--
All the dying must remain undone.

And your purlicue will grow fatter
As you grasp

The bit by its egg-colored collar.

Green hours.

There is no honesty in sweetness.

Take afterthought and prior to that, thinking.

Take thinking, take the riches that grow even prior
to growing. Isn't it a world of kids?

Isn't it fast? Doesn't it go by?

It has green hours for parents.

Monday, January 9, 2012

In the throat.

Every time you speak I lie in your throat.

There with the hatching blue eggs--

Permanently springtime--

And the cooling comfort of your

Speech--

I lie there. I wait for you.

Sunlight adheres to me.

Sunlight adheres to me.

My skin buckles in its smallest corners
And closets.

It's static, roaming. I sweat heartbeats.

All this--I know it seems like nothing.
All this for charity.

All this sunlight adheres,
Here where I sit against the tree.





Tuesday, January 3, 2012

The grand chill.

Winter waits around for the grand chill to begin.

Think--as thinking curries sympathy, of the work you'd do.

You might be untimely and coldly rude,
Flash freezing and stuffing its scuffs and laggard birds
In a belated letter

Or forcing its tears into fluid lakes as they firm.

Or be wild.

Would you let the last orange leaves have their place
In the unexpected mild
Nude?

Would you--since you're a participant, now, wait, too?

The same thing that makes you believe there were dinosaurs
Lets you believe that when this missive comes the cold will come
True.

Something else will happen.

Split the envelope as gloss spills
Across the white sunset seam

Where,

More vicious and important than words
The tongue to seal, actual and flush--

Presses.

This season will--as if in writing, beg of you;
And the grave is not so different from the stars.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Clothing.


Clyfford Still - Untitled (American 1957)


We don't want to think about what we'll do after.

Maybe nothing.

From time to time the past is jerked or pried and,
Occasionally, a good quality yellow

Intrudes or just comes over.

But our houses are crowned in fluctuating
Attics. Light.

What to do, what to do...