Oct 18, 2014 | Uncategorized
5.
Headlines from harmony — are you
awake?
bulletin for a coward
chisel made of alphabets
blissman Africa Blueland blooming
a conga-line of white-collar
mercenaries
old movies tell new truths
fold yourself back into fable
the feasts of Magdalen
on your white napkin I wipe my bloody
lips
downstairs curtains in the rain
the sound of wet wood
hypothetical distances.
Oct 17, 2014 | Uncategorized
4.
Trying to avoid thinking he counted
instead
ample precedence for this mistake
soft answers
theologians distinguish the qualities
of the unknowable
divided nation
richest supported fiercely by the
poorest
ugliest oligarch masks as democrat
tribal values clan corn stalks ratty
barns
all the way to the horizon
this is the day of wheat the day of
chaff
in the shrine one candle burning
salt shaker shattered on glass top
table.
Oct 17, 2014 | Uncategorized
THE MAXIMS OF MARTIN TRAUBENRITTER
is now available on Metambesen:
Books
Oct 16, 2014 | Uncategorized
3.
All professions are full of grief
the west wind’s ghost stories all
night long
sometimes is cold enough
to be at peace
nail half an orange to the rail
finches love to plunge in
and walk downhill on someone else’s
feet
sarabande of rainy morning
old Scottish battlecry measure the
sky with your hands
rain on the windowpane
tiny boxing gloves from rearview mirror
slung
still at sea but married young.
Oct 15, 2014 | Uncategorized
2.
There was an analyst who worked free
nobody believed him
so he had nothing on his conscience
it might be a father a lover one’s
own lost self —
be kind to anyone you meet in mind’s
eye
say:
this is a conversation in my head with someone who isn’t there
stop this, say what you like but only
out loud
things can only happen once
in the mind or out there, out here.
Don’t use up the event imagining–
things like this are what he must
have said.
Oct 14, 2014 | Uncategorized
1.
Liturgical responses of all
wind and rain are answers
let an island be a proposition
in Euclid. Parse the rapture.
Words that need to be said over and over
no measure
if you can’t count them are they really there?
Who is the enemy in the epic?
Is it the king or the thought of the king?
Cold knees of chivalry
brooms for breakfast and a horse
hawk aloft small birds will flee.
Oct 13, 2014 | Uncategorized
Was that a yellow bird that flew across the yard
into the wind it went so not a leaf
now when leaves are yellow? Some bird
unknown, a newfound cave in Celebes
where a woman with a long slim hand
(an Air hand we palmists say) pressed
her hand against the wall forty
thousand years ago and calcite covered it
so we can feel her touch still, long
pinky slender thumb, so prone to love
and art, that other wonder thing.
Was she our mother? Too many
questions I ask, keep asking. Where
are the answers I used to tell?
Oct 12, 2014 | Uncategorized
7.
But am I sure?
Why do I see a crown
idling over her head,
is
she a queen of it
or even more?
Did I hear her first
in the wilderness,
Old
Mill, Murray Hill, Joshua Tree?
The crown persists,
her forehead fits
so this must be the one,
I pull
with all my night
the
stone from the stone
and veer hard
into her royalty.
Because
these stories
live us still.
And not just me.
Oct 11, 2014 | Uncategorized
6.
It meant an island where the rabbits ran.
No island anymore, no bunnies. No wolves
to eat them.
I listened with my eyes
to the words of your journey
on the silent glossophone,
it rang around me, dark as I was,
the
spurs
of words caught in my trouser cuffs.
I am far
away
in place but in spirit a pine tree
nearby lets a single clench of needles on my
table,
here, I’m writing around it,
four needle fingers
on one hand,
I
spread out and count them to make sure.
Oct 10, 2014 | Uncategorized
4.
But um,
the light changed,
her thigh beside you
safe beyond the crevasse of machinery,
her thigh you imagine beside you,
imagine.
Desire
is like a windshield wiper,
comes
and goes,
obliterates
all
that it has seen,
swipes clean.
You have seen
nothing.
No
image left.
5.
So the sea was natural enough
to come to
in its way—
phasellus
a yacht or little sailboat,
by Catullus, young poet frequently marvelous.
Sail away with me she said you thought.
The grammar of analytic languages
perplexes with contingency.
Who said?
Who thought?
We were speaking
we were young,
speaking
something
like Chinese in Coney Island.
Or was it Brighton Beach.
Or
was it raining.
Recent Comments