New England Poems for Seamus

I

Old Houses, their
refelctionless windows and walls
date stamped for vindication.
These are the houses of a revolution
seemingly remembered but long forgotten.
The revolts here are between yacht men and teens.
There is a struggle in the iron river.

II

On first look, the river glazed in ice.
The night brought wind and
the ringing of a single bell, chained
above a window outside the house.
On second glance, great chunks
of ice missing, carried away by the wind that rang the bell.

III

This morning the river moved sluggishly,
plates of ice housing the brittle dark banks.
Bridges, iced metal.
Roads from dreams, houses stacked with windows,
an absence of grass, and the red shutters
of a house built for a revolution.

winter is not the time for a poem

december is young;
the ice has already chewed through her.
she is so frozen now that she cannot tell
a poem from a hole in the ground.
There are moments of white and
a series of grey months that do not lead to words.
she sees shadows and shapes that are not there;
glimmers of nothing caught in the pre-dawn silence.
The days will peter out into wordless nights and
she will cut holes in things with a sword.

Mt. St Helens II

There was mockery and spectacle
our backs ached from stooping
like apes
and when the mournful cry
of a lonely elk
rose above us
we
paused only
long enough for impatience to seed;
the elk's tall figure present in imagined moonlight,
a real mystery neglected,
and an omen dead.

Mt. St. Helens I

So dark everywhere that the trees were not remembered
over the sound of our own voices.

Minds
much louder than our fire,
we watched the wings of insects in a
glowlight that wasn't theirs

and reason?

The trees laughed,
their moss a flamable smile for our stupidity.

The Ocean

the ocean is a vast pair of lungs
heaving with catarrh,
swollen with greatness and
swelling with yellow-white froth.

these old lungs suck air like a trumpet
blowing past the stale air inside itself,
giving the ear wanton repetition.

these lungs are only the salt and water
of a great surface and
below this surface some say there are
a mountain of intruders making life.

I know there is nothing down there.

Life below the tumult
of waves hitting lungs
is as unforeseen as an aftershock,
a watered down idea like a drunk's imagination.

suffering is

1. insignificant
enough without thinking
or knowing that the planet
is all one organism.

The mushroom grows
beneath the surface,
spreads its sponge and fiber
across the curve of the earth,
linking with roots of aspen groves,
linking to each other,
linking to themselves.

2. A burn on my arm
is the death of one cell, not many.

And the sea washing over me is
the sea washing over itself.

And a deep shudder of sadness is a
Drop of water from a spray of sea, evaporating.

Relativity

The sun’s size
and yet,
a cloud big enough to block it.

The Cit is Ugly

Here in these cracks
next to the gum wads,
the old cigarettes,
some dust from me and you,
is a flat, hot weed, growing.

"A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far"

We held this potential contradiction
and we held each other
and the magnolias
peaked at us
through the moonlight
outside the window.

Poem Written While Walking

1. And he said, "My memory is poor."
but poignancy is not lost
in the short term of his memory.

2. And he said, "The empty lot is beautiful."
I went back to see a painting,
a wall and a treeless tree
with two long buds
like broken fists unfurling

3. Eyes full up from too much sight
concepts make eyes brim
a punctuation mark holds
a globe
or a concept
small and meaningless
small and black
ridged
unchanging

4. I do not
can not
write concepts
only images
pictures
stimulus

5. Yellow hat,
woman points west in the dog park.
Cracked pavement like rivers
telling the tale of
parking lots from the past.

Telephone wire like licorice rope
Music, bikes and garbage cans

"He went out for the paper and never came back."

After a night of heavy dreams, this poem was the first waking thought I had.

To be so sure
that nothing was right
as to walk away
and never come back.

Trite

Accusations revolve in me
like the cogs of a clock working
backwards:
You are a coward and
a liar,
a man without tact.

Where you are,
damp foliage waves accusations,
drips honey-water,
taps you on the head whispering,
"The sunrise hates you."

For the first time I
feel the thickness of my
coffee spoon,
as I swirl in cream,
watch the bubbles pop,
or become heavy and sink,
and I am sad
and it is meaningless.

Spring Poetry

On most days
to finish reading
a poem is to put the book down and
let the heavy lines
sink through your subconscious,
slip down your throat,
stumble near the heart
to be absorbed by your
spongy lungs.

But when light hits
your morning window
and air
smells of cooking blossoms
you must turn the page and
read on,
the sun awaits you.

Half-built

We climbed up in that half-built house after we fought, after I refused to go on the roof of your house. It was night and the half-built house had no door. There was an unplaced bathtub in the foyer. The steps were jagged gaps, the walls faint structures, only seen with imagination. On the second floor we walked toward the back and looked at a tree above a mound of concrete and dirt. Its branches blurred into the night sky.

We walked through windowless windows and sat on the tiny slanted roof built only as facade, or perhaps a cover for the non-existent porch below. I cried. We could view the park from where we sat, off to our left.

Then we said nice things, unspecifically remembered, and we climbed back inside. Leaning on a beam for an unformed wall we both felt a ghost and left, never speaking of its presence again.

Something Lost

Facing the alley below
this chair in
City Lights
I feel my ghost.

She is the ghost of something
I lost in this city long ago.
She follows me on buses;
into the park.
She avoids the fog
and when I board the plane
she is gone.



City Lights Books, San Francisco. My natural habitat.

And

"Speak of an angel and an angel appears," he says outside of the bar, my bar, the dive bar. And I am only passing. And I think about the angel from the day before, how he stopped and asked for a quarter, then turned and said to the two of us,"You are better than average," and how, "It is better to burn out," like his cigarette,"than to fade away," like his cigarette, and how he left us embracing and how that wasn't enough.

Just before the man outside the bar says, "Speak of an angel and an angel appears," I try to miss the lines in the pavement. It is superstitious. I think of the synchronicity of the day, other people's problems placed against my own ashy problems, burned out in an ashtray, and I wonder when these things will be resurrected to confront me.

My short breath, induced by alcohol. I couldn't have done anything differently and so I didn't.

Time is Money

And she threw a plate at him,
and the next one threw a beer
bottle through a clap of thunder,
but I just chucked a handful of
change on the pavement,
mostly nickles and dimes,
no pennies.

Powell's

These books are
built to live in like a shoe;
narrowing possibilities
expanding possibilities
carving language into you,
dissolving pictures,
forming pictures to put
in mental boxes and
place on shelves.

The group of older women tote shopping baskets full of various sized books. Their arms hang unevenly: the right one almost drags the basket down another unknown aisle, the left points and searches. Some of the women lightly kick their baskets, allowing them to slide on the shiny pavement floor. They scan the shelves for a title they recognize, a cover that intrigues them.

A boy sits cross-legged, blocking most of an aisle, leafing through a stack of Asimov novels.

In the Powell's coffee shop I read Frank O'Hara and look at everyone. The boy across from me is searching for a good translation of "The Golden Ass." I pick up John Berrymen and read a poem about suicide.

Pests/Ghosts

First, it was the moths. In the humidity of summer, my room filled with living moths and then with dead ones; the window sill lined with furry winged bodies. Eventually, when the days grew cold, I swept a pile of their dried bodies into my paper garbage bag and was done with them. But the cold brought no solace. Rats gnawed through my walls and forced there way into my room. Twice now, the rats have been killed with a strange poison, and while they have not returned again, the warming air has brought many flies.

My World View

I am glad that the street I live on is flat. If I am sitting on the roof and a biker passes below me, he glides along leisurely and with a smile. If I lived on the side of a hill and was seated on my porch, the bikers passing would be in the midst of a struggle. Perhaps, if the hill was big enough, no bikers would pass me at all.

The Tree of Knowledge

He was a person defined
by what he wasn't
defined by who he wasn't
defined by himself,
huddled by an oak tree,
arms suddenly stretched
so that someone might know him.

The Trap

As the Rats chewed their way
into
my whiskey dreams
they said
You are not a human
but a weak rabbit
feeding on incandescence.

Morning

In the dark morning I rode the loaner bike to work with no helmet and no front light. The bike has a skull on the back of the seat that lights up when you knock it. It is too short for me and one of the pedals is loose. Now the sun is rising and the ominous feeling this ride gave me is beginning to dissipate...

The City

Your reflection in
black granite,
walking.

Green

After taking this picture John said, "They look like a bunch of craps. Fucking lilys"

My thoughts were somewhat different.

Signs of spring are coming seemingly early. I keep thinking of the first stanza of The Wasteland, "April is the cruellest month, breeding/lilacs out of the dead land,mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with the spring rain.Winter kept us warm, covering/Earth in forgetful snow, feeding/A little life with dried tubers..."

Walking home from work I came upon the most delicate white flowers, their tiny clean heads hung down, ashamed at their early bloom. But I am grateful for the return of spring, it makes poetry much easier.

IMMORTALITY!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula

The Old Creek

I walked the wrong way and
ended up in the dry creek bed.
I have never seen a creek in the bed.
It is an old grave,
I am lost inside it.

Untitled

And the ocean grove was over-run
with auburn beards and cans of Oly.
And by my side the spirit of a poet,
outlining the trees with verbs and poignancy,
a romantic song rolling on the tongue of the sea.

Father

“It's the Foster way” he said.
“To control every situation.”
And the whole time he spoke I could not help
but look at his all-white beard,
and the way I did not know where his chin was
or what his chin looked like
or what his face looked like.