sometimes I wonder (revisited)
Sometimes I wonderif she ever existed.
—found poem
Sometimes I wonder
if she ever existed.
Only a smile now
a gesture
copper hair flashing
she fades even in dreams
artist in the supermarket
She stands in the aisle like reverse Stendhal:frozen, her hand extended over the mound of apples.
Apples push into her like the fists of a lover
knocking at a locked door, urgent, juicy, plump.
It's always like this: fruit overwhelms, vegetables
scream longing; fresh trout imagines a sizzling grill,
beef lounges in a marinade, ready to sear.
She wants to paint, to cook, to knead warm
transit
Night. City street after rain.Early autumn leaves cling to the pavement
like wet hair on a waiting face.
Amber and blue incandescence
lies in pools for walking entrances,
performances and exits,
as the occasional soloist mimes
man walking alone on the street
concert
engine idle just beyond theancient boathouse
river calm and waiting silent
to the weed beds
and the spaces vast, beyond
ease the throttle slowly forward
hear the engine twist
inside the music
The part I sing in our quartethovers above or below the melody;
often it sounds like the French horn.
The Lead's note sounds familiar;
the Bass is the solid foundation;
the Tenor lilts above all, thrillingly;
my part, the Bari, fills it all in.
cocoon
Inside the silk threadsis what will come:
beautiful wings,
gleaming reds, yellows, blues,
curves and strength,
the freedom of flight
instead of plodding,
gnawing eating.
lotus eaters
This is the first in a series I started a while back. I should write a few more on this . . .everyone on the street was
somewhere else
listening to music
words from another time
another place
after
She used to purr when she leaped onto the bed;I prefer to think of her arrivals.
I could read her expressions through the fur:
glad to see me (and usually was):
relaxed eyelids, fur sleek off the face;
impatient with my stupidity:
Mauve and Gold
If a god were eating strawberriesWhen that sunset happened,
I know he'd stop in mid-bite
With red sweet juice dribbling
Down his chin onto his toga
And just stare and do a god-thing:
driving home
The sun set just before we turned west onto the roadthat curved into the pure black landscape silhouetted
against the absolutely clear tangerine and indigo sky.
As our headlights revealed and dismissed the familiar
meanderings of this riverside route and its clusters of cottages
On being mistaken for myself
Photos never lieexcept when they must,
with a minimum of mendacity,
tell welting whoppers
about how egregiously old
the old codger has become.
I have studied photos
taken years ago
that make me look
what was left
First they took away the all moneypoured it into the government trough
and they fed the war in Afganistan
but still that wasn't enough
so they crucified the artists
and they stood around and laughed
consider defeat
His huge leather tunic gleamed;
his massive hippopotamus hide shield
proclaimed his bloody history.
There he beat the side of his iron blade
as the drums pounded,
shaking the dusty hillside,
heating his hungry blood.
The marine’s gleaming boot
hesitated for a second
then lifted into the helicopter
bay from a frazzled rooftop in Seoul
as the streets swarmed
screaming chaos below.
In the empty locker room
the bruised rookie realized
only one winged victor
can dance on the
head
of a pyramid
and the pharaoh
is entombed deep below.
The poem:
The voice of the poet
riverwriter reads:Commentary:
The voice of the poet
riverwriter reads:Leaving
Some of us have gone
all of us will go
heating with the dawn
cooling like the snow.
Poem with commentary:
The voice of the poet
riverwriter reads:Climbing
I was holding the door for
a grey-haired matron
who glanced up at me
as she passed.
She did a double-take
and I saw the look
an ex-student gives:
the lights go on.
Now we were caught
teetering in the moment:
I don’t remember names;
nor did she I gather.
How are you?
Still teaching?
Still studying?
I should ask
—or not.
As I let go of the door and
engaged in the predictable
banter about life
in the intervening years
I read the subtext:
we are both climbing
the same ladder;
but once, I gave her a boost.
The voice of the poet
riverwriter reads:archive: in perpetual schottische
in perpetual schottishe
Tune your pipes and honk ’em up lad
and sup on the whiskey we gi’ you
for tartan is flying and summer is glad
and the blood’s in the tune alleluia
O hear the soft swirls of the piobaireachd
my lass: and dream of your love in the valley
he is deep in the loam with a lance as his lot
but you shed not a tear at his passing
And he on the rock again dances schottische
and flings his slung sporran so sweet
so strike up the cèilidh and sing out me lads as he
flings his delicate feet–
She tears her teeth from this rotten fruit and turns to the laundry ready
to pound it on the rock worn smooth by her constant corrosive curses
her hands are coarse and as cracked now as the rock when two were young
and he stood on it teasing her crossed ankles frozen in perpetual schottische
he said and he danced on laughing for her to blush and soften her reluctance
Oh God she had let him go without tasting him once
forced his spoon to stay on the counter as her mother used to say
her sister’s son hops into the creek as trout wriggle away in the sun
he seeks gooey clay for his mother’s mocking artful fingers
she watches him search the clear water with his delicate feet
From the cool clay his mother fashioned the effigies of
a youth lying dead straight arms crossed on his breast
and a banshee prostrate pounding her tears into it all
[I wrote this piece as a contest piece for a WILD Poetry Forum monthly contest. The contest requirement was to use two arbitrarily given lines, which in this case were "he flings his delicate feet" and "From the cool clay his mother fashioned the effigies". The podcast of the reading is available directly below.]
The voice of the poet
riverwriter reads:other
a north-easterly flow of warm humid air over the ice in the river valley
will bring unseasonably dense foggy conditions for most of today
no
island trees
dark splayed fingers extended through the soft still white
dream of winter
the only reality is the dark strip of asphalt
the cottages, houses hanging at the edges of the uncertain dense white
that brings clouds down
but not clouds exactly
more like quantum uncertainty
bestowed on the macroverse
our little cosmos
No
Some white angora sweater has taken over the river
filled the river to its banks and beyond
NO
someone smudged chalk over a painting of the river
and the river liked it
as a fashion statement
The voice of the poet
riverwriter reads:
clicking on the play button starts the sound. You may adjust the volume by the sound control to the left. You may access a complete list of podcasts here. I shall add to this list as I add podcasts. I have recently improved my recording equipment; as a result the sound quality will improve. If you have any requests, please comment below the podcast list.
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