Independence & Resolution

 

            for Douglas Wilson

Listen, he said, the sound of flies

Above the riffle, that bodes well.

The old man sat, in sad surmise,

And thought of revolution. Hell,

He told us, when the world was new

And we ran guns and gerunds sang,

I watched the mountains turning blue.

Ecclesiastics never rang,

And girls were disappointed I

Moved them along. Now I can hope

That when my grey habiliments die,

The Queen will wear a dab of crêpe.

The music of satiety,

Which has no wings and does not grow

In memory, plays endlessly

And only strikes the notes we know.

Chains They Forged In Life

 

The poems no one heard of populate

This verbosphere, invisible and bleak,

Dottering incoherently in dry

And crumby cupboards, turning bedsheets gray

On sleepovers, making little girls pale,

Afraid that they have accidentally bled.

Elegiac, embarrassed, and full of tropes

Disparaged by Seleucian kings, they tell

Stories of unrequited jealousy

Engraved on stone with sponges, vetted by

The underappreciated and the fat

Recipients of Golden Books and schmaltz.

A few are goodbye letters, never signed.

A few are tax returns, unaudited.

Some lisp. Some swoon. Some have these wild ideas

About the immanence of outer space.

They drool. They belch. Complain. Complain. Complain.

They like a mirror, write they backwards verse.

Walking Home in the Dark

 

    This appeared in Life & Legend.  I have changed it a bit since then.

Some nights I can't get home before the dark.

I can't quite make it. Some nights I brave the streets,

And I'm afraid. Who isn't? There are ex-

Acquaintances, role models, and the police

In every hole, the shadows of themselves

Awaiting the day when hair loss is reversed.

Arise, I tell them, and I say, Not now,

But after I've passed and left you where you were.

I hear them rustle in the deep-down beds,

Less than they were, more than they ever will be,

Until the day when fallen arches rise

And all their triumphs, mute so many years

Still in the gladstone bags they kept close by,

Rise to the surface, fried by benignant sun.

Things In Bloom

 

The peckerwoods are blossoming—this heat

Is perfect for them, clears their rosy limbs,

A scent of gravy with a hint of lime,

Creaking with all the weight of special sauce.

Me, I just can't transport a whole lot more

Compressed into this stringy frame, a touch

Of spirit in a wealth of this-and-that.

I'm thinking chastely of a new frontier,

Out where the rumpus rooms are naugahyde,

With attic vases all the way downstairs,

Where Indians bear cobras in their packs,

And landsmen dance the shabbos hully-gully.

It's just a myth, a brackish aspiration.

I'll choogle to the fridge, but nothing more.

Next year the Thousand Islands and a hope

At long last I can be consumed with relish.

Adam's Rib House

 

Leaving a lot to be filled in, it took

Less space than a person ought. The garden floor

Was filled with hippopotamus and mice,

With rhododendrons and Rhode Island Reds—

The irony of which is clear, even to me—

So maybe it was good that it was spare.

He did okay without it, anyway;

And she built quite a suite of space around it:

Organs to make the windpipe sound, a gut

Deep enough for a cello; and her loins—

Well, he needed no instruction as to those,

Which seemed a little strange, when he reflected.

It served, the rib did. In his view it made

The Venus de Milo look like cottage cheese.

They had no seasons, so there was no fall.

They made a paradise and called it peace.

And Adam never wished he had a dog,

Not more than once or twice. And so did she.

They Call It Rain

 

What with the locusts and the twirling spray,

It hasn't been the best of days. Old blood

Pumps through the holes and sewers of the town.

Oh, that is what I'm smelling, people say,

But what they mean is, Holy shit. I'm leaving

The final days behind and going now.

Those purple hazes may not be the best,

However sonorous, for telling time,

Of which we have unlimited supplies,

Not each of us, of course, or one by one,

Just lots of foggy, vulgar chunks of loss.

And locust shells, lying around like bones.

Mortal Lovers

 

Year on years, pages and pages, 

I have soaked myself in sages.
You who come here, the unwary,
longing to complete your knowledge
in the ventriloquil college,
pause, perhaps, but do not tarry.

All these parti-colored bindings
bind the heart in all its windings;
flecks of red on green and blue,
all they are , all they stand for,
saturate the heart with candor.
They are what you turn into.

Daphne, who, however stately,
could not be the god who lately
ran her down amid the clover,
Daphne’s lovely, green, and shady,
but had rather been a lady
with a flawed, a mortal lover.

The Post Is Never Dead

 

Antipathy dropped by last night, the heat

Escaping through his bowler hat, a brush

Mustache above the toothy grin, cravat

In old-school colors, much askew. He stood

Half again as wide as tall. So it seemed.

He hadn’t a sweet sound to make. A few

Blasts of opprobrium and then all gone.

I sprayed air freshener and lit an old

Pumpkin-scented candle, then I returned

To sweeping up the letters I had dropped,

Overseas mail, the most of them, from times

I promised I would not forget, though some

Contained an odd surprise I’d overlooked.

And now, spent by Antipathy, I found

A rhythm I was better off without.

I Rose For Emily

 

Urgent to divest—

Oppression and undressed —

Afforded scant relief

By grocery belief —

To bed—too soon—and met

Specimens of regret —

Leaves like colored labels —

Descending on our tables.

Housebroken

 

The houseplant leaves the room. It twirls a leaf

Around the door to see who's coming. Green

The grass outside the window. What it's seen

Of vegetation grown and come to grief

At mowers' hands is not to be believed.

The ficus argues, "Leave a leaf deceived.

No one who's known is better off." But Phil-

Odendron needs to know. He snakes the hall,

Heads for the door. He gets there by the fall.

The frost has stolen all the chlorophyll;

He dies upon the jamb, cold and enlightened.

The leaves lie blown in stacks, then wet, then whitened.

I feel a moral coming on. The sun

Will give us back our green. Out of the mire

Come kudzu with the energy of fire

And clover till the field is overrun.

There will be philodendron by the dozens

In music rooms. But not him. Just his cousins.

Men are like fish, you say. There'll always be

Another in a minute. I have no

Idea, but, Filly, if you let me go,

There will be more, but never more of me.

The dying plants are rich in latter plants;

But Philodendron gets no second chance.

The Sight of Snow

 

The fat squirrels have surrendered.

Nuts, I say: they had no other course.

The chickadees complain until they’re hoarse.

I feel for them as though they had been rendered,

Or would if I were nature’s friend;

But I’ve made other, safer plans for fall.

I shall not be at home when ill winds call.

Spring is the goal here; winter is the end.

The trees are sure they will awake.

The frozen grass has done it all before.

Clematis clings to hopes there will be more.

But they're all botany. There's no mistake.

No cyclic show for me; but, oh,

I think of warmth and someone whom I knew,

Someone who spoke in cadences, as you

Burst with excitement at the sight of snow.

Now About Those Crusades

 

At first I thought I should work "hauberk" in

and "Holy Sepulcher" or maybe "paynim."

But as I tried, they grew less glittery,

less Coeur-de-Lionish, being as they were

mere bloodstained souvenirs, like pigges bones.

Instead I told the Stations of the Cross

of Peter the Hermit, who made Europe shift

eastwards, and who today, on 16th St.,

would be a menace to himself and others,

thus thorazined and forcibly confined.

With such tools is the course of Empire shot.

And all those little paynim nippers who

neglected to be born as French Provincials

may hope a Savior comes to save them, too.

The Pastorale

 

This appeared in Angle. I have altered it slightly since then.

Down by the river the trout are laying bets

Per croquet hoop. They swear like Fielding fish--

Damme this and Bloody that. They're old ones

With cheeks that frogs would eat. Here unafraid,

They list to port and pass it to the left

And praise the neighbors' sheep and curse the day

Electric lights infested county skies.

Crooks, not hooks, still in the adverse flow,

They praise monogamy, but that's a joke

Told when women go the separate way

Appropriate. They do not fear the fly,

A thumb upon their scales, or lemon sauce.

These are the myths told small fry. They are men.

Cherry Blossoms

 

Focus, they say, and Bof'us, someone laughs;

But crocus is what they mean, and inching through

A yard like iron, just before the daffs,

They make a spring. The spring remembers you

Under the cherry, blossoms in your hair

And dress too small to make a handkerchief.

It's you, and you are never ever there.

Some jocund flowers beggar all belief.

Let summer burn them down. Let the sweet grass

Give itself up to desiccate and dirt.

All memories decay, and cherries pass.

Bof'us, they say, and laugh until they hurt.

The ice is melting, all that broken glass

A spring in motion and the past inert.

That Old Black Magic

 

Ants, they may whisper, but they’re hoping for
Something preposterous, something more the size
Of Cincinnati, something which can catch
A mortgage in mid-air and snap its neck.
They may say shadows, even in the dark,
But what they mean are little men with knives,
Carving their names in the venetian blinds,
Altering light. Dressed up they may exude
The confidence of snipers, but they wear
An amulet of frog hair on each wrist,
Boasting that they walked miles to cure DTs.
Under the bed the suitcase is packed, the tag
Tied with a chain cased in a plastic sleeve,
Directing it to To Whom It May Concern.

It Doesn't Scan

 

On the east coast of that unheated isle

A tribe of girls survives whose creed consists

Chiefly of singing Happy Fathers' Day

To someone else's father. No males found,

Which makes their culture something of a glitch.

Essentially they beat their boys and float

Young women out to sea at menstruation.

They mate with wind. We do not understand.

The central islanders claim their descent

From great Odysseus. Their Bronze Age rites

Are pure enough to justify their claim,

They know so many chanties about axe-

Hacked thews of sailors; but they haven’t heard

Of boats, making their worship of wet gods

Ironical and plausible and high

Fun for the Left Coast credit-carding clans

Who hold their wives in common, but who keep

Their cowries to themselves. The wives have heard

Reports of the East Coast; though misinformed,

They yearn to ship their kids to school back there.

Solstice Song

 

1 Angels think of little of consequences

on mornings like this, cold like steel thawing.

Singing chorales so old they sound avant-

us to mortal tympani, they rejoice

all over my clean walk. If snow could sing,

it would sing like this, crooning in low brass.

2 The Wise Men travelled in 3s. Stooges, too,

and Blind Mice. Whereas, the Angels keep watch

in companies, recruit the clergy, old

old women whose grandsons went up in flames,

and pods, squads, prides, and bright congregations.

We are well cared for in our ignorance.

3 You write from the Berkshires that all is well,

your husband having found a new wife, more

than 1/3 his age, and your sleep unmarred

by magic realism. An Angel, dressed

as a weather vane, surmounts your peaked roof

and chortles. Alleluia. All is Clear.

4 Through these white nights we trail crimson roses,

Ariadne's string. The Angels retrieve

them, smell them, watch them fade, flowers bestowed

on cheek and breast, but temporarily.

Our sin was not forever, but will do.

Steel gives way. And snow, caught by the great spruce.

Yo, Muse

 

Either because you're visiting

other, meritless versifiers

or because you’re trapped in a holding

pattern on your quills, I haven’t heard

much from you lately. The lamp’s been on,

my study casement has been unlatched;

but you’ve been off, I guess, teaching gaunt

refugees new names for old sorrows

or at Oxbridge again, haunting quads,

looking for lost honors. The floor’s swept

here, cushions plumped, and the bedskirts tucked

up. Warm milk, thick port, cheesy biscuits,

all are handy, but the oak bookshelves

are warping, and the old bindings crack

in this backwater clime. As for you,

my pretty, what else have I to do

but wait for a slot to open up

in your grey kidskin Life At A Glance?

A Poem for the Girls Writing All Those Poems

 

So you picture yourself

in a cream satin t-shirt

writing a poem about

you writing a poem about

your cream satin t-shirt,

how when he breaks in

on you writing a poem about

writing a poem about

your cream satin t-shirt,

he’ll be so excited

about you so excited

about writing a poem

about him so excited,

he’ll shred the damn t-shirt,

sweep you and your poem

right off your futon

and someone will publish

your poem because it is

true as a t-shirt,

besides which, the paper

is cream, like the t-shirt.

And, smooth as it is,

the poem you’re writing

about writing a poem,

who needs the boy?

Or if he shows up,

while you’re still in your t-shirt,

all cream and all satin,

who needs the poem?

News of the World

 This appeared in Candelabrum.

Mr Paul Riley of Decatur writes

to say strange doings have invested his

quiet suburban neighborhood, Sea Views.

Middle to upper-middle class, he says

Sea Views is, mostly ranch-style homes, two-car

garages, lots of grass, and too few trees.

Mostly professionals, says Mr Riley,

chiropodists and CPAs, their kids

and lives no different than yours, he says—

which doesn't make them good, only familiar.

Well, we say that; to tell the truth, he didn't.

Fourteen police calls in the last two months,

all for the same offense, if that it is:

a misshaped man running across the rooftops

in tarry night, clomping over the shingles,

those blue asbestos ones, heavy of foot,

but featly nonetheless, and leaping far

to span the voids between the houses, too

broad of a space for any man to jump.

Det. Abercrombie says he has

no clues, no evidence, no damage done—

not even a crime exactly, just an upset:

a man, if man he be, where none belongs.

Det. Abercrombie doesn't like them,

anomalies in Sea Views, when the whole

point of a Sea View is to get away

from aberrations, which are doing well

and thriving, thank you, in the bigger city,

if that is what Decatur is, and, no,

Det. Abercrombie didn't say that.

So, if you have some information bearing

on running rooftop gargoyles in the States,

(we'll rain in gold on you for photographs),

call us no charge, 1-800-BIG NEWS.

And, Mr Riley, please, sir, keep in touch.

3. The Lines Are Drawn

 The third of "3 for the Trees"

The line is as if drawn there on the ground,

the trees above, the grass and house below,

as though by nature planned to be a sound

demarcator of how far we should go:

here you may live, here visit, though it's true

our living room expands some every year.

A little firewood, a yule or two,

a few more of the sentries disappear.

The deer, of course, were gone last century,

and now the stove has claimed the elder oak.

Perhaps the odd, covert raccoon can see

the vestige of it going up in smoke.

It isn't that we hate what isn't ours,

and no one here needs to bring in a crop.

It's just the way we tell off ancient powers

who dared advise us where we ought to stop.

2. Finally Today

 The second of "Three for the Trees."

Finally today the trees

shook off their leaves to go it bare.

They'd had enough remembering.

There will be cold, and they prepare,

attentive to the nth degrees,

by shucking off the last of spring.

In brazen shapes of disregard

they rustle and they flinch, but stay.

Their gift is doing what is hard

as well as they do anything.

1. Apple & Oak

 The first of three poems, collectively "Three for the Trees."

The apple trees stay close together, far

as possible from the oak trees which look down

upon those wind-spun blossoms. Though they are

communicants in pollen, though renown

would greet oak/apples, if they only could,

they won't. Unheeding acorns, apples grow

a little sour, while the oaks make wood

from dirt, then slowly leave the dirt below.

They draw no moral, neither leave. They sieve

the same brown air and replicate their kind,

but do not share, they do not change. They give

no sense they have each other much in mind.

What apple does for oak tree is not clear.

From rooms across the way, though, people frame

them in one scene, glad that they stand so near,

one sight, one kind, called by a common name.

The Dead On Arrival

 

The number of the dead in Pasadena

Exceeds the grasp of man. Who would believe

You couldn't fit another body in

Another hole, the green so green, a sponge

Extended to its fullest? And the dead

Continued to arrive. From Ypsilanti,

Louisa, Chillicothe, and Gig Harbor,

The dead, the poor, the affluent, the dead

Came rolling in like breakers, but the shore

Declined their cold attentions. Thank you, no,

The living said, and didn't say much more,

The declinations, courteous, ignored.

So many, light, and losing heft, their last

Ride a return. Where was that ticket home?

The Desuetude of Mr James

 

Wry Mr James commits enormities

Of style with style. This late in life he knows

Embonpoint is a structural device,

The close that makes the man--his buttons need

Jumbo's dexterity to finish off.

He calls his flowers flowers: that's enough

For floribundant similarity;

But caution comes in shades, like purple light

Climbing a red-brick garden wall at dusk;

And he sees every tint, Adamic man

Mounting a stair which knows no period,

Only a pause, a lamp lit at each landing.

Here It Is

 

Here is a list of what I can't remember—

I'm kidding, of course. No, wait. Here is a list.

What time it was. How old I was. Who came

And what she brought. The capital of Chi.

The publication dates of What's-His-Name

And when I hit him. All the horses' men.

Pringles & Funyuns. All the rabbi's girls.

The Queen of Hearts and Blackjack Mulligan.



To few of these have I been reconciled.

I shall not steal your money, and your wife

Is safe if I'm awake. A coral reef,

Teeming with spirits, angelfish and clowns—

Did I see that, or was it someone's book,

Lost in the fires of '71, the last

Post just before the world grew up and left,

The bitter end of something bittersweet? 

Over Land

 

What is the sound of Puget in the fall?

It seems to be an owl who doesn’t show

What or when or why or where. Below

His wings no squeak escapes the wood. The call

Of the meek, the gently terrified, the bland

Seed-swallowers, is wishful in the dark:

That they had never occupied the land,

But joined the doves escaping from the ark

To anywhere. None of the toothsome tots

Asks for a story. Tell me nothing more,

They say. We already have lots and lots

To share. Pray with us to the predator.

The owl is looking at the looming shore

And pivots towards a land of limbs and knots.