ALL RESPONSES |
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the river is nearly more empty
than my gas gauge is always
skeleton catfish swim
with backs cresting silty water, their
brown spines, the color of
sullied tides of virgin cirrus
by summertime the billowed sky
will feel like potroleum
and clouds will be
apricot jelly on toast upside-down
the milky day-napped sun
will always set,
seeming now to sit hours
complacent in the undefined horizon
as an uncle's rotund belly cascading over
the grains in dinner tables
while roads extend into
the next vapid stream
the redolent mists of gas
begotten in the loss of memories
and
soul. |
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A mind that will not move is dead. Art
that does not speak never lived. Words
that fly through balance, and the wretched
limits of science, make deals with suicide.
A soft-spoken shadow hangs on a hook,
a trade for one last sensual experience.
What we live for, is water, to swim in,
to drink. But what makes us reach, we
rarely have or know. A drug. A feeling.
An experience that throws all others
into shade, an entire life into small boxes
in windows, wrapped in memoirs. What
was once love, is comfort, and what was
comfort, salt herring for the voyage. |
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there are certain times
when i look at my eldest
son, he of mother face,
infrequent tears containing
her DNA, her same salt
his quiet man becoming
voice deeply imprinted
and think to myself:
there must be some
explicit reason for me
to know why my own
father will soon collapse
in a heap of ashes--
how long will it take
before this reason, rising
from curt shadows like
a policeman of time
stands in my hallway,
soft calling my name,
waiting with a whistle
with me
doing
my best
to ignore him
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years have passed--almost 50--
now and still you look back to see,
not really expecting anything
different things look amazingly
similar, besides, no one knows
if you had a wrong number or
a bus ride without paying or laid
Shelly on a golf course at midnight
when you were sixteen she didn’t mind
the “out of bounds-loss of two strokes”
sign had been blown over the night before,
at least she said she didn’t
and there are all these choices when
looking back: who to kill, when to kill,
who not to kill
you even need to see behind
the pictures: who took them, who’s in them
when you’re not
people to forget, people
you didn’t like more beer than Carter’s
got liver pills--one of mother’s old sayings
see what one can see by looking back over
one’s shoulder--in the mirror--under the rug
waiting for the pain to move so long
you finally notice huge chunks of your life
are missing so you make up what’s gone
or you can’t remember the rest years have
passed--almost 50--now and there’s been
vanity wars and ghosts and Sinatra died
but looking back you can see in your heart
you are still free--
but it’s so, so secret you can’t tell anyone
--except in a poem |
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She gave us a ride back to the hostel
In her pea green Skoda
Telling us about her
French boyfriend and how he
smuggled records and chocolate
in for her. But French boyfriends are
best in France, she said, laughing.
The cobble stoned street made the car bounce
A tin can propelled by the wind,
made us laugh even more.
It was late, no other cars on the road
and we were all drunk. Full of French wine
and kucken. Her apartment was light and airy,
sophisticated and sleek, like her. Her friends dark
and amusing. She was a translator for the East German
government. She loved being paid to listen. Paid to talk.
Why would I want to leave? She asked
when I have the best of everything here?
Even the best poets are buried here.
Didn’t she want to live in France? With the boyfriend?
No. Never, she said. He is so happy to see me
when he comes to visit. He adores me.
I am a trapped, rare and beautiful, bird.
He does not want to set me free. Nor do I want to be.
It was raining, gently, and now she slowed the car.
Rolled down her window and asked the young police officer
on the corner if he wanted a ride somewhere. He climbed
in the back seat with me.
Julia, she said, tell him about French boyfriends. Tell him
about where you come from. She’s crazy, I thought.
In East Berlin when we told people we were American
they turned and walked away, faces white as if they’d seen
a ghost or were about to become one.
He smiled at me. He was young and handsome
his power sat straight like his teeth, gleaming.
He wanted me to say something French, wanted me
to tease him.
In a week, on our way to Munich our train would be searched.
We’d stand by the side of the tracks for over an hour
as the police moved every seat, opened every rucksack.
The dark of night, in a field of stubble and mud.
Our passports taken from us, grudgingly returned.
I tried to picture him then, this young sweet man
who wanted to flirt. Instead I saw guns and night sticks.
Goose-stepping men who wanted to find someone
and beat them because they could.
It was late then too. Almost morning, raining softly.
Clouds lit from below. No birds, trapped or otherwise.
Full of sounds only night can bring.
All my dreams have trains in them.
Not all of them make it to their destination.
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Prosit!
What’s missing in this tomb is a microphone.
To amplify the screech of bed lids rising,
and two old poets’ whispered questions,
"Kennst du das Land?"
"...wo kein Hauch mehr weht,"
banquet speech on the bier and on lives
lived well in comparison to the afterlife.
An ode to the Stammtisch is in order! Prosit!
Let us drink to the unreachable for these masters--
seventh heaven beer and wine and the music
of the living, shaking off a tomb’s silence
and the caskets’ plain appearance which
intones death's cold democratization.
*From Goethe’s “Mignon” and Schiller’s “The Hugeness of the World:”
“Do you know the country?” “...where breath stirs no longer,”
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Germany lay to bed their greatest poets,
Goethe and Schiller, side by side
brothers on display.
Angels of words,
they dared to imprint history.
Shadows made of thunder
boxed in wooden chrysalis.
Generations have stood in this very room,
eager just to be near and
inhale decay of their greatness.
Go ahead, stroke the lids.
They’re ready to gift you talent.
You too, could learn to
dip love in ink and drive quill across page,
changing the world with words.
Others like you, have done so
having since created masterpieces.
Come on, give it a little touch.
Sell your soul.
It’s always been this way,
hang around genius long enough
it’ll rub off on you.
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Beneath piles
Of love’s laundry
The she-poet
Versed in healing touch
Measured in beauty
Straining to rhyme couplets
Lays down
Compost
In the celebrated garden of genius
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In spring, azaleas cover the city.
Have you ever forgotten who you were?
Have you ever tried?
The white house with the garden. The dark wood of the study
and shelves of books in blue and red. Vines climbing up the sides of the house.
Music on vinyl. The record player was furniture. There were books. There was black and white TV.
The Lone Ranger danced to the William Tell Overture by Rossini. The NBC Nightly News was sung to the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
A child ran in circles, dancing with Beethoven. |
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the grave digger comes away
from his last shovel, observing
dying leaves of wilted oaks
shadowed like black construction
paper hanging in a night mirror
the earth too cold
to touch
the trees are from another century,
heaven’s stencils on each head
stone, moss wet
(they remain unmoved
by presence
etched names, both thick & thin
strokes: "beloved husband, willful wife"
are permanent reminders of our contrast
as with most nights, the grave digger
leaves the cold as hard stars roll by
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Oh those elongated timelines
Flattening our hearts and waves
Reducing everything to
cosmic permutations of
the zero
More than ones.
Infinite space meet infinite
emptiness.
And boxes filled with people
whose lives were spent filling
empty people with something more
than emptiness but who still get
dumped out at the end
Into dustbins great and small,
Who pray the eyes of heaven
Aren't so remote to ignore
even the passing of lowly dustmites
But kind enough to look aside
When the tiniest motes plot revolt
Against the seemingly absent
Like all good children
with mouths and eyes |
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