Random Acts of Poetry

"Venus"

She stands alone,
her bare
feet reflected
in a dark pool
of polished stone.

Her hair,
untied for the night
from its impossible weave,
promises a shower
of pale spirals

from her Circe head,
while a drapery
of gauze
defines her
narcotic form

till I startle awake.
The air is hot.
Men would melt
in her killing embrace.
Acid vapors cloud her eyes.

And even as her star
rises in east,
bedecking the sky
with a crystal tear,
she burns and whispers a lie.

Random Acts of Poetry

Improvisation

We, man and woman,
decided last evening
to impersonate dark trees.

Our elbows
were the crooks of branches.
Our feet disappeared in the dirt.

My thoughts hardened
to wood. You hardly breathed for fear
of roosting nightbirds.

We went too far in the forest.
By morning our fingers
scratched at the sky.

To the whack of an ax
we drank our warm rain,
mindless and mum to the root.

Random Acts of Poetry

January A.M.

The sticks are broken, the coals have faded.
Smoke offers speculation. Your mirror shivers,

and the moon squanders its silver.
A tilted house is sleeping.

You rehearse the passions of Thursday.
The sharp lines of glass--

instants, appetites, lessons
revolve in the cobalt. Everything

fragments to jazz, futile words,
a pack of dogs chasing their tails.

An onion unpeeling its burdens.
You remember

blurred photos, three siblings, the old Chevrolet.
Lost books, days of inertia.

Now pencil light sketches an horizon.
Pigeons complain

on the frosted sill. The stale roar of traffic
builds its illusion of normalcy,

the radiators tick and exhale
a warm assertion of morning.

Random Acts of Poetry

I received an unexpected gift today: a poetic piece of non-sequitur spam in my email.

~~~

A heaven, yet unseen.
From where he stood to preach and pressed a path

We have learned its lessons in life, and learned from our experiences;
Shells for guns in Flanders! Feed the guns!
(Children in boxes at a play

Pinched up the atom hills and plains)
THE OLDEST SONG

~~~

It makes weird pictures in my mind. And yes, nonsense probably is "the oldest song".

Random Acts of Poetry

Scatterbrain

Tending to imagine,
at the post office, even,
he made a white dove
out of an envelope.

At home, the walnut mother
sat calmly in her bowl,
happy among framed pictures
until night fell.

His wringing hands
roiled the clouds,
made weather wetter
for chessboard royalty.

Nine-o'clock black
was the nothing of space,
or an empty mind
long erased by age.

Dropped matchsticks
formed broken crosses,
stick-figure portraits
of starving saints.

Later, he turned pages,
touched dead heron wings,
let his insides bleed
a comet tail of words.

Random Acts of Poetry

Break Time

Somewhere above
the arctic circle

stars form
absent faces in a dream.

These are signals, symbols
that come in waves

from an inland ocean,
delightful

as the periodic breezes
of a clouded afternoon

in the summer of the dog.
It's time for a break

at the dance school.
Time for the coffee,

the whiskey,
half an hour of it,

before each coat hanger
takes another spin.

Let's make a joke of structure!
Drop all our mail in the furnace.

So many people today
are made of paper.

No more a threat to us
than a snake in a cage,

than my mother
with her wooden spoon.

Random Acts of Poetry

Time Travelers

Travelers in time constitute incomprehensible questions. Their bead-like eyes see heaps of ashes, a world formed, polished and ignited but always relative. You can see the space between ellipses on their window-shade faces, always less animated than ours, and drained of perplexity. Their eyes may glow with an icy fire, but their mouths hang open like zeros. These wanderers presage a smooth cancellation of all money lust and other bubbling desires; their humanity has been crystallized. Give them a kiss and they will analyze it, turn around that affectionate moment and reject it for lacking exactitude. They see cribs and coffins as emblems of a predetermined rotation -- a paradox to be admired for its supreme inanity.

Random Acts of Poetry

Ode to a Grecian Urn

1.

THOU still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

2.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

3.

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

4.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

5.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

--John Keats

Random Acts of Poetry

Instructions for Thursday

Today you are upside down,
in the dead place,
the sky gray as basalt.

Houses kneel near the edge of the street,
all the doors barred,
windows blank as eyelids.

Grass grows tall and perverse
in the tiny yards,
like your morning hair, unruly scalps.

You follow the sleepwalkers.
They seem to know the way
better than you, underground,

across the river to the factory,
where a black dog
dozes on the threshold.

He has three heads,
three slobbering mouths
full of teeth vicious as knives.

Step over. Take the seat saved for you
in the center of the egg crate.
Close your eyes, palms turned up.

Think about a golden ball
wandering an endless pool table.
Think about a poppy red like fire.

Random Acts of Poetry

Trains

I remember that heartbeat
thud of them

while I turned in my bed.
The endless freight

of Lackawana, the mineral tick
of steel on tracks.

You could not enter
the city of my birth

without smelling the tannery,
respecting

the crossings that brought us all
to a stop.

The noise of the courses
off in the world

was part of that house,
with its model train

in the basement,
with a miniature mind

running in circles
vast in their distance.

Mental Note

I scraped by to break myself recently -- had to live in purgatory under an old stone wall in Devonshire. He who assays the hour of such entrance is a lucky cat, though gray and with a relatively besmirched family observing his table manners at a small lunch. This is a scenario of little consequence in a walled outpost. Here, each boy from the town's whistle-stop recites verbs in the morning, directed by a small concatenation of squirrels. And each morning, that circle of fur requests that llamas join them, to come live with them and join their league, distancing and separating everything from its element. That straight-line, forsaken boy of the Brown's with the worn, upturned collar sees this clearly, but is not taken seriously.

Random Acts of Poetry

Late December

The sticks are broken, the coals have faded.
Smoke offers speculation. Your mirror shivers,

and the moon squanders its silver.
A tilted house is sleeping.

You rehearse the passions of Thursday.
The sharp lines of glass--

instants, appetites, lessons
revolve in the cobalt. Everything

fragments to jazz, futile words,
a pack of dogs chasing their tails.

An onion unpeeling its burdens.
You remember

blurred photos, three siblings, the old Chevrolet.
Lost books, days of inertia.

Now pencil light sketches an horizon.
Pigeons complain

on the frosted sill. The stale roar of traffic
builds its illusion of normalcy,

the radiators tick and exhale
a warm assertion of morning.

Random Acts of Poetry: Saturnalia Sentiments

Exactly 10 years ago (give or take a day or so) I posted this poem I wrote, probably when I was feeling a bit stressed out by it all. I'm not always so "bah, humbug", but I think this expresses one aspect of the holiday.

Fa la la

Red, green, red, green--
your lights nictitate like
arrogant cop cars,

making my eyes throb
as your garlands drip
Yule-shine onto the crust

of this decomposing snow.
All night you're dreaming of
the right Christmas--

gilded Styrofoam,
tinsel and trash beneath a tree
of wires strung like nerves.

Let's admit that you're dying
to get it over with,
the frozen fa-la-la

for that suckling in the cow trough,
who will someday wander
the tepid Israeli hills

in dusty sandals,
knowing nothing
of such nonsense.

(Originally published by Melic Review)

Quote of the Day

Ten years ago today, I posted this:

"Shadows are harshest when there is only one lamp."
--James Richardson

"I think this aphorism refers to our tendency to look at issues from only one point of view ('lamp'). When we open ourselves to other points of view -- even if we end up not agreeing with them -- the shadows may multiply but they also fade. We've let in more 'light.'"

We had a lot of early winter weather that year, if I recall, and I must have been in a philosophical mood. I also composed and posted this haiku:

Winter's leafless trees
Whisper gnarled philosophy
As evening grows near

Random Acts of Poetry

Xmas looms, but I'm "slouching toward Bethlehem". I have no gift ideas. My extended family has decided not to exchange gifts this year. Nobody around here seems too anxious to put the tree up or festoon the front porch. There's too much going on -- on at least three separate tracks -- to even think about egg nog. Not that I'm a Scooge, even if I am tempted to say "bah humbug" under my breath. I still have a list for Santa.

My Xmas List

The drugged buzzing of winter flies
spiraling downward in a dream.

Loons in some Scandinavian night,
the woods full of moose.

An old ship, crossing the ocean,
cold waves slapping steel.

The sky pricked by stars
and exhaling frost.

A blaze of leaves dieing in a bonfire,
salting warm stones with ash.

~~~

Meanwhile....

Ten years ago today I blogged about The Metaverse Excuse-O-Mat, which is still going strong. Because things happen.

Random Acts of Poetry

Jacket

My arms are limp
as seaweed.

My collar encircles
the base of a beehive.

My front opens,
then closes,

admitting a trunk
full of ropes and pulleys,

pipes and an odd
timpani drum.

I hide in a closet,
I hang on a hook

when I'm not
touring the town.

I'm like the peel
of a plantain,

the hurricane globe
that shelters

a slow-burning flame.

Random Acts of Poetry

Apropos of something (Sandy, Sandy, Sandy....), I've decided to foist this bit of verse I wrote (several years ago) upon you. Things are different now.

Sandy Hook (August 2004)

The air is vacuumed clean,
and all misgivings drain

from an uneasy day.
At the end of the street,

past the wild grass's
endless deference to the wind,

waves are polishing
three primal rocks

with ceaseless caresses.
Time might as well stop.

The gigantic iris of the bay
gazes at the hot, absolute sky

with perfect attention,
a hypnotized witness.

Now my footprints disappear,
at the edge of the surf,

no more enduring than foam.
I bend and realize

the shell is broken.
Inhale, exhale.

Random Acts of Poetry

Slippery Season

There is no place for draining.
A solid sky, water licking

dark under sidewalks,
translucent silks of rain,

like sheer drapes convulsing,
but every window shut.

The distant smokestacks
dissolve like an ancestor's

faded reminiscence. Shapes
drift away, vacating dreams.

But from the stony bottom
a face rises, a garnish of seaweed

like a headdress,
more slime from the sluice gate.

What's that the rain hisses?
Ssssh. A slippery season.

Random Acts of Poetry

Behind Shut Lids

I see her old
low hills running,
snake river's
silvered pools,
deep maple shade
under blue blazes.

Then
Sunday in the car,
their plowed furrows
ratcheting,
patches of cows,
a stick barn's tilt.

Then that house,
charcoal mist
of booming clouds;
I can almost
hear the rain hiss,
eaves drip.

I'm safe, dry
among her heavy
glass globules,
tiny worlds,
memory's paperweights.
Then as now.

Random Acts of (Prose) Poetry

Something I wrote a few years ago:

August

The AC breaks down and the house is full of soup, stirred by fans. Sidewalks are hot plates; the car, a teapot. Everybody's all wet. The sun is unforgivable. Hydrants open, and streets become rivers of laughing children. Thunderheads boil up in the distance like Himalayas. Stores and offices feel like Frigidaires, and I wish I could linger. All day I wonder why woolen coats crowd in the closet. Were they ever needed? I sit and drink an ocean of colorful sweetness and don't want to move.

~~~

Meanwhile....

A Six-Word Story Contest. Write a six-word story, and if it's good enough, win $160 -- or a night at the Algonquin Hotel. It will be hard to top Hemingway's original: "for sale: baby shoes, never used."

!dea: words as images. Inflatio,ooo,ooon