Dead of Winter

In dusty apartments reeking of cigarettes --

In vacant lots on ten-degree evenings
when even thought freezes and falls to the ground
to shatter among the broken bottles and feces --

In a parking lot outside a bar like a souvenir
of a heedless bacchanal left behind
for the staff to collect and deposit appropriately --

In nurse-white hospitals that purge their atmospheres
of the life they aspire to prolong --

In a car unaccountably parked on an abandoned pier
in a blighted waterfront district full of big plans
and bigger failures --

In a body buckling under the impossible weight of a snowflake
of the thought that there is nothing more
than this cold, this grey, this frozen bustling
to and fro in an effort to present a moving target.

Single

All love is in great part affliction.
--Marilynne Robinson

Bruised, misshapen, piteous, what an extravagant array of flaws describe those last unselected fruit in an emptying bin among the detritus left behind by those selected, desiccated leaves and stems, crushed and oozing victims of the selection process or of their transit to market slouched weeping in a corner.

Passed over, suggesting only by aggregation in isolated undisturbed curves and stretches of incongruous health their betters now exhausted: skin red almost to bleeding, muscular with preserving their vulnerable perfection, the implication of rich aromatic interiors.

And will a hand pause among the remainder, hovering equivocation, to weigh sustenance against displeasure? Will it grasp, gingerly weighing and squeezing, or opt for another ingredient entirely, abandoning premise and conclusion altogether in favor of a fresh argument?

Self-pity's jaundiced murmuring: You dawdled, came too late, will to your bed hungry; or, Softened and pregnable, unpalatable, you are ill with rough handling.

Or another facile metaphor in waiting, perhaps.

Cresting

At the hilltop emerging from the trees,
the sun like a radioactive lozenge
dispels the illness of shade that lent the climb
an illusory chill. Stomach recoiling
from exertion and heat, legs withering --
who would choose this unlikely occasion
to meditate on the nature of things?

Take a Holiday

The christmas lights pizzicato
in the gas station window
mimic the frantic rhythm
of a Pittsburgh police car's flashers.

The cigarette ads cornered
like fugitives behind the glass
and these words begin to form
around the edges of the fear

that I have no Idea worth this effort
to shape language to reflect it.
A major premise:
All poems must convey something weighty,

something fraught with consequence,
as reflected in the distorting glass
of an Other's conjectured perception;
A minor premise:

The goings on in my mind this evening,
holiday impending, banalities encroaching,
lack gravitas and moment;
Therefore: I have no poem.

[revised, 12/22/2006]

In the Meatpacking District

The day like a thousand steps
and me too anticipation-petrified
to note the strain of each or all;

Imagining you beside me at MoMA
in the next room contemplative
before Magritte while I succumb

to Klee's underembellished portrait
and discover Boccioni for the first time;
Wishing you there beside me

to mark with a knowing glance
the humor of a tourist confident to his friend
that The Persistence of Memory

is Dali's most famous painting
(and promising the existence
of a larger version elsewhere).

At dinner you hide in the shrugs
of friends sick of hearing your name
cross my lips like a profane sacrament.

Later, across a table your angular visage --
overbite inhabiting a cloudy smile --
captures candleflame and dances,

a vindication of our mutual apprehension
three years later -- and not a blue day gone by
without a rumor of rain in your name.

To have given what cannot be reclaimed,
a cloak sewn from what is worthy in me
that i'd forgotten lending.

My spectral companion embodied
and in the flicker and din,
a drag queen belting out show tunes

at the next bar
over cabernet
no candle.

[Untitled]

Capillary and dust
and a third ill-defined notion
bloodlessly vibrant like
a midnight thunderstorm.

Tongue thrust out like a leaf
slapped down by an invisible palm
and wanting, unreleased static
sizzles in its stem.

For a poet of moist particulars,
silica abstraction
yields insipid sophistry
and the taste of burnt wire.

With no on one to decipher
a telegraph in transit,
its caternary undulations
lead inexorably to ground.



[Author's note: The first stanza is always the hardest to substantially revise or cut when it contains the impetus for a poem that has wandered far afield of its promise, such as it is. There's a connection here between those first lines and the rest, which plainly cohere more closely with the first stanza excluded, but I don't know what it is or how to draw it out. As for the title, I want something that spells out S____ O___ S___, but nothing comes to mind. Gah, I've grown lazy even in this.]

Shelter Island

28 August, 2006 (as scrawled on a legal pad by the muted light coming through the windows behind me as I sat on the porch in the rain)

The night is saturated and raw, a rude awakening from summer, but the peach hue reflected against the undersides of the clouds across the bay warms the sky. Runoff drums in the downspouts while baysurf sips at what's left of the beach afoot the seawall, insatiable, its mouth full of salt.

Drifting through the night come the sounds of two boats playing tag in the fog like children of sound cavorting behind parents of light, father first, his searchlight caving the mist in sweeping whorls, fixing the opposite shore for a moment before turning to pin me to the porch moist and still, mother steady in his wake, an emerald perched in her tiara?

As mother and father are eclipsed behind the point, their children still play over the sibilant white caps, which climb over their own backs to surf their bellies, and as their game dissipates higher surf visits the beach like a rumor of their passage.

Beset on all sides by water,
we leap from womb to womb
like sunfish breaking the surfact
to thrill in the gasping
before slicing back into the darkness.

** The photo was taken in 1989 from the top of a dune only slightly down the shore from where I sat when I scribbled the above musing. I remember sliding down it on my belly all the way to the beach as a child. FLICKR has many photos of Shelter Island.

Neighborly, Ritual

I cannot let go the insult
of his quiet celebration
the day of my home inspection
to learn that lily white me
would be moving in and not "colored."

Nevertheless most evenings,
wrestling my bike to the top of the stoop
I greet him warmly --
hand upraised as I fumble with my keys --
with the insipid fare of small talk

cast like a grappling hook
across an ocean
seeking purchase in the spongy ground
of "Good evening,"
and "A long day done."

Flowers on His Pillow

Crystal morning reverie shattered
by thought's banal intercession,
he resumes his body to find
his fingers walking the unfamiliar
landscape of a duvet of another's choosing --
weary prospectors lost in the desert
gasping toward a fantasy of water.

As alone in wakefulness as in sleep;
equally uneasy as audience
to the play of morning and as player
in a murder of dreams;
his Grand Guignol
of contingency and regret
wrought rewrought (and overwrought) by day,
staged in perverse infamy by night --

each morning his fate fulfilled:
a series of awakenings in strange beds:
flowers on his pillow
ashes on his tongue.

father of three

he dreams she
is with triplets

and wonders at
the trebled cliche:

granted she is
no virgin she
shall bear neither
prophets nor prophecy

even thus his
inquiry unassuaged by
this falling into
something like a
cautionary tale yes
an object lesson
yes you are

a dead man

she spits in
his dream in
the kitchen of
a house that
by day belongs
to another woman
of his past

while in rushes
her present --
brothers friends father --
primed to punish

he protests
i would be
hers

them undeterred:
she would not have him
they know and
he knows

she turns away
in the morning
gloaming unapologetic

ineffectual
father of three
lover of no one

overcome

[revised 12:00 P.M.]

Commonplace, Williams

Say I am les an artist
than a spadeworker but one
who has no aversion to taking
his spade to the head
of any who would derrogate
his performance in the craft.

You were kind to be at such
pains with me and -- thanks
for the view.

William Carlos Williams, "The Visit"

Which is to say, feel free to comment on my poems. Then duck.

the most interesting woman in town, a valentine

1.

you borrow from burkard:
the most interesting woman in town
walks slower than the spider.
you don't speak
yet i would speak with you

still

we learn to love
the spider
and her slow walk
to love
the slow walking spider
to love
we are taught.

conversely
we needn't be taught
how loathsome are
the spider's prey;
for their slaughter
for their slaughteress
we give praise.

at my own peril i treasure more
the acquired appreciation
than instinct's imperatives,
fine scotch over chocolate
love over lust.

but you are
neither spider nor prey
nor are you a cat
as you might have it
and as i have said
(in pique but not unkindly)

-- neither
treed nor treeing,
slashing nor crying.

you are too
disembodied
for a cat
whose quintessence
whose catessence
is sheer embodiment,
habitation without remorse
without apology.

(you are neither
problem nor solution.)

you are seraphic,
many-wing'd;
your lofty vantage
(where you mistake
the cold breeze coiling
about your naked ankles
for the onrush of
a spring tide to drown in)
confounds your
terrestrial defiance,
yet there too
you find shadows
to hide your fear.

for me no metaphor
of my own devising:
my imminent me-ness
confounds auto-figuration.

but i needn't live as metaphor
to live by metaphor
or to hold a bird in hand
is a bird in hand is
a bird in hand is no
bird at all.

2.

i squint against
the air you churn
in fluttering consternation
before my fool's grin
marshaling conviction
before darting heavenward

one down-wan feather
twirling to rest on my lip
like an eyelash
that tastes of you:

grenache and syrah
cigarettes and coffee
hello and good-bye . . .

you cut i choose

it's not like yesterday's cake is
all that fresh anyway

but i recoil from the burden
of scoring that line
pressing server to icing
etching the transient
in a parody of permanence

-- intransigently --
i'd as soon freeze a hot shower
with you in it

or you

or me.

so take this implement
this gleaming triangular
medium of transformation
and cleave the sugar smear

-- split the spongy chocolate
like lightning rends air
or scars a treetrunk's crenellations
in pitch and cinder --

and i will choose thusly:

i will measure each portion with my eyes
turning each plate around in my hand
weighing
recalling geometrical formulae
for volume and area

and i will discover
that this task also is odious

apprehensive of choosing poorly
failing to observe some critical distinction
comparing the worth
of a sugar blossom with
the thicker layer of cherry filling

and neglecting all the while to ask
why i should want a bigger slice
than you

or

whether i wanted cake
to begin with.

Invisible the Shining

Morning's door closed
safely against
the night's transgressions,
the shower is sun-washed
and calming after
a fashion.

From my brow cascade rings of
droplets toward a vanishing
point hidden beneath
the sun-quickened enamel of
the bathtub,
constellated elongations like
tears
in swift retreat,
circumscribing the tunnel of
my vision and
bearing away sweat and memory
illuminated from
within
(and sanitized):
incarcerated sunlight older than
its departure
and younger than
I would describe myself
in candid conversation.

Eyes veer equine and foaming
across a porcelain grid
etched in grout and unseen --
I envy
(or perhaps resent
or perhaps there is
no difference)
such orderly delineations --
in pursuit of
a new and unfamiliar
flaw in the vitreous humor, an
indistinct and thus more
troubling
smear attended by
a vermiculate eddy,
a corona to record
some occular insult
or mortification
a metaphor --

occult sun shining
occult sin shining
occult sun shunning
shining

shunning.

In such darkness as
the sun allows
as God allows
his opposite
if He does

I hide

the venous aureole
the venal reminder
invisible
the shining.

Commonplace, W. C. Williams

Good Christ what is
a poet -- if any
exists?

a man
whose words will
bite
their way
home -- being actual

having the form
of motion

-- William Carlos Williams, "The Wind Increases" [my apologies that I cannot seem to duplicate the irregular indentations of this passage's proper formatting -- not for lack of trying]

Sonata

I.

In the brittle chill the brilliant sun
sings in radiation's tongue
of morning and winter.

Unshoveled snow ossified into
undulating perfidious ripples;
feet skitter perilously seeking purchase.

Friendship Park, through salt-stained Plexiglas:
a moonscape of foot-shaped craters
rimed in metamorphic crags,

five thousand crunching footfalls --
five thousand strophes unrequited --
etched on unlined parchment,

score an inchoate symphony,
the crescendi and diminuendi of which
reach skyward then drift.

A child in quilted down,
hatted and scarved and mittened,
chinned down against the wind's lechery,

leans into his passage
like a conductor his orchestra,
studied in his mute adamance,

attuned to his vain endeavor:
to nurse from each note its frigid beauty
to find in a stagger its dance.

II.

Pressed into stoops' sun-lee corners
upset pyramids of ice-rimmed snow
lay neatly in the shape of their shade.

House after house thus adorned
with winter's diamond jewelry,
their recessed pointing limn their beauty

like symmetrical grooves a grande dame's visage
against the glow of her glistening eyes,
her gown's shimmering lyric,

the caternary elegance
of pearls to flatter
its plunging decolletage:

curves implicit in curves
complicit in curves dancing circles
around Euclidian formality.

III.

In chaos a suggestion of order,
in winter a whisper of spring.

[1/28/05, 11:08 AM (as Wave Equations) - 1/29/05, 7:11 PM]

Checking In

Work sneaks up on me, gets impossibly close undetected, then a floorboard creaks or a nearly imperceptible draft of lungwarm air raises the down on the nape of my neck, and I turn, startled. It will not be denied. I haven't the time to post as I'd like to just now, but I'm congenitally incapable of not looking around from time to time. Accordingly, I bring you this morning's find, like my cat brings me her fake mice while I sleep, and set it on the floor at the foot of your bed:

sometimes in weird nightmares the shadow just wants to
chase not catch you
the dark wants to scare not kill you
evil wants to play not eat you
and girls want to sex not love you

I like that. It's nice. I enjoy tonypierce a lot, even if i can't quite imagine ever reading his book: somehow, the idea of being told "How to Blog" takes the fun out of it.

[revised, 12/29/06]

PAT Still Life #2 (501)

-- wide brown eyes like touch transubstantiated,
a finger tangential across a sandy chin
sliding credulously down an overcoat lapel;
brown hair color of fall,
an autumn cataract over a plastic ledge
blue like electricity --
where is the neck? the ears?
they hide but lurk predatory like memory --

-- youth's frivolity on stage
trading ringtones and gossip in voices umodulated,
an ostentatious display of indifference
to the high school refugees
whose memories falter, failing
to recall childhood's cadence,
its contrapuntal march from the old(er),
a colloquy of studied slouches and sighs --

-- unfolding herself from her seat
a jacknife opening to its task
eyes returning home up lapel over chin
and away forward leaving a wake
of glowing warmth in a rippling V --
all in tan like Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
(Stevens' verse circling in rehearsal
for the lap it will turn all evening having now begun)
hair swinging like an earthquake
and a parting glance like a prod of inscrutable origin
or intent --

-- the teens giggle and mock and maunder gum popping
while minutiae aggregate and gather
to spill out on this page --

[revised, 1/27/05, 12:25PM]

Morning, Snow

Isolation's ache incipient,
a million shades of white murmur and shift
outside where gingerbread cars shush by
and a simple machine grumbles and coughs.
Warm and alone inside this is a day
to drift in and out of sleep, to daydream discretely,
to find succor in solitude (or suffer in silence).

Alone with my imaginings
like friends forgotten but forgiving
the day ticks forth as the quiet accumulates,
drifting in the corners
tickling my cheekbones and nose.
A head shake sends a cloud of soundlessness
cascading to my shoulders, to the floor,
where a draft whisks it around my feet
this desk in furling eddies.

A gust of wind loosens and lifts the hush
in whiskers and whorls of white
until inside and outside merge
and I stand naked and snowblind in an endless field
dressed in alabaster.

If you run, I will follow.

PAT Still Life #1 (54C)

Old-man breath of hops and doom swirls.

Charon, peroxide blonde, implores a coltish teen to clear a bench;
she complies, the diffident surrender of youth's sunset
deferred by freedom pledged but undelivered,
clumsy knocking limbs and tangled clothing knots,
two steps across the aisle to another seat
where pride stiffens her posture.

Sighing, the bus stoops to embark its fare,
a short mustachioed man manacled at the forearms
shambling aboard surrendering coin sheepishly
slumping against the vacant seat
crutches dangling and clatter to an uneasy rest
on the floor slanting askew in our box of light.

Colt's skin too fair for the cold,
eyes too big for their sockets
too pretty for the world
(held in by no more than lumped eyeliner
inexpertly applied),
legs too long to fold,
grudging innocence unbetrayed
by a gleaming septum ring;
she locks eyes with her twin in the opposite window
and feigns blindness, autohypnosis.

Beer Breath cattle grunts and presses his knee to mine;
I shift and watch the night in warped miniature
unfold through the thick of his bifocals and the windshield's thin.

The chime, a shorter girl presses forward
thin lips wildflower pretty,
body awkward in jeans less snug than the mode,
bookbag like a field stone slung low on her back;
leaning forward like a mule to the yoke
she enters the night.

[revised, 1/19/05, 11:59 PM]