Antiquity
Page 2
2
Out at the Mall
after Martial
She waltzes by
as if we’d never met
but that smirk
her new petit ami
shoots my way tells all
Braggart with that
sharp haircut!
I thought I’d caught
the difficult catch seduced
the unseduceable
But the joke’s on him!
I know how that hair
will grow back
once she’s through
Ever seen stubble
return from the axe?
Listen Up Medusa
Seduced by your statuesque
hourglassivity the oracles
are all correct we’d fail
even as tresses to exist
and this icy innuendo
where blades come whetted
daily for our splattered
scales scalding light
welling in the cold
as the next of those perky
paladins approaches
mirror-toting
as we’ve been told
he may Watch as we act
on our own for once
It’ll really fuck everyone if?
when? reclaiming our limbs
serpentine prelapsarian
we just get up and storm
right out of myth
Riposte to Ode
It isn’t like that Horace Life stresses us out
However many hundreds of decades later we’re told
to welcome anxiety is beneficial
and to quote honor our imperfections
You’ve got the Adriatic Sea We’ve got what
the Finger Lakes? Not quite as conducive
to worrying the infinite question so we worry
about other things equities statistics
I’m not really a wine man either
not in the unmixed sense where Alcibiades
might barge in any moment and out-naked us all
I’m an American so I prefer pig iron
Wildflowers abound somewhere I’m sure
I don’t know anything about flowers though
Few of us in the cities follow them
the way you seem to as if tracking currencies
But to speak to your point about an actual
battlefront approaching Main Street who knows?
Maybe we would resort to hookers and crack
per your suggestion I can’t say Horace I wish I could
Personal Narrative
I’ll probably die having worried too much about morals
The ocean harms the moon and the moon
harms us it’s a simple narrative
Except for the way forgiveness evaporates
once so fleshy and red and eager to please
it evaporates into molecules into families
Then again I rarely agonize over the ocean
possibly dying while it brushes my toes in search of afterlife
as if I were its god
Broken Home
The Buddhas of every religion
once rapidly lost
interest
Clouds like mud crowded over the driveway
where dark nightgowns
ignited
The family already burned down
swims instead
with mastadons
Endurance
after Giotto’s Miracle of the Spring
Whether the palette
was muted by time or intent
cleft indigo pale escarpment
deep plum the horse’s coat
and the robes at the rock where the fountain unfurls
in a trickle of silk
One turns to chastise
one gestures back
toward somber blossoms nicked oak
what are these minerals
our minds are made of?
Oh and the idiot to my left
who forgot the water
is he really divine as I am?
ache at the kidneys
and light slate straining still
beneath the gloss and the yolk . . .
Frame
after Kandinsky
Out of whose first-person
slopes emerge points of light
left on in a high-rise
junk of fog human contours
the profile of a face receding into
any given number of minds
Out of whose melon-
blue hill past telephone poles
cilia wires extending
unattached as the eye
glosses from cloud
to unaffiliated cloud
black with blurred edges
each limb gangly
as in the cusp of prepubescence
Out of whose colors
fusing colors some total
organism slips
toward bewilderment
of multiple vanishing points
and opens itself
finite now milky clear
to the moon’s membrane
starch-white actually egoless
Phenomenon
A goldfish glides toward me
pond water cool against our presences
and sunlight glancing the pearls
Upon approach its mouth disappears
just pops right off the goldfish’s face
so the fins glide forward
more as a passive symbol
Sadness wisdom dejection
of course have nothing to offer
The other fish retain
only their own interests at heart
as the water holds its placid poise
Nothing happens still nothing happens
Sand flares up from the floor
to skirt our rawish motions
while the oblivious tail
flitters on a cold reminder
More and more doubt fills the water
Restoration
What can we live off if not little data?
overseas news? news from the mountains?
What can we look at
perceiving no lack of deep space relay?
the steeple’s black entablature?
gas-lamped air among the greens?
Far into the field of unbelievers
the mulch and the mill and
oh here’s someone who reads
so we gather around the central pole
updates drifting like honeysuckle
over the trade winds and listen
to the bouzouki’s local melodies
intimations of miracles voices like batteries
and fall back on a future where the price
of wheat is again skyrocketing
Unjustified Mood on a Monday Evening
If in the stillness
of lamp or carpet
Corsica for example
Napoleon off
at boarding school
his parents in
evening mauve
strolling their favorite
esplanade poplar leaves
flapping like flags
from greenish
balconies in Monet
3
Ruins
A man picks up a piece of flint in 1982
at home on his seaside patch of grass
Though the earth still sits in darkness
it is spring and there are turnips
How can your temple lie scattered in ruins
before it has even been built? the man demands of Jupiter
loafing on the green run where cows graze
Hold on the god responds lifting his left
headphone slightly In a few years
clouds will hardly dare to pass Gold inscriptions
will flare in the sun archways everywhere
plinths inner sancta neglected statues
eyes glowing and robes painted red
All this without fire the man
snaps back which you insist on withholding
Some pillars still reach the height
of five or six drums marble with even fluting
but most have dwindled to one or two
maybe some portico chalk white bitten by ages
The man is sure he remembers fire
that first escalation of feeling
later so controlled maybe the size of a finger
Torches ringed the highest rows
where Carl Lewis broke ten seconds
and the Dream Team posed for Wheaties
over gladiator-littered water
riots still smoldering in streets
everyone had thought forgotten
Yes he’s sure he remembers
though maybe that naked
spiky-haired creature beside him
twisting and untwisting
his triceps tattoos simply to pass the time
plunged the images into his brain
The earth sits in darkness
The man chews his turnips flicks away leaves
It is spring Jupiter has gotten up
and slumped off toward the breeze
flowing over the dry ground
that held his temple once The man
senses his presence in the whitecaps below
that tempered indifference
scorching his forearms the back of his neck
There will be fire soon Bibles
glass displays of caryatid fragments
long stretches of empty highway
Modern Sensibility
Everyone here
is dying to
arrive at some
gravely original
take on things
every image every
idea shifts
and contorts
all out of breath
while along
the edge of the
lake for decades
those remaining
sit and discuss
the reflections
East
Blemishes on the loop of the river
I had to drop him
Life or death
for me I saved myself
Everything happened
in less than ten minutes
Cracking and splitting
roots squirming
black mist in front of the wave
I could see no water
flying boards broken tracks
a freight car over my head
No lights and no people
sky red to the east
a hole in the roof or the wall
I never knew which
A small white house
went sailing by
on yellow water
The lake broke
then formed again
miles from its original place
the town shaved down to rock
We cannot seek out
a single soul
the world floats on water
boat of the moon
gliding across its underground ocean
I saw it coming
a commotion among timber
messages going out
since early morning
I saved them all except one
Wall of water the color of coffee
black care riding behind
and punishment the imagined effect
Porches torn loose To flee or endure
Boards bursting open
dead horses
pitched into air
Cut loose all ties fate of the valley
decided by signs
sand stuck to clay
and vessels of glass
Illness grips us
by our soul
A man washes
in through the window
then sinks back out of sight
We must get away
from this love of crowds
Clasped hands folding
into the underworld
as the valley divides
The last of our houses
disappears to the tide
Many die willingly
Bury us with necklaces
copper ears and gold flowers
Nourish us only with dust
We have lived enough Let us not fail
in the full of our flesh
suffering comes as profit
Baskets of dirt offerings of flowers
bliss in another life
by torment in this
The simplest boats
begin to appear
along the river
planks and torn-out ties
trees shrugging over the current
I gouged the air
and told them to run
They just let me pass by
bodies already
pounding into the mud
No statistics
for anyone to go on
impossible even
to tell what sex
Black waist black collar
black dress shoes
Estimates everywhere by night
Wallowing in dead water
beside the hotel
or floating atop their own attics
people begin to think
about where they might be buried
Gold earrings animal entrails
God said God said God said
Many flee toward the green hills
too sacred to demolish
with their luminous slopes
and offerings of blossoms
Hundreds without shoes
churn tooth and nail
straining to understand
Voluptuous life
receivers of luxuries
once lulled to sleep by pleasure
Let me shiver in the dark
with this child’s toy
a lion on wheels
found bobbing around
by the roof of the tannery
Homes of brick
where families sleep on summer nights
God came carrying a saw
Wading among shingles
till the mountain advanced
they understand
instantly
Steeples stick out of the water
as pansies float by
and ducks sport about
in place of the street
Examining the future by entrails
hands clasped
against the dark
Though luxury though idleness
the greater part remains
having yet touched nothing
I had to drop him
A man back East
recognized me
Villa View Drive
Cold house hung with dark grapes
whose manicured acres
sense I’m a source of displeasure
Bright mornings live orchids
my father from before profound
with possibility or my father
from when I was twelve
or when I was dead gather in the den
where the stakes of consciousness
have finally relaxed Over and over
I disappoint a pollution upon
the rooms full of pianos
Lingering under the creak of the beams
where I can see him and he can see me
my father and I inhabit the vents
jangle the oxygen disappear
around staircase corners
enacting along undisciplined time
all the hostilities we believe
the spirits before us performed
Dad I can see you son you too
Hallways pool up at our feet If you want
something from me if you want . . .
Or maybe just this will strike fear in your heart
West
Each of us seems convinced he is the sole member of the family running home from t
he battle at Marathon bearing good news We have fought bravely and survived and are now fully aware of the irony that the long sprint back will kill us We ask from the outset Are those we’re running to tell really worth the trouble? and How come they weren’t out there with us fighting alongside? So we make a pact with ourselves that this time around we won’t die Or if we die we won’t reveal that we stopped a few times along the way strayed from the legend walked a little to catch our breath We won’t reveal even catching our breath wasn’t enough in the end that we gave ourselves over and savored the sight of olive leaves in the hills the smell of marshes behind us the mist in the laurels at dusk still throbbing with victory