a silver scepter in his white knuckled grip.
Front right: the hooded friar, hands freshly washed,
silently fingering his cross.
Front left: the clean shaven, three-piece double vested
executive distractedly clutching his blackened briefcase.
Down center: the barefooted, the twinkling eyes.
The accused.
For truth is one and one is truth
and so the youth are corrupted.
We must, Yes we must, cleanse this thinking for
this is the greatest nation the Earth has ever seen.
You are freely given your choice, Socrates:
Death,
Death,
Or Death.
We cried and we groveled, oh dear one, don’t choose
death,
and we stood crushed
as he glided, twittered and sang,
trying to explain
till the sun reached the rim of the horizon.
Then he slowly brought the cup to his lips,
smiled,
and all watched as the sun rose brilliantly
in his eyes,
And the three accusers crept back to their temples.
This too is a something poem
Like the quanti-colored seeing
Through a fly’s eye,
The multi-glassed mirror
Of a fly’s mind,
A sensible knowing
Before absurdity takes
Whatever’s fair, foul, enamored of perfection
Must fail-
Sensibilities are ringed
In rings of absurdities,
Plethoras of pretty little poses
Preparing us for death.
Perspective is quite peculiar,
Whatever we think or do
Changes our circle of knowing –
Absurdity fills in the differences
As I am changed by you.
Her mother’s face fallen like stunted groves,
Once full now timbered devastation,
Belies her grief, an encompassing globe,
Denied the green love of forest station;
For memories lie singular, like the soul wound
Of lost species, trapped in her boy’s wooden tomb.
He’s riding the ism rails
He’s a riding the ism rails,
dialectical iron constraints,
contracting through vast plains of politics,
religious icons, tyrants and dictators
blurring by his window seat to the world.
Ahead, the first class supper car breathes
of twice cooked repast from a previous age.
The engine steams over a groaning of bedrock ,
and soil and bones.
Looking ahead, straining
against the glass, pressing to see
still further,
he sees the two-fold linear
track of mind
converge on the horizon;
end of the line
realism,
vanishing point
perspective.
Loved One
White walls with nameless magazines saying countless nothings.
You turn to the next page.
An intercom crackles and you gaze and wonder as a
white-coated medicine man bustles by with a
note-filled clipboard.
Sterilization burns your nostrils.
An obscure flash of white steps into your view.
The blood pulsates on the back of your neck and
your tongue sticks dryly in your throat.
She beckons.
You follow with an unintelligible nod and
pursue the quick-paced heels as they click
sharply on the square-tiled floor.
You stumble after her trying to catch up but
can never quite manage, when abruptly
she stops. You are there.
You hesitate,
take a deep breath and enter blindly into
the grim gaping mouth in front of you.
Tubes.
Tubes fill your vision.
Coiled tubes alive with liquid life, they curl
and rear in every direction.
Upon a raised platform lies a silent figure about
whom these tubes bury themselves…
Deep.
Deep into the nostrils, the throat, the chest,
they look as if they twist throughout that
configuration lying there.
A bustle and you are guided with a gentle yet firm
hand (that is neither warm nor cold) to the center
of the room.
You look into the silent figure’s face and your eyes feel
oh so tired yet it is only a little past three.
You stiffen and again focus your eyes on the face.
Your mind longs to reach out and touch
that pasty, grim visage but your hands lie frozen.
A second has passed and the bustle of white leads
you to the door with the same coldless,
warmless grip.
You are powerless to resist and move automatically.
The closing of an electric door.
Dusty gray jacket
And drizzling dawn
Start the rumbling tractor
And low of dull knowing
And waiting
In their fettered stalls.
Feet stamp and echo,
The harness connected to the head,
The engine steams
In the morning muck
Roars and approaches the shed.
The harness is slipped on the tractor
In its deadly game
Of tug of war,
Where both know the game is staged,
Both know their appointed parts,
And it is the man who lowers
His eyes first,
As the churning tractor
Pulls the struggling cow
Onto the muddy field
And into the rising dawn.
The head is raised,
The straining force
Lifted off her front feet;
She tip toes in a death dance
On choking, wobbling hind feet.
The eyes wild and wide
Stare unclosing,
Nostrils flare,
The gun is cocked,
The barrel raised,
A sudden blast
Shocks the body
In one great, slow,
Rippling wave,
Then after shocks
As the bullet passes through bone
To soft gray.
“She’s only stunned,” he says,
“so she won’t feel any pain.”
The throat is cut,
Urine and shit stream out
In a sudden release,
The blood is caught
in a silver tinkling of pans,
the body strains and pulses,
a thin strand
of flesh and bone
the only connecting
of body and head.
The eyes glaze
Then slowly dull
In the growing light.
The man looks at the boy
And laughs. Smiling,
He says something the boy
Doesn’t quite understand;
Something about life on the farm,
Or maybe the meaning of life.
Part Four
Blue jay framed
On aspen trunk
Rusted oak bough
Drifts to sleeping ground
Blue sky chicory
Folds at end of day
Gnarled arm oak
With raucous crow call.
On a visit from a friend
Although I did not tell you,
I kept the towel you used
long past
wash day
and every day I would dry
my hair, my face, my chest
and linger with your smell
my eyes not seeing
only feeling you:
smile, quick eyed laughter
friendsome touches.
And though the fragrance of we
is slowly fading,
still in silence
I sense your essence
and wish
you were here with me.
I lift my hand
From your moist embrace
Head dizzied thick
With the smell of love
Lips brushing cheek
In a tickle of peace
Lips tremble weak
In caress of love
Sweet murmuring face
Soft downed belly
Hands in the hair
Embrace
Embrace
Embrace
Silk thin skins
Rippling
Joining
Merging
Swells of passion waves
Twining
Peace
In passion
Gaining
The voices of little children leaves
Trip and trickle across the ground,
Scamper and skip with delight
As the busy mother wind
Bustles her children along
To a cool damp winter’s sleep;
She breathes and sighs in gusts
With an ancient sadness and grief-
She knows she will never see
These little laughing feet
In their summer’s growth again-
And though she knows
Death is but a beginning
And all life weaves itself
Into her pattern of now, yesterday and eternity,
There is no solace in the sighing time,
No end to grief in the dying time,
In the deep of a cool damp winter’s sleep.
The Rest Of It
His voice, with longing, cracked the silence;
He listened, then kneeled with a bowing sigh,
His echo to emptiness but numbed defiance,
Long now it seemed since he expected reply.
For years by these blue, sun tipped glittering waves,
By these myriad greens of its tangled shore,
Some free will communion was all he craved,
Yet still his mind filtered, fragmented and tore,
“Enough, enough! There is nothing here,
no origin, no co-creative cry,
all these labors wasted in a blind fear
or hope of some nature god before I die.”
And death it seemed, his mind suddenly silent,
Till he heard sharp clatter, heavy heaving flank,
A snorting warning, mad dash, then sudden quiet;
The immenseness crumpled him on the bank;
For the first time he saw a grain of sand,
Pure holy water beyond any demeaning;
Himself no more than imposing demands,
While life was singing, a choir full of meaning.
Poised my heart lifted
like the prayerful step of a heron
my tethered soul pulling against the shore
I smell crushed mint
see fresh velvet scraped
on the bare branches of elderberry
and I long for the curves of your arms
like an otter twisting
under the covers of our bed
tumbling,
diving like swallows
over the river
at last light
Like the gulls which are born to flight,
We are born to love—
Easy, freely, in harmony,
Yet, we fear the faithful giving;
Of being eaten by the uneven,
Our flesh being torn from our being,
And it being torn, being all.
Now for almost always
until again today
snuggling her
ducking
under down
covers kisses
forever and again
and always
at night
walking wet
pavement
through
rings of
deserted street
light
I miss you already
and I fear the unknowing
like a faulty gas gauge
your head nodding up and down
as you nap on uncertain roads
dark trees crowding the embankment
These poems are for the lovers
Not for the poets to see
And pick apart – discerning
Fingers probing for art
In this part of a part,
Because beyond them are the lovers
Who feel or not that this is their poem:
The whole which is for seething lovers,
The parts for sermonizing poets.
I write naïve passions my soul to save
Full low with mutterings forlorn and grave.
None should read this but for painstaking fame,
Some ethereal substance beyond men’s blame
And praise, some heart easing passion and much
Cerebral pain. So be it, but to touch
The garments of those whose wheels turn with truth,
To recover old age with spiritual youth.
Mark me, Grammarians! Stilted seem I?
Then read me not, I do not yet deny.
You Diggers, stand your ground; no more shall I be
But humble as soil, I shall conceive.
Part Five
While Journeying With Red Cross Knight
From under Lucifera’s gilded gate,
He seeks with an ever increasing haste
The key unlocking his black widowed fate
With stinging prodding pride. “Wither now, chaste
Lad?” Pride says in sighing from its cased
Vault. “Look here! Fathers upon fathers lie
All mute, their fearful flesh to oily paste
Pressed, yet on and on your weary bones fly.
Do you not know their fate is thine? To lie
Such toilsome task is not unmeet, for thou must die.”
to professor _ in english 215
Mock on, mock on in two fifteen,
Do you not know that you have been
But we must be? “but what,” I cried,
“content with nothing and with nothing pleased
till self and pain to gentle grave are eased?
Is there no shore for raging tide
Or age as sight for youth diseased and blind?
Has he not taught and I not learned in kind
That to live is to love, truth’s realm abide:
Man’s greatest works receive, her vile despise,
E’er with good humor and sense realize?
For he but breaks and batters buttressed pride
And thus shall never die some mere muted sound,
But in his pupils beating breasts astound and resound.”
When in rhymes beyond time,
I read of loves divine,
Sublime,
Their sweetest breaths
Move me not
Like my imagination pressed
To blessedness
By your working dress
And unmade face
And subtle grace
Of household laughter
Coursing through the day,
For all cry out “Love!”
Love past an ephemeral urge
With passion purged
Till we have become
What the poets yearn
What men have forgot,
And what the gods have learned.
Men Who Run With The Wolves
It’s a dog eat dog world-
; Damn their hoary hides!
Nothing can be taken whole
But needs be rent, torn, wrecked
Before another uses what once was theirs.
You’d think they’d let go-
Lie down gracefully
In their last patch of sun;
But no,
They gnarl and growl
At even the youngest pup,
Just to gnaw their last gristled bone.
They know it’s mine; justly mine.
It’s they who demanded
I smear their hapless blood
Upon my maw,
Their gray beards twitching
Feebly under fangs of destiny.
They desired this blood letting,
And may it speed their
Once proud dreams-
Maybe even now,
In their last consciousness,
They still believe
They run in front of the pack-
A gentler day, graciously
Engraved on their mite-eaten brains,
But now, now
There is something new under the sun;
I lead
And am no trembling maid servant;
The pack follows my destiny,
If I die, the pack dies,
May I be glorified, eternally.
White pine, soft pine
Five-needled gentleness
Against the blue of an autumn sky;
These once ancient giants
Of a virgin wilderness
Have regrown to a mere post adolescence
And still are felled
To build more houses
Or sheared off the land
Like an unwanted growth
For a “better, pre-fabricated,
Corporate consumer” lawn.
My pine –
A six inch twig in dirt
Given to me in the first grade;
I don’t know how it survived
Much less endured the uprootings
And sandy soil of its youth,
Yet, there it stands
A little pine amidst pines
In a tiny wooded spot
Intersected by homes;
For twenty-two years it’s been growing
In that shaded overgrowth
And still my thumb and forefinger
Can still touch as I curve
My hand around its smooth gray skin;
It’s been a crowded time,
Both our lives stunted
In tightened rings of waiting
For openings to the sun.
We didn’t anticipate the powerlines.
The tree will need to be severely pruned.
But I guess nothing can be totally natural now,
There’s always some want in human kind –
Hardly ever need – so that wild nature is sacrificed and killed
Mutilated for useless products,
Torn limb from bleeding limb,
The natural world, my tree,
My natural being stunted and trimmed,
Pruned in the name of a growing “civilized” society.
It’s too deeply rooted –
To transplant her now would mean her death.
The Unpublishables Page 2