Jul 6, 2010 | Free Verse, Poetry |
Should I travel, displace myself from here to there,when I am traveling each and every instant ,scaling peaks in the mountains of time, losingmyself over and over and then returningto someone who is someone else as well as myself? Let Phnom Penh be, and Angkor Wat and China, too,and Sydney and Patagonia and Durban, Chennai,for my journey is here and my garden, mystery,and this sense of traveling while staying in place,is not a commodity, no thing for buying and selling I traveled when I was young, went here and there,before I discovered this voyage in a single placethat is vast beyond my imagining. I find it hardto put down in words how I don’t take myselfliterally but do take myself gently by the hand. I am going where I am going and where I’m goingis here and near and far and I am the only ticketthat I need to get aboard and go abroad in myown environs that I try to paint for my pleasureand discover they and I slip away both...
Nov 15, 2009 | Free Verse, Poetry |
I am more reclusive than I everdreamed that I could be – far more I hide in the burrow of poetrynot because I don’t love the sun but because shadows terrify meespecially my own which seems an abyss into which I could fall without evercoming to the end of my falling it’s a limited life, hiding here in thisso shallow excavation of earth, poetry, but it’s the best I have been able to doI’m aware, too, that trees and tall buildings, houses, other people, even birds in the skyand ships far out on the bounding main are quite at ease with their shadowsand don’t know what I call my abyss I come up on cloudy days before rainwhich sends me back into my burrow I’m afraid I compose my best songswithout light or shadow, when I’m...
Nov 12, 2009 | Free Verse, Poetry |
In the vast ornate antechamber of dreamI unbutton my self and remove it I try carefully to fold it but it refusesto hold a pleat and becomes a small cloud A hint of breeze comes to float it off leaving me more naked than naked The faculty of loneliness has deserted meI shatter suddenly to be a flock of birds Compound entity flying through nightto light in the branches of an inky oak We are the leaves of burgeoning springand attach by slender stems to the wood Nothing lingers of the birds we wereNothing lingers of the words I was Waking is the most peculiar passageI come back from not having been I have to learn myself all over again,finger each button as a perfect...
Nov 5, 2009 | Free Verse, Poetry |
Leila has a new babywhom she calls “my ancient baby because the instant she was bornshe had always been” not just before she was bornbut before Leila herself was born before Leila’s mother and father were born,before before before before “a dew drop of eternityfor now is always and this labor took me somewhere else from which I doubt I’ll ever be able to come back.Can a bee return from honey?” “See her sleeping, brother, waiting for a name to rain down on...
Sep 27, 2009 | Free Verse, Poetry |
What the exiled man never saysbecause he is a rational man,a man of moderation, someone whosemanners are civilized, even suave, is that there are momentswhen he doesn’t believe in the catastrophe that destroyedhis native city, where he was young, the place where he was a child,where he discovered the worldand found it good as it found him good,the place where he first loved… It is whole, alive and well,as in a smiling trance, he walksalong the avenue to the square,enjoys a young woman’s beauty It strikes even him as absurdthat he doesn’t believe, because he was there, because he saw the fireand tasted the ash, saw dead bodies lying on their backs, like micethat had encountered small misfortunes,(there was one very tall man who appeared to be doing the backstroke, but was frozen in mid-stroke), because he had seen his own housedestroyed by a bomb and burning, because he had escaped by accident scrambling across the borderin a misty morning to be bornas another person into a new lifeand most absurd of all is that he can remember and also not believe at the same time, so that easeand unease make an uncanny blend,so that he feels at home and not there. No point ever in saying anythingabout this, even just after sex,because if you didn’t know it,then you couldn’t know it, shouldn’t So where he was most intimatewith himself he was most aloneand when his little daughter would askwhat he was thinking –...
Jul 19, 2009 | Free Verse, Poetry |
A man as gray as ash,I walk green breezy woods Fallen trunks speak to meof what they were and when “Once we were green and huge,we caught sun in our nets Once we stood and we swayed,we defied wind and storm Our now was forever,deep our roots delved dark earth We slept through the winters untroubled by the snow We woke up in the springwith rage to make life new And all that we were, sir,is best forgotten now And all that we were, siris past ripe to rotting” I lose a flake of ashhere and there but walk on by dark rushing riverthat holds water and time The breezes that touch meare both caress and claw. Cardinal’s bright in bush,talisman of flame. I loose myself in speechI lose myself in song Ash once was wood of dreams,now burnt by becoming To be lighter and less,ready for wingless flight This summer took so longcoming, swiftly is gone as the trout keep rainbowsin the river’s deep holes. A man as gray as ashI walk green breezy woods Beware that you see melong after I am...
