May 27, 2012 | Free Verse, Poetry |
Your motherwhom you hardly knew whether she withdrew just after your birthor died before you were two or twenty or forty or fifty-four or even sixty or moreshe gave you so much of you but was the origin of riddleseven if you know yourself as a riddle your fingers can’t reach out and brushwho she was, what she meant, what she held I know there are vast rivers of sentimentthat run in the other direction celebrating unions however imperfect,exalting mother and child together I can’t help that I stand for the truthof a lonelier life, one full of destinations we never reach whether by the seaor in the vast unsettling...
Jan 30, 2012 | Free Verse, Poetry |
I want to dream beyond dreaming,to be convinced by worlds that exist onlyinside me like pearl planets inside oysters of sleeptethered to the flickering electrical reefsthat invent me both when I’m snoring and when I’m awake who can dive for these pearl planets, bring oystersback to the surface for examination, for interrogation,so that they can be asked to state what they might knowabout their circumstances, about my own circumstances,how we’re all accidental, even if round and smooth? the border of dream is not waking,not a line of fence posts and barbed wireor even wishing with all its exotic barbs,the border of dream is hard to reach because dream keeps springing up under all feet, five toed, poetic nor is there any going back to the beginning,when I dreamt I had arrived at origin, suddenly a wild buffalo appeared and I had to run for my life,humiliated that what I thought was an idyll wasinstead something so other and in sleep that was mine I want to get in my dreams beyond seeking approval,beyond asking acceptance, even my own, beyond tryingto amount to someone, but just to float and glow liketiny phosphorescent plankton awaiting the whale’s maw,but without knowing that they are awaiting… In my thinking about my dreaming, how it is satisfactoryand unsatisfactory, there is more than a hint of jazz,of improvisation, of never putting my tongue in the samestream of mind twice, even when I want to and when I try,it’s no dream I’m always finding and losing myself, all...
Oct 27, 2011 | Free Verse, Poetry |
In longhand in blue ink on white paperat the Claremont Hotel on vacation in Mainejust outside Acadia National Park, I wrotedown with urgency just a few early lines – about how nothing lasts forever, nothingis utterly distinct, how each of us is almosta second coming of others who once were,who were themselves almost second comings… and so forth , turning just slightly asideto notice that the mind lives in complex space native to a profusion of infinite regressions,finding myself now on path of genuine interest… but somewhere between Southwest Harborand Harpswell, Maine, the pad and the lines,and the beginnings were lost, with nothing quite distinct of it all left in my mind… I can say what was lost was nothingand say at the same time what was lostmay have been everything – I write anelegy for the indeterminate, coastal...
Oct 20, 2011 | Free Verse, Poetry |
Zeus said, “I have the worst headache of my whole life since the beginning.” Zeus thought, “Hera is a pain, but not like this that is so near my center.” He swaddled his head in dense cloud dimming the sun but got no relief. Since gods are two –year- olds writ large, he threw a temper tantrum, scattering thunderbolts to the horizon so shepherds feared for their flocks and those lucky ones who had skins of wine, drank deep as they worried. Zeus’ tantrum was of no avail, so he changed times and donned human guise. He presented himself at dusk to an ER in San Antonio, one more droplet in a brown river of nameless suffering and told the triage nurse that he had “the worst headache of my whole life since the beginning” – she came awake. Zeus lay in the tube of the MRI listening to noise with none of thunder’s glory. When he came out, the resident told him, “Listen Mr. Z we have to operate. You have the largest aneurysm anyone here has ever seen. You’ll die if it bursts.” Just then the pain became even more lancinating and a small patch of mist burst forth from his forehead and grew and grew and took form even as it grew to be as large as Zeus himself, but with gray-green eyes whose depth was wonder. “Ah,” said Zeus, “Pallas Athena herself.” “Becoming, great Zeus, is suffering,” said the wise one, daughter of depths and foolishness and thunder, too.” Then they disappeared, Zeus and Athena in just a single patch of cloud, moonlit. “How should...
May 15, 2011 | Free Verse, Poetry |
1. I’m having trouble making anything because where invention once seemed like piecing my own only head together, adding new space with novel views, now invention seems like taking my head off my neck, exposing its inner workings, a matter perilous from the outset in which I’m likely to lose much more than I gain I’m aware of an inhibition, a hesitation that prevents me from taking the dive so I’m left embarrassed with inklings of what might be, of what might have been 2. My old ignorance that licensed my daring has been replaced not precisely by knowledge but by experience, thousands of flavors composing and recomposing atmospheres that have turned me inwards even when I’m not aware and feel I’m looking out To make something new when I’m someone old, I must use myself as preamble, go into what has been in order to let it go, refresh itself, put on a familiar costume that is yet fabulous – I make myself new and uncanny,...
