Feb 18, 2008 | Poetry, Sonnet |
Mollusks are their own mathematicians.Blind in the deep they discover whorled forms,yet they’ve no use for metaphysicians.Men die for purposes and drown in norms. The lowly mollusk echoes galaxiesand cares not a wit. His shell bounds his world.He lacks light for larger intricacies,bothers not how stars through heavens are hurled. I culled today a shell from dreamy sea.It made a point and seemed to wear a map.With lines of green latitude, precisely,it was ruled. I disturbed it from its nap. Now for the deed there is no remedy.We both lie lost in stranger’s...
Jan 1, 2008 | Poetry, Sonnet |
Each second I’m launching that second’s guess,second guessing all seconds that have gonebefore, adding one more awkward mirrorto a hall of mirrors that’s never done. Now each second’s guess prepares a surprisefor all the seconds that are yet to come,for the invasion of minutes and hoursthat can’t stop itself and does not conquer Any objective, but is caught in risksthat bloom from mornings and bright afternoonsto become catastrophes, oppositesof what was intended or expected. Don’t forget worry is an art form, too,That we can’t bear to live only what’s...
Jan 1, 2008 | Poetry, Sonnet |
So many times now have I asked myselfthe same old questions that I’ve gotten usedto them as parts of me: it’s no longera question of answering them, but just Of knowing where my edges used to be,how I’ve gotten smoothed down over the years,so it’s hard to recollect my roughness,my inarticulate passions, their ghosts If I start to think I know what my lifehas been and is, I’ve passed into stupor,those old questions, hypnotic, until Ifinally join them in the river’s trance What’s more precious than a question’s curved markTo keeps us company in our own...
Dec 30, 2007 | Poetry, Sonnet |
M was never an easy one to know,for he thought of himself as just the firstor last hesitant outline of shadow,a beginning or an ending, subtle, Neither unambiguously the oneor the other, too vague for expression,someone who was a half way hint, more thanhe had ideas or aesthetic, plan Or purpose, someone who passed life’s short termbeguiled by intimacies and fictionsarising only in him without cluesas to how they might be made more robust A trace of M is not the taste of M,who wished to be flower without a...
Dec 30, 2007 | Poetry, Sonnet |
Cancer killed a man who led the VilnaGhetto uprising, fought in the forestand knew evil when it was live and fierceall around him and he wrote poems still Even after the cancer took his voiceso what was left was written character, the smell of the hospital, memorycompressed in disinfectant, pain ruling An empire growing minute by minute,the glow of lights off the slick floors as nightmoved along towards another cold dawnby a river on a far strange continent Abba Kovner, we let you go and staywith us as steel spark of the darkest...
Dec 9, 2007 | Poetry, Sonnet |
The world is beautiful with breezes, snakesof grace, serpents of softness, which avid steal from tree to tree. So green slumber wakes,animated to indulgence, shy kid of goatish luxury, by the quick biteof teeth envenomed with air’s elixirs,first, last and best poison, in malice slight,yet most rich in invention’s rare mixtures. Sin original is mind’s first motion,art’s intent, which like some fallen rainbowstirs the waters of harmony’s oceanin search of the sign which has drowned below. Eve’s green garden was Adam’s best delight.Eden’s trance is everyman’s prime...
