Doubt

She believed

it impossible to live

there in the open

wilds of sawgrass

and sea oats exposed

to the water, at home

in a box standing

stripped by the wind,

the old wood

worn like a fault,

until the water rose

to wash her feet.

Cubism

sat holding hands

one holding mine

and mine another's

as if there was

a daisy-chain

Catherine wheel

in the silence

of expanding spaces

read horrid news

of horrid ways

the aliens

who steal the young

and give them guns

to use against us

who raised them up

now to shoot us down

went wading in

to wading pools

where children play

and played a game

of catch the boy

who caught the girl

and kissed him

on beautiful lips

fell quick upon

with quicker pace

through frame on frame

the running man

who tried to run

away from me

but he would be

forever mine all mine

knew knowing men

who knowing wrote

of one man's wit

to wit he wrote

manifestos

convincing men

of lesser wit

that they were supermen

slept through those years

that through us led

to so much loss

that when I woke

all known was gone

to dogs in war

their jaws jawing

on the bones of yore

caught fading sight

in fading light

of battlefields

where many laid

there down and died

in a gambit

to win a war

now unwinnable

ate ready meals

already to eat

from paper plates

in soup kitchens

that serve the poor

who paper walls

in dining rooms

of the rich men served

rode rolling stock

through rolling fields

of fog that held

the frozen air

that held the breath

the farmer breathed

before he drove

cattle to the cars

I stopped

like a stone dropped
mid-air. I stopped
as days were ending.
I stopped, not caring
where I stood. I stood
as light was stopping.
In its shadow I stopped
to stand watch, and, watched
as the trees watched
the lake, which held the sky
from which I'd dropped.  I,
made whole. Filling earth
where I stood. I stopped.
And, there I had become
a stone at rest.

Four Unsavory Parables for the M11

   
I.   Neil's Little Black Book.
 
The numbers. Names, in waiting.
A terracotta army locked in notes
on mood and personality.  Denatured,
to preference.  Performance, rated
for distance and readiness regardless
the hour.  Gathered from chat rooms.
Their tiny novellas pimping fictions.
Fleshed out in pictures of washboard
stomachs advertising the will
to beat linens clean off of you
whenever you might call.
 
 
II.   The Sound of The Rain.
 
The sound of rain.
Of lightning. Hail.
The hands of thousands,
clapping fans.  And, then,
the coils of jets, drawn
still as though making
a landfall, and no one need
fly the plane.  As if
amidst the unseen, silence
filled the body like air
leading to the lungs until
it pushed out all else,
and, out of body came
the sound of engines, droning
back to life as from waking
and weary remains of dream.
To the sound of thousands.
Like the sound of rain.
 
 
III.   Sin Qua Non.
 
"Nothing has never been
discovered, found, or
uncovered."  He wages:
Nothing lost is
everything else.
 
And, so, he strides in.  Sailing.
A great ship in his navy whites.
He fancies himself in mirrors.
 
 
IV.   Golf Course of the Brown Fields.
 
Wastelands.  Summer's reeds,
skeletal on the borders.
Stilted husks drained
of reserve, busted, broken,
bent over the margins.
 
Then he approaches:
Stortford man.  His golfing shoes
clawing the ground.  Pants
so green, the lawn blushes.
His partner, the Bishop,
is winning with a hat-trick.
He's already scored
three holes in one.  Stortford man
notes: the swagger of his steps.
 
 
 
 
(The quote in Sin Qua Non is from S.F.  Nothing else here is ... so I'm not going to tell you who S.F. is.)

Fallen Stars(Cleveland, Ohio, long ago)

They can’t imagine
here what it is like to watch


a river burn, the fire
spring to life as you


flicked the butt of your fag
into the Cuyahoga.


Lucky it didn’t light
the embankment where we stood


or the coal flats where we wrestled
in the back seat of your car,


we would joke later about that
Chariot of Fire.  Piece of us now


burnt into me — a Burning Man
on a desert floor already blackened,


naked with fear of having done
not enough to keep you,


wanting you to set me on fire,
but whetted with the sinews of the bent


river crooked against the skyline
from which we’d come.  Aliens


to an alien world.  No one
here can imagine what it is


to have lived through the moment,
the fire in us burnt out.


     

The Iron Horse has Wings

Satori Katsu in memory of Robert Allen Meyer




1.


The road ends in a circle. 
You feel its gravity, gain
speed over the arc.


Release, if you're lucky,
sends you home.  Through a field
of yellow flowers.
  

 

2.


Rape presses.  Seed
oil.  Lamps burning
long.  Engines of industry
sputter.


The next train will drive into the plain
like an embroiderer's needle.  Its design
can be seen off the tip of our wing.



 

3.


Why is it you defy gravity?
Can't you see it will pull you down
like a star?  Leaving a crater,


Earth will be forever 
smoothing over.



 

4.


Flight was the stupidest thing I've ever attempted.
I kept returning
like rain to the rivers of the Pacific Northwest


while you sewed the fields
with seed crops.  Pressed
to light my way.



 

5.


In the penultimate car, a passenger
throws down a window.  Waves.  Like
a wing.  Like a ripple.  As if 


he's soldiering the fields.  Repeating. 
Remember me.
I am one of your conquered cities.

 

Note:

"Lightning's blue glare fills Oklahoma plains, the train rolls east casting yellow shadow on grass. Twenty years ago approaching Texas, I saw sheet lightning cover Heaven's corners ...  An old man catching fireflies on the porch at night watched the Herd Boy cross the Milky Way to meet the Weaving Girl... How can we war against that?"

    ̶  Allen Ginsberg.  "Iron Horse"  (1972)

     

Sandman Takes a Room

It is
possible that I will be
nothing by the end of day,


that I will       
disintegrate in
the dry air of this room
where no breeze blows. 


And to
protect myself from these
inevitabilities,
curtains have been pulled
and drawn upon themselves


as a canvas where
the artist painted the scene
and his portrait eyes
the room in which oils still
supple mark the man


when he
turned keys against the latch
not to enter but to lock him-
self away. 


I have this
luxury: to scrawl out
my last will, my testament,
a cypher in grains of sand
on this firmament
where nothing holds.  Need


drives me to fire, white-
lightning and moonshine
and a match poised
to answer the only question,
What color shall I be?