The Unpublishables
By Steve Lavigne
Copyright 2012 Steve Lavigne
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Creative expression is an intense means of learning - all of human experience can and should be our subject matter. However, it is the art rather than subject that determines a works effectiveness. If you haven’t already, I would ask you to consider reading Fork And Other Poems. This current collection, a condensation of a lifetime of off and on again writing, is (just like the title says) not quite publishable. For although there are little gems scattered throughout, putting this work into the public realm is akin to going to the beach after a long winter of becoming pale and gaining a lot of weight - it seems like a good idea until you actually get there – umm what was that? No, no really. I honestly thought this was a clothing optional area….
Table of Contents
Sweet comfortable you
Our comfort is no sluggish slave to sameness,
No erosion of the soul, no leveling to one plain
Existence, but with a vegetable passion grows –
Grows from the roots of mountains, and spiraling
Through time with questing, untiring looks to thyself,
Myself and back and back again, we grow together, always
Changing, but ever with sweet comfortable you.
Hunted by sounds and hunter of petals,
Nibbling and silently dropping the forest
Home he lives in, he waits.
Until there is forest silence, he waits
In his seven course camouflage thicket
And gyrates brittle twigs and fleshy grass
Between white pucker lips.
Contented, he hops to warm himself in
Sunlight and triple kicks fleas near a turning
Dinner bell ear which is answered.
A fox squirrel shakes its tail and chirps.
The shadow of a hawk screams;
The earth is brought near a red straining eye,
The other rises harpooned, an olive on a beak;
Feet thrust slowly much slower against a
Pine needle floor inches away,
As all forest discords cease
Except the methodic pecking beak
When the quivering nose stops.
When no tears come
and still the self won't die,
when feeling out of sorts
with men and all their lives,
then strength is desperation,
seeming speed, a lie,
all action becomes discord,
a lifetime's work, denied.
When tears flow
and no poem comes,
when verse slows
in a melancholy sun:
in a wrinkling time
when future, past, now
collide and refract,
a prismatic show
fracturing self,
threatening ego,
then the rose
is more than a rose,
each color says more
than the words self knows,
symbolic meaning fading
to a universal close.
When I am old and peel back this thin skin,
This pulpy bark of a wind tossed fallen limb,
Shall I see us etched in time, my rings and thine,
Two grafted souls growing you and I entwined;
Or shall we fade with smooth rubbed kisses
When each the other a rubbing stone sees,
And every touch brings such blisses
And still more desirous wishes
Till nothing but mingling dust shall we be.
Love! Love is true but for this practiced eye,
This paint by number niggling with love’s design;
When thou or I see the others breathing fly,
Love’s soul we’ll have seen in a meeting of eyes;
This whole of knowing is like a ball,
A child’s toy dropped in an eon of time,
And we, some glimmer, while down it falls,
And once picked up beyond recall,
When shall we have time for each others sighs.
If I would allow you to be you
and still take you into me
and me e’er be possessed by you
and all the world turned with ease and free,
if the stars shook their locks
still from the light
and night begat night
with an oozing, darkling right,
if all that we’d thought
was a onetime thinking thing,
if all became loss
in this simple seeming Spring,
even then I’d say
my love would be true
if I would allow you to be you
and still take you into me
and me e’er be possessed by you
and all the world turned with ease and free.
Trying to understand and put into words what the occupy wall street movement means
This movement (and it is a movement despite the name) is about justice - a sense of fairness, a sense of empowerment, giving voice to the voiceless. And how many of us standing here- reading this, listening to this, truly have a voice. Those who support this movement feel that there is something wrong – know there is something wrong despite what the media says, despite what the politicians tell us. We feel the game is rigged- hell we know the game is rigged- and for most of the time we can kind of grin and say “yeah it's always been kind of rigged against the little guy, against those who teach, against those who serve” - we're not stupid. But it's gone too far, the problems are getting too big, the breadcrumbs to keep us in our place are too few and too far between. We all know the injustice when tragedy strikes individually – going bankrupt from healthcare costs despite having insurance – getting a foreclosure notice even though the bank no longer has our paperwork – has no real reason to foreclose- and then uses the police (who we pay for) to kick us out of our own home- when it happens to us we know the injustice – but with the occupy movement – as a group we feel the end game coming – there's really no more time left on the clock to dick around, the problems are getting so big so fast, our society as we know it could flicker and fade like that - how do we want our children to live, what kind of society do we leave to them - as it is now, we don't have a say. The adults have left the room and chaos prevails, greed is king, sociopaths running amok, the patients are in charge of the asylum, whatever analogy you want to use... however you want to put it, the normal people - the ones who don't gamble with other people's money and rig the game so they win no matter what, the ones who get bailed out and still do not acknowledge their responsibility to the collective whole (there have been no perp walks) - hundreds of years of social laws and conventions - habeas corpus, usury laws (how quickly what we take for granted can be taken away), the execution of american citizens by our own government without due process- we are in trouble- we feel it – we need to express it - we do not have the answers but until we ask the right questions as citizens, as media, as politicians those answers wouldn't matter anyway- raise your voice in the new media, in the street, with family, friends, live the dream that is empowered democracy....
Deep Feeling Nature
As thick as soil,
Rigid as endless grasslands,
Translucent as the sea,
Breathes as the wind
Whose purpose is unseen.
Passionless, she is the greatest lover;
Uncaring, he groans with endless dying;
We cry forgiveness, she gives no mercy;
We spread our arms, abundance overflows;
He is one, there is no other;
We cannot count her endless forms.
My death over takes me
My death o’er takes me;
each moment, motion,
is a finer stringing,
a subtler tuning,
of this mine bodily instrument.
Déjà vu reverberates
in the core of my being
till each savored moment
fixes each to each,
every other on other
and all lead to still time,
a measureless attuning,
a nothing gulf emptied open
where there is no fear,
there is no love,
there are no opposites
to attract.
Although I love you
I can not love you.
What facade is this I have created?
I have longed for friendship
And gotten none by seeking it-
Too lonely in longing
Too lonely in longing
I’ve o’er reached my limits
Seeking ultimate
With others in knowing
And failed the boundless of my inner self.
Though I know this painful love
Is possessiveness,
And in possessing will lose
Whatever love there is amidst the pain,
Still my conjuring mind
Fills out fantasies
(Emotion laden delusions)
Spreading flowery thighs of desires
On a stage of submission seeking security,
An illusion of a vanishing act with a love
That never was.
Do not love me too much-
I do not know what it is to love.
If once I had known
Surely now I’ve forgot-
There are actions,
Remembered or not,
That wear down the soul
Surely as soft water
Wears the rock
Over which it flows.
Forging Love
My heart aches
From above and below;
My body saying yes,
My mind saying no;
For in this midst
The heart is being crushed;
A forging between anvil desire
And the hammering blows of mistrust.
I have seen her face before
Fallen and still with a sad foreboding
At times when she stands before the door
And does not see me seeing her knowing.
But grown comfortable with our love,
She sighs in thoughtless moments of my day,
And though I perceive without her perceiving,
I must be silent to acknowledge her being
Though silence be a slow death for me.
To acknowledge and accept without regret,
To pay your little child’s forgotten debt,
Is a butterfly floating in the rolling mist
Of a waterfall’s flowing cataract of bliss.
The fear of facing ignorance reflects
In quickly turning pages, labyrinths
Of desires, whose meandering treks
Seek only more and faster sustenance.
What I Saw This Morning In A White, Flat-bottomed Dish
Baby blue
already been chewed
gum
dried green pea
orange cheeto bit
thin black hair
Happiness
the dark slate
stones
you always seemed
to find
in such abundance.
You always said
you can never find
more than one or two
at a time -
smooth rocks
tumbling in your arms
squirting
unbidden
like strange
eggs.
Crossing cars bleat
Like mad runaway sheep
Who have lost their fleece;
A bugging beetle
I fly in front of windshield eyes
Who care not a want nor a whit
For my hide.
Diving at four way stops,
The cars converge,
As sacred crossing birds,
Screeching to a stop
On thumbnail red signs,
Burping and pacing,
Honking and cursing,
Sea gulls fighting high tide.
“Let me walk’, I cry, vines
growing out of my snout;
they shudder to a halt,
my roots break,
I dive through the shell of a skull.
One day in summer when the sun went down
(For so it seemed alone with little thought),
In a vast wood freed from all dutied ground,
A solitary bliss I often sought,
My soul was consumed like the blackened west
Not from a love or a bliss that was lost,
But deeds of men mine never to possess,
Oh, bitter yield of freedom with such cost!
Then, cut off from men in my wand’ring wood,
The only paths were dull pride that barren end;
I searched not for fruitful love as learning should
With patient discipline as steady friend,
Nor let hard self knowledge be my rod,
No, nor conceived more than myself, some god.
When apples too full of life
Are brown red ripe
And no more pickers will come,
When the sun in a fire of trees
Its last ember bleeds
And in a dying westering is gone
Then it’s easy to believe
Thy soul will leave
Thy love, my life will be done
For I can imagine no spring,
No dawn of a seed,
When thy voice and breath are lost
And this ripe apple falls with the sun.
What was once so sincere
Now seems silly of a sudden,
What once was so dear
Now seems of a dozen,
This cozening, this affectation
Now seems so clear-
I look into thine eyes
And I see my mirror.
I am moved to these tears not by thee
(whole peoples have died with no such remorse),
thy cankered bud of inconstancy
is of but one tree of a single forest.
This pain, this weeping cry, is not for thee,
Thy soft impulse is but a mimicry,
A just picture of the world’s history,
Yet, still worth no more than the pain to me
Were it not that love, all forgiving love,
Has been proved false;
For in you, as with Christ, the world has been moved,
All has been your burden to bear, your cross,
And in denying true love to me
The world has been lost by little little thee.
Introduction
Beyond one’s declarations of success
And failure
Is Nature’s slow grinding down
And rejuvenation,
Where nothing is wasted in the process of creation;
Poems being but a subcreation
Of joy and bless`ed thanksgivng
Wielding the sloughing of skins
To smooth, naked reality
And peace of mind.
To thee, Nature,
Words archaic, sublime,
Crude are for our use,
To reach some more concrete thing
Than the rational mind,
Some beauty of imagination,
Some truth, pure feeling,
Emotion, linking human kind
In deed to the web of life
And the inanimate sublime.
Our bedroom closes like a lobster claw
The underwater swinging of a door,
That secures our search for the pinpoint star
Dancing above us on a surface cloud.
In sheets of kelp, wrapt in a sandy cove,
We jig in a circling turbid crowd,
Swept feeler eyes growing erect, the clammy
Clashing of shells – shoals of breaking love.
And still when I rise from the damp day bed,
The sun undrowned in the microscopic
Sky remains, so I withdraw and backwards
Crawl, scuttling across crustacean remains.
Sweet were her breasts
In the swelling waves
Reflecting pale
The harvest moon.
Naked with yearning ,
We had shed our clothes,
Those foily rinds of fashion,
And swam lazily
Under the tow of our needs
Simple passions.
Until again, we ascended
Exhausted in our crustacean searching
To reach the sun,
Then brushing the sand
And our clinging hair,
We smile
And believe the other a fool
For still believing
That these simple passions
Can cure the ache
Of our being.
Sea creatures,
We glide
Pulled by the tide
Of our common humanity:
The placenta of salty solitude.
Breaking In Union With The Sea
I have never yet seen the sea,
Nor the sea seen me I believe,
But apart from my outer cup
And swelling tissue fishes with dreams,
My seething blue-red ocean boils up,
Breaking in union with the sea.
The Death Of Socrates
Three men high up on the juror’s stand look down.
Front center: white silken robe and jeweled crown clenching
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.
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.
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.
So, I’ll make a cup of white pine tea
With the fresh green needles,
But first I’ll ask permission
And forgiveness for her unintentionally enclosed
And intertwined life with me-
She says it’s okay,
She’ll live many generations beyond me-
And with hope, she might be a two hundred foot tall
Giant awing the puny lives of men.
I hope they don’t cut her down
But there are so many people with saws
And fewer and fewer humans who know
And love the tree people.
Ah, my white pine tea is done,
Migwetch, many thank yous, amen.
In a deserted field, I write this song,
A hymn to melancholy man,
That neither beast, bird, nor tree can e’er bring
This simple man to understand;
For city bred I am with ore
And wheel and lock the grinding gears of song,
From whence my family ne’er could feel
Any loss except to belong,
But now I sing with joy in voice,
A belonging they’ll never understand,
A voice of bees and starry skies,
Now twice to sing a melancholy man.
Dig, dig, dig like a mournful clicking clock;
Lay waste grim face, such a weedy forsaken spot;
Tear it down to build again, then mock
Your towers once more, and like as not
You’ll try again, your mind begin to plot,
Nevermore in naturalness ever to rock
In the sweet depths of your Earth Mother’s arms.
City Autumn
Leaves rustle then scrape city stairs,
Gear upon gear they bluster down,
‘til rift and flutter they alight
the air, lifting my soul to fall.
City Park In Autumn
The park, which leaves her rustling garb
Deposited on a bedroom yard,
Releases a juicy fullness
In exchange for barren wholeness:
A harlot’s wrinkled line of houses
Between cakes of cracked make-up douses.
If neither age, nor name, nor date were known,
And these the only lines that e’er were writ,
Not thy smile, thine eyes nor thy wit would show
Though the wide wondering world might think it fit;
Nor would the love I hold for thee be shown,
Nor indeed thy love for me, though limitless,
And though fain would I have of all thy loves writ
(A lifetime of making and two lifetimes grown),
I’ve not time and still thy love would not be met,
For thou hast greater love e’er left unknown:
A love of the divine encircling time,
A life without lines, a joining, all things combined.
What is love? Can those who love freest
Love best? While others pine for love untrue
Do merry soulmates hop from bed to bed,
Pleasure begetting pleasure instead of dread:
Dread that all pretty words are petty lies,
That use and abuse, self esteem denied,
Makes the puritans’ possessive demands-
A failure to let himself expand.
Liquor is the fixer
Which keeps thee from me;
One syllable’s distance is too far,
Though comfortable it be.
Sled dogs hanging tongues, lolling, lagging
Over rubbery lips,
Wetness over cold,
A gliding skimming sailing of ships.
The Pain Will Out
Weak tonight
The side aches dull,
The body knowing
What the mind’s forgot
Or withheld.
The pain will be known,
It will out
One time or another,
One way or another –
Dull knowing is no substitute
Razor jagged edges
Will out
And if not let out
Will sacrifice
The very beast it rides
So that in agony
On death’s cement stoop
We’ll scrape our chest
And bloody our knees
Scrambling for death
To let us in
Till quick and bright
We see the pain,
Who led the way,
Too late
And cry out to the darkness
“if only I’d known”
but this too
you’ll know
you knew
too late
for the pain is there
was always there –
the pain will out.
A finny slipped further reaching thought
Life and death has always been as easy
as casting a line,
the slow reel,
quick hook- as they bite
ravenous,
or maybe just curious,
and some unlucky ones
getting hooked by just passing by
till knowing widens their eyes
and this hoped for savory
is bitter as gall and they sprawl rigid
as if that spread eagle stony grip
clawed and water breaking
gasp could stop the slow reel
and guttural praises as the net hauls
the last of your flopping back
and forth on board.
They’ll roast you over a campfire
and tell half truthed stories of the
breakers of lines -
no one knows what happened to these;
in the stories, some live from generation
to generation breaking lines perennially,
and maybe here and there
there’s a scaly ascension
or a finny resurrection to liven the time
as the son of the great dog fish
rises again to break another line,
but the fishers of fish
and the fishers of men
know what everyone knows:
every fish has an end
and feeds the eaters of death,
there’s no such thing
as dying
of old age.
The wind
stalks her back,
just out of
sight,
a whispering
here,
a nudging
there,
an escalating
tingling up
then down
her spine,
until, like an unholy thing
it reaches
under her skirt
and tightens her walk;
she scurries fast,
and like a mouse
to a shadowed corner,
she retreats
inside her door,
and sits trembling,
still tingling,
in the dark with the unknown
of this groping,
following
dread.
I remember the night you
Tossed the red, mangled mass
Of your tampon to the cat
And said, “Here kitty, kitty,
Get the mouse”.
And it did.
Your gleeful smile, wide
Vacant eyes,
Were you possessed?
The constant tap, tap, tap
Of shuffling feet
In an unheard dance,
A song continually playing
For you alone, reverberating
For days now, behind that silent,
Somewhere else glaze.
“God,” you said,
you were in religious ecstasy.
Who was I to stop you,
Even if I was your husband
And we glanced off each other
With force fields of different beings –
I guess the loss of the house,
Your clothes, our pets, anything
Like the normal life we’d come to expect,
Made me depressed
But you, you left,
And a stranger screamed at me,
Calling me strange names
In a biblical tongue
And I was running out the screen door
With shame and a razor blade
Coming after me.
Then the cops picked you up,
Don’t you remember,
We rode together
In the back of the police car;
You didn’t remember the incident,
You were gleeful for a vacation –
A ride with your huge bible
In your upturned hands;
I sobbed quietly like a child
While you babbled in tongues pointing
Out bible passages,
Until the cop in the front seat
Turned around and said,
“Hey, you don’t have to worry.
She’ll be all right.
We do this all the time”.
Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Checkbook
I
Amid blue, green, purple and pink,
Myriads of innumerable packaged things,
All that stood between his
And desire
Was the checkbook.
II
I do not know which to prefer,
Making the kill,
Or stalking the prey,
Writing the check,
Or just before.
III
I was of one mind,
Like the man without his checkbook,
Who waits in line
With a cart full of groceries.
IV
In all that cluttered apartment,
The only negative
That could be less than zero
Was the placid looking,
Peacefully consuming
Checkbook.
V
Who made thee checkbook?
How differently alike are its answers
To a lifelong executive
And a homeless thrall.
VI
The checkbook is a symbol
Of the symbol of money;
Is it in the bank,
Ecuador,
Poisoning a river,
Planting a field?
Who knows,
And who cares?
VII
What separates
US
From
THEM
Is the checkbook.
VIII
In the third world,
One or none have the checkbook;
In the first world ,
A few more do.
IX
Glassed pine boughs,
Freezing drizzle,
Bitten fingers and toes,
The only thing between
Cold and death
Was the fragile flame
Of the checkbook.
X
With this one check
And a flick of the wrist,
I have neatly sliced
The neck of a pig
And splattered its blood
With a wriggling squeal.
XI
The man without a checkbook
Finds it much more difficult
To hold a pig down
While killing it.
XII
In all the world,
There was only they
And the checkbook,
And one wasn’t Real.
XIII
A blackbird looks down and
The river is flowing;
One does not need a checkbook
To live.
Please Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London, Consumer Activists Urge Or On a refusal to cry out while having bamboo splinters shoved underneath fingernails
Never since the clichéd hanging slap yelp
Of the red slimed newborn,
Step on a rock indentation,
Blood dripping prick of a pasture rose,
Never since the first child’s first ever lack of need,
Never since,
“it don’t make no reason to cry,
you ain’t special,
get down on your knees and pray”;
I am oblivious to pain,
Your pain,
The rigid, horse tongued dead
Of mustard gas,
The quick incineration of the atom
Lightening flash
(what shadow feels pain, that’s all that’s left you know),
lying for days under machine gunned
concentration camp prisoners,
afraid to breath
but more afraid to die,
“pain has no meaning for such a person,
it is a condition lived through and with
for the rest of their lives”;
never since the first heard
agonizing death cries,
“it’s only bodily pain,
and pain can be transcended”,
even someone else’s pain,
“we are not our bodies alone,
the greatest worship we can give
is our unacknowledged pain”,
or was that accepted and released
pain, is there any difference
when you’re tied down,
a razor blade cleaving you a forked tongue.
When the Chinese overran Tibet,
The monks were in ecstasy
Because they were trained
To transcend the pain,
Tortuous deaths
Were the ultimate claim
On a life well lived,
Or died;
You know, they would have had to transcend
In more mundane deaths,
fires are as unforgiving as
Trained assassins,
So quit making a big deal
Out of everything;
Yeah, right, like after the first cut there is no other.
The kid from the cat in the hat in therapy
God damn cat! After that first taste
it was cake on a rake
my childhood in that little house
balanced above me – dropping
away, always falling
you with that stupid grin
and me on my knees, hands
reaching, grasping
my world collapsing, crumpled in a corner
just like you knew it would.
I never told and I don’t think Sis did –
we hardly ever spoke after that -
thing 1s and thing 2s,
could'ves and would'ves,
all of our dreams in pieces,
everything scattered -
everything swept away
so fast.
Tell me what would you say,
what would you do,
tell me what if that cat
and his stupid hat
had come to your house,
what if he had come looking
for you?
I lie
in luxury
my illness forgotten
warm heating pad snuggled tight in
the bed.
The bed
is, oh, too cold,
please, lay down, no - no clothes
inconsolable, just awful
I lie.
Black shoes
like frayed feathers
blown under the dresser
by your visit – the flight of some
stray bird.
Stray bird
eyes like onyx
searching, circling under
windows, ruffling covers for lost
black shoes.
Angelfish being acclimated to an aquarium
Angelfish floats,
An anchored sliver of a galleon,
Prouder than eight pinta’s as it surveys,
Or swims,
A furrowing sailboat through liquid air
Til bow lips and stern tail meet the plastic
Globe harbor and press for open sea.
At the end of day,
The sunflower droops
His head with the fullness of seed;
The cricket chirps her evening
Song and listens
For a distant reply;
And I, I feel the fullness of the moment,
My mind still,
Silent in a savoring
Of this symphony of all being,
My vision soars
And all that I long to be
I am.
My breathing, the ocean,
They come and they go,
My hands, a sun speckled salmon,
I release it … slow.
Aid’s Dance Therapy
Johnnie’s going home to die;
He wants to be with his mother and father and brother
The house he grew up in to slowly give way in.
It’s not going to be long now;
Tonight is his last night at dance therapy
And we know it, we know it all too well.
Johnnie could be Barbara, is Tom, maybe Robert
Maybe me when my time comes
But now is Johnnie’s
And tonight’s dance therapy
Is a dance of support and of upholding;
Some of us are weak, some are strong
Ancient rhythms guide the knowing motion-
Drums beat in an ancient healing
In a moving guided
Empathetic sharing knowing;
With my arms at his shoulders,
We walk together, circling the room.
I am legs to support
Others are walking, others are leaning
Soon we are chanting, then dancing
Faster and faster, carrying the weak waist high,
Embracing holding head high
Uplifting over head sky high
And glorious release to know another
Cares, I care – I support you- hold you
Till the dance slows- and I must lessen
We lower you- gentle you - to the earth,
To the ground and chant, “Home, Home,”
“Home, home peace at last”
“Home, home peace at last”.
My death sits on my head and shoulders
like a leaden veil;
it stands before me and behind me
like a second skin;
it waits to the right and to the left of me
like a brother and a friend.
FAT
Fat
isn't soft;
it's hard
hard as constriction,
your belly, a bloated boa,
writhing as you bend,
your gasp
sufficing for its laugh
suffocating you to leave
your shoes on,
at least, until
your supper settles.
TRUE NORTH
(Ollie pleading his case before congress)
my actions did a shredder mulch,
but people shouldn’t hear,
the public is not fit to touch,
such things as “true” and “fair”;
for this, in truth, you all abide,
I appeal to my peers;
Let no importance e’er be tried
In this Election Year!
The men in power change but the poor go on suffering.
The birth of humanity
When humanity first burst
This fledgling sac of atmosphere,
And with fists clenched
And feet kicking said, “we’re here, we’re here!”
Then his next thought was that somebody else,
Something strange, might make a housecall to his door,
Some fiery welcome wagon from the stars,
And thus he grew afraid.
The world closes to only
The bed, the blanket,
A turning from side to
Side,
The retching from the belly
The looseness of the bowels
Disjointed images
Of light and color and sound.
On the souvenir of the death of a young poet
Farewell! I keep you close in a bottle
Of brown and tasteless beer which your singing
Lips sucked in to their death. As my mottled
Memory fades, on my mantelpiece you sit,
A dull reminder of days of an age now gone;
Gone in a glistening pink lipped wheezing
With vomit and words in a back alley
Streaming down the edge of drainpipes with our dreams.
After reading about the life of a famous artist
Rage, you withered old beast,
May your lecherous flesh
Be chipped from your cold breast
And crumbled into the dust
Which your prideful heart
Would not let you confess
The few grains you thought
Were yours, are ours or worms.
Like us, you too have prayed
In your hour of need,
And now for our children, we pray
That you and your fame
Stay and suckle your devouring life
In its solitary grave.
Music, so sweet and sensuous,
Floating, groaning with other cares,
Our bodies contoured to our chairs,
We orbit, exploring celestial sound,
Yet when first we learn these tantalizing rounds,
Our looks become quite critical,
It’s, oh, so mathematical.
The Song Of Belonging - meant to be chanted
I have every right to be, I have every right to be,
I have every right to be, I have every right to be,
The eagle takes his prey
And I take mine,
The eagle takes his prey
And I take mine,
I have every right to be, I have every right to be,
I have every right to be, I have every right to be,
The grass grows tall
And I grow strong,
The grass grows tall
And I grow strong,
I have every right to be, I have every right to be,
I have every right to be, I have every right to be.
(Repeat song again or end)
walking alone
through a field
with the newness
of the green of spring
stepping over
fallen branches
crooked
in the twistings of life
rustling
of undergrowth
under each
well intentioned step
bright dawning sun
glistening dew
one comes arms wide
haloed
in rising light
There is a young con named Lyle
who's wrongs are all placed on file;
the crime he enjoys
involves some young boys,
for access type Ped .(dot) ophile.
She bears her love for me like a fruit
Ripened in a summer of long waiting;
Soft and yielding in her upturned hand,
I see the whole from seed to seed:
Our autumn waning to a long winter’s decay
Till some future spring finds us once again
Lying on the grass, our eyes fixed on each other,
Our souls twining like our fingers in the moist grass,
Where once again we will thrive
In our changing seasons of love.
Lovers seek a soul greater than their own,
They seek some greater beauty, some better worth to know.
For you and I, the new year’s thin film of ice has broken,
My love flows through scattered fragments floating,
My fingers dangling to warming waters flowing
As I caress your skin, soft like still water,
And know that our love is as new as spring’s rippling waves,
Our thaw saving winter’s long sleeping decay
As I plunge my soul into your shoreless love
And lose myself in a wonderful sea change,
Made into something rich and strange,
Transformed by your beauty and love.
As I said in the opening, creative expression is an intense means of learning - you open yourself up to the criticism and ridicule you thought you had long ago learned to avoid in middle school. But what is our alternative? Job, family, leisure time can all be either futile distractions and death bed regrets or opportunities for really living - your portal to self expression, growth, enlightenment, uh disdain, ridicule, pity... So here's to all the fools, life is what we make of it, some day we'll all become wise or dead ...
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