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POET'S CORNER
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Angle on a Chain

He gave me
This angle
For rainy days
And years and things
Like when blue shadows
On dusky slick streets

Don't blow
He said
Your mind
Just hang loose
And no fear
He said
Can hide in your wide
Black eyes

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Pipe Dreams

Let us play image
to the four great Frenchmen
of surrealism
who gave us their tongues
to lie on,
knowing no ways
(no matter how green)
no one can feel it
and not grope for more
smoke nothing in here
while the blue band
still lies
in complete incompleteness
and the bead of a brow
is rolling, rolling...

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Ritual

Little men live
With twigs in their eyes
As they scurry about
Gobbling the spit

Of their heroes.
Belong, belong--
It's as much
In your toes

As it is in your head.
Stand still.
Pull out your twigs
And spit.

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A Father's Song

Someday soon
I walked into a room
and somebody asked
Who's that?
That is the fact
said somebody's son
the fact that
we'll all be dead

I don't mean
to scare you
or dare you
to do anything
at all I said

But somebody else
just kept staring
and staring
until I had left
the room.

I don't want to be part
of entanglements
I can't understand
I said as I left,
and forgot that
the doorknob was
my hand while somebody
else was still staring
and standing somewhere

very closely behind me.
Good/bye I said
and he was Death

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sea trip

let's get
.....buried
..........in the sea
making music
..........called love
wishing
.....in the
water, giving
..........what we are
to our dreams
.....and riding
..........the waves

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in the afternoon

the ways
confound me
in arms and bodies
of gentle embrace
how lost I am
on the memory
of night songs
now in the clear
sunlight aloneness
with tobacco dreams
of a passerby
dissolving in
distant blue smoke
and footsteps
quietly screaming
the smell of
my summer body
in coolness

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All of a Memory

Here's your
head back,
here's your life--
the smiling you
would have no more,
amazed how much
four days can take
and then give chills
and a drunken kiss

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four poems for L.

1
youngness again
(in browning hair)
so swiftly in walk
atop rocks shoved
nearest a shallow sea,
and unbroachable topics
indicating eyes
(so distantly) a laugh
for the envious wind
tightly unheld

2
sand flatness light,
a foaming throw
to pass beside my
blue-eyed loveliness.
here softly sit,
directions of thin
arm (intentioned touch)
what easily wind,
and follow flying you

3
door-opened space
obliquely filled
with summer's hot
light streaming,
seeming of so past,
and now again
I love your
nameless doings

4
tangle lovely
the vine leaf flowing
brown softly
in wind lash
a gift of hair
through vision swept
thin movement, too,
your delicateness

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A Poem and a Half for Jack

Let these words
be nothing more
than smoke in the air,
elegant rolling gray webs
vanished blue --
now which do you
need, a cigarette,
or to reread this poem?

Into whatever unlit
corners the vision may fall
you will not find a blackness
like that in your mirrored eye,

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Into whatever unlit

Into whatever unlit
corners the vision may fall
you will not find a blackness
like that in your mirrored eye,

thin window to the night,
black night of your lonely
soul growing large to the
wind and stars of love's idea

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Undying Idea

It is never so dark
That I cannot see
An image of you
Walking close beside me.

(The rain cannot wash away
The wind cannot blow away
The sun cannot burn away
The memories I have made of you)

It is never so light
That I cannot find
A second shadow
Standing close beside mine.

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Poem for the Late Poet

I was enjoying an easy death
when you asked me why
I'm always so late.
My watch, I said.
My watch has stopped.
I haven't wound it in years,
and please knock
the next time you open my coffin.

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Visibility

What happened to the one
I used to know so well?
It seems we're on the run
(Do you know) I just can't tell

You how I feel
Or if I'm real --

Where did you go?
I can't see you any more
Except with my eyes

Tell me if you know...

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shoulder song

touch hand
shirtness of undone air
legless delight running
dark in the night
overlays moonlight
too cool
in windless wisdom
of bright spoken
silence shining

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Quiet Fog

Quiet fog comes floating
Into the city
Into a life

Quiet fog is loading
Me down with measures
Of tomorrow now,
Imagined mists that somehow
Vanish into wind and sunlight,

Exposing, line by line,
The unexpected design

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Morning

Sun come
paling blue
small noises of streetness
and morning without you--

Down lying lonely
with memory only,
my mind is a headful
of nothing to know

my windows are pictures
of noplace to go

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The Exercise of Loving Ignorance

Alone in my room
With thoughts of the wide night sky
I am counting stars!

Crickets chant
Rhythms rise
A ghost at every door
Is born and dies

As clear reflections pass
On what reflecting surface?

(A wrinkled moon lies on the water)

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Your lonely morning knows

Everything's price
is paid to be
a little less painful --
You and me

wiping the dreams
from a sleepy mind
What do we pay
to stay behind?

Promise the dawn
a swift return
Morning's objects
start to burn

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The Way

Beast night
Angels of hidden light
descend
A voice whispers its sorrow
through dark glass
Morning refuses

Where will we find ourselves?
Is it too late?
The touchstone declines every
advance

Procedure for release:
State your name.
Deny that it is your true name.
Accept your black swollen fate

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Someday in a gray city

Someday in a gray city
cool enough and
fog held high
I walk in a wind
for nothing else

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