This poem makes me despair that other human beings have to write poems such as this.
This poem makes me despair that I’ll never write anything so true.
Read the poem. Listen to the recording. Celebrate Danez Smith and his words.
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/say-it-your-whole-black-mouth-0
Requiem
That it begins.
And like a wave which appears
only to lose itself
in dispersal, rising whole again
yet incomplete in all but
form, it returns.
Music. The true magic.
Each day the sun passes over the river,
bringing warmth to it. Such
devotion inspires movement: a cello in the
darkness, the passage of sparrows. Sighs.
The currents are of our own
making. If we listen do we also
hear? These bodies. These silent voices.
* * *
“Requiem” was written in the 80s, in response to a piece of music. It made its most recent appearance here in November 2016.
Still Life with Silence
Not two, but one,
invisible
and stretched between
stump and fence,
filled with
time, defining
implication. Empty
the pitcher. Accept
its limitations.
Listen to what is not.
“Still Life with Silence” first appeared here in October 2016.
The Military Industrial Complex’s CPAs Never Sleep
We so seldom bury people at sea
in weighted shrouds,
preferring instead sealed
containers or ashes
mixed with concrete.
Little girls skip
down the street,
giggling, unaware of their
value on the open
market. Dollars, oil.
Weapons. All fungible.
On the forgotten shelf,
the avocado’s flesh
blackens inside
its withering armor.
How is too much
never enough?
Targets based on
possibilities, innuendo,
cost-benefit analysis:
three men and a camel,
wedding parties,
hospitals, homes.
When morning comes,
they’re still awake,
collating damage, counting
opportunities, massaging
sums, ignoring cost,
harvesting their dead fruit.
This first appeared here in September 2016.
Setting Fire to the Origami Crane (the one floating on Muscongus Bay) at Sunset
Who is to say which comes first, the flaming crane
or the sunset’s burst just over the horizon
and under the clouds? There are causes and causations,
an illness named bad air and another attributed to wolf
bites, neither accurate. There is the paraffin to melt,
and the folded paper resting comfortably nearby, with
a small, unopened tin of shoe polish and the sound of
tears striking newsprint. You know the myth of the
Viking burial — the burning ship laden with treasure
and the deceased clothed in all his finery. But pyres
are lighted to make ash of bodies, to ease the soul’s
transition to the heavens. Think of how disturbing
it would be to come upon the charred lumps of your
loved one washed ashore. And other myths — various
versions of the afterlife created to bend wills and
foster hope where little exists — to which have you
departed? There are no returns in your future, no more
givings, and your ashes have dispersed among the clouds
and in the water. They’ve been consumed by earth and
sky, inhaled and swallowed, digested, coughed out but
never considered for what they were. So I’ve printed
your name a thousand times on this sheet, and will
fold and launch it, aflame, watching the letters that
comprise you, once again, rise and float, mingle
and interact, forming acquaintances, new words,
other names, partnerships, loves, ascending to the end.
* * *
This was written for the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge. To read the poignant story behind the poem’s title (which I was unaware of), visit Jilanne Hoffman’s blog.
Privilege
Every hour becomes another.
Surrendering minutes, accepting
gain, which gravities restrain us?
Strong coffee, books. A smile.
Such imponderables – the measured
digit, starlife, an unmarked sheet of
paper fluttering to the floor.
Sometimes the lights go out
and we wonder when they’ll return,
not if. Or the laborer misinterprets
a statement and stains the carpet.
There but for the grace…
Anything can happen, and frequently does,
but we open the door and step out, unhindered.
“Privilege” is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for order now via Amazon.com and Finishing Line Press.
Snow Country
desolate the reach
of space a
curved line of
white empty as
the loneliness one
feels the tone
is different on
a day like
this she says
unaware that her
words fall like
snow in the
mountains soft quiet
in the roar
no one hears
* * *
Another piece from the eighties…this first appeared here in November 2015.
The Daily Celebration
Life here is good, but sometimes scary. My community has been rocked by four explosions, four bombs meant to maim and kill. Sunday’s occurred just a few miles from my home of 34 years, and it seems that the package that exploded overnight some sixty miles south of Austin at the FedEx facility in Schertz (coincidentally just a few miles from my sister’s house), was sent from the nearby FedEx store that I frequent. All this is to say that no matter how we try, we ultimately control little. Each day, each step, could be our last. Thus I pledge to celebrate today’s breath, to speak kind words and do no harm. To listen, to taste, to see. To feel, to thank.
That incessant buzz around the mountain laurel hummingbirds are back!
Nights at the Magdalene Laundry
Waiting, as if it could
be foreseen, as if influence and love
and truth could ease into the conversation,
she pours water into the night’s
mouth. A little longer, says the voice,
and the wind bends the grass,
reaching, without apprehension, a conclusion.
Which is not to claim verity, nor the patience of stone
crumbling along the ledge.
She leaves when nothing remains.
“Nights at the Magdalene Laundry” first appeared here in January 2016, and was subsequently published in The Basil O’Flaherty, in November 2016.
That Number upon Which the Demand Lieth
Overcoming duality, yet binding: the trinity.
Beyond the contrast of two, it initiates the concept of many.
Albertus Magnus claimed that three lives in all things.
Becoming; being;
disappearing.
In Old Saxon, the month of May is named trimilki, season of three milkings.
Number as quality depends upon the visual field.
The ancient Egyptian sign for the plural requires three strokes.
Points; lines;
angles.
Lao-tzu said the triad produces all.
Acronyms, sports, and traffic lights reflect our ternary culture.
The devil may appear in the form of a three-legged hare.
Witness; testament;
tribute.
Representing the unknowable: I, you, and the beyond.
The figure of completion, the number of the cube.
A Sumerian number sequence began “man, woman, many.”
Curse; liturgy;
blessing.
The scale as a succession of thirds.
Imperfection implies the concealment of perfection.
Shiva’s number, his eyes, his braids, his place.
Root; third;
fifth.
The triangle in Euclidean space.
I walk the three roads to the commonplace, preferring rhetoric.
Three to through, it penetrates the personal, unhinges that door.
The law; the land;
the world to come.
“That Number upon Which the Demand Lieth” was published in Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art in September 2017. I am grateful to editor Susan Lewis for taking this piece.
O at the Edges 