My poem “If We Burn,” which has appeared on the blog twice, is featured on Imperfect Life, an Australian online magazine. It is, sadly, topical.
Poem Featured on Imperfect Life
48
Tag Archives: peace
Mockingbird
Mockingbird
Withdrawn, it unfolds
to another
voice, like that
of a child lost in the wind.
Or, lonely, it rises from its place
and sings, only
to return and start again.
The pleasure we accept derives from
the knowledge that we are not alone.
Each morning we walk out and sit
by the stones, hoping to observe some
new patterns in his life. What we
see is an answer. What we hear is no song.
* * *
“Mockingbird” made its first appearance here in January 2015. It was written
in the 1980s, probably around 1987-1989.
Gaza
Gaza
We presume affliction by census,
whereas light
requires no faith.
Is the roofless house a home? When you call
who answers? The vulture
spreads its wings
but remains on post. Shifting,
I note minute of angle, windage. No
regrets, only tension. Breathe in. Exhale.
Again.
***
“Gaza” first appeared in July, 2014, and is included in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform.
If We Burn
If We Burn
What flares instead to replace our
privileged nights? And which
assemblage of words could reorder these
deaths into comprehension,
change I can’t breathe from epitaph
to actuated plea for help?
Are words ever enough?
Can we stack our indifference and fear
into a mile-high pyre, and torching it
watch them rise to nothingness,
disappearing through the clouds
into the streaming light of cold, dark stars?
Raise your hands and sing. Blow softly
upon the ember. Inhale and recall.
Do you still feel? Will you breathe?
Every fire needs oxygen.
“If We Burn” first appeared on this blog in December, 2014. It’s also included in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform.
Having Survived Myself I Lean Away
Having Survived Myself I Lean Away
You know that
but not
why
the mockingbird mocks,
or how one note
marries others,
forming blissful
chords. And the skies
flaring each night
betraying your willful
ignorance,
while you paint
the words for love
in seven languages
you can’t
speak.
Where are you now,
whose bodies
have you denied,
wrapped in linen,
bagged or boxed,
arriving unseen?
Sagging, I observe your
counted victories, the
smirk claiming
exceptionalism
and destiny or
nobility of purpose,
as even your own shadow
recoils.
Variations on a Theme
Variations on a Theme
1. The Long Night
We envy the shadow its attributes, its willingness to subside,
but what of its flesh?
I lay in the field and wept.
Think of the fragrance, the moist leaves
enveloping the still
warm body. In retrospect, I realize that I should never have left, that air
returns to voided space despite all attempts to disavow
light, that wind and rain and soil alike filter through the chest’s
cavity, that stones may bear one’s touch in perpetuity.
At nineteen, death had gifted nothing to my world.
At twenty, little else remained.
So close, so lovely.
2. The Loneliness of Shadows
Light collapsing around a point. The two-headed flower.
In my dreams, no one speaks.
Not the thing itself, the bud bursting forth, petals ablaze with color,
but rather change: the process reinforced.
Sleep seldom shows such kindness.
Or its fruit, redolent of sun and rain, withdrawn and shriveled,
and finally, ingested.
Yesterday I woke damp but unafraid.
3. Alchemy
Stones never talk, but they rise from the earth, appearing as if by invitation.
The way silence lines an unfilled
grave, which is to say as below
so above, an infinite murmur open to the night.
And other notions: transpiration.
Waste.
Sublimation. Calcination and burning.
At times I have withdrawn
like water from the air’s
body, fearful yet reckless in the act.
That evening the moon flickered and the shadows lay at our feet,
and all the words we never framed,
the bitters our tongues could not know, the wasted
music and abandoned caresses, those words,
sighed into the ground, leaving you adrift, alone.
But how else might one transform darkness to light?
Or the reverse.
This originally appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine in April, 2014.
My Poem “Ashes” Reprinted on The Reverie
My poem “Ashes,” which appeared in Extract(s) two years ago, has been reprinted on The Reverie Poetry Journal‘s blog:
Nocturne (Blue Grosbeak)
Nocturne (Blue Grosbeak)
Why tremble
when nothing
arrives to be seen?
The architecture
of the day
comes and goes
in the same
heartbeat,
a disturbance
more felt than heard.
But listen.
The grosbeak sings
his presence
and departs,
leaving behind
the echo
of a motion
blending with night.
The air is cool.
A leaf utters
its own message
and falls
unnoticed.
Nothing awaits it.
Endurance, 1946
Endurance, 1946
Unaware of the day’s movements, she paints her
reply to the bracelet of light flaring above
the horizon. Tomorrow’s edict is gather,
as in retrieving a sister’s bones in black
rain, reassembling in thought
a smile that could not endure despite
its beauty. I seek a place
of nourishment and find empty bowls.
What is the symbol for peace, for planet?
How do we relinquish the incinerated voice?
Under the vault of ribs lie exiled words, more
bones, and beneath them, relentless darkness.
And whose bodies mingle in this earth?
Whose tongue withers from disuse?
The eight muscles react to separate stimuli,
four to change shape and four to alter position.
Turning, she places the brush on the sill
and opens the window to the breeze.
Exit the light, exit all prayer. Ten strokes
form breath. She does not taste the wind.
Mockingbird
Mockingbird
Withdrawn, it unfolds
to another
voice, like that
of a child lost in the wind.
Or, lonely, it rises from its place
and sings, only
to return and start again.
The pleasure we accept derives from
the knowledge that we are not alone.
Each morning we walk out and sit
by the stones, hoping to observe some
new patterns in his life. What we
see is an answer. What we hear is no song.
O at the Edges 