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.
Quite the interesting mag back in the day. This particular issue saw the likes of Bukowski, Ivan Arguelles, Lyn Lifshin, Norm Moser, Sheila E. Murphy, and, well, me, among others. I was thinner back then, as was my poetry.
no more than
the slow grace
of light turning
the leaf so
patient in the
air and colder
now that sense
of permanence unfurled
it is not
long to wait
as Wang Wei
said in his
letter I listen
for a sound
but hear none
Originally published in 1987 in a short-lived publication called The Balcones Review, this is the opening of a longer work. Today, as I look out my window at that same tree, I hear the birds, no longer silent.
Uccello
the wind is what
the stillness
desires to say
each instant
collapsing into itself
like a bud
returning
to the seed
listen
the birds in my tree
are silent
as echoes
before their brief
lives are
silent
something thrashes
in the leaves
the feather
spiraling
slowly
is not only what
it is
as the candle
is more
than flame
or a moment
curling
to darkness
the question
is of clarity
I built a frame
but placed
nothing in it
the wind
blows through
quietly as if
between silences
there exists
only silence or
light
the familiar embrace
unfolding
The formatting isn’t right. Not wanting to waste more time on learning code (hey, I barely have enough time to write), I’ve decided to instead provide a pdf of how the poem should look. It might be interesting to compare the two.
I have three poems appearing in Ditch, a publication “celebrating the innovative, the non-conforming, the radical, the alternative, the avant-garde, the non-linear, the abstract, the experimental.”
http://www.ditchpoetry.com/robertokaji.htm
I’ve three poems appearing in Ijagun Poetry Journal:
http://ijagunpoetryjournal.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/robert-okaji/
It’s nice to have found a home for these.
For those of you who might care, I’m featured in an interview in Middle Gray.
I dug this out a few days ago. It originally appeared in SPSM&H (perhaps in 1986?), a publication devoted to sonnets. It’s interesting to look at these old poems. Some seem to have been written by a stranger, long ago and far, far away. This one somehow seems closer.
Apricot Wood
I built a frame of apricot
wood. This was for you. The clouds float
through it even as I sleep. You wrote
once of wild herbs gathered and brought
to a lovely girl, an offering not
of passion but of some remote
desire to hear a word from the throat
of the Lord Within Clouds. I thought
of this as I chiseled the wood.
Last night it rained. I listened to
it from my bed by the open
window, hoping that the clouds would
not leave. This morning two birds flew
by. It is raining again.
O at the Edges 