Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Tell Me, Darling, Who's Doing the Talking? And Then, Who's Not?



Wilton, New Hampshire




Tell Me, Darling, Whos's Doing
the Talking?  And Then, Who's Not?
                               

...what remains
is the heart, its choke a small reminder to be mindful
lest we go too far
for flavor.
                                                Jorie Grahm
                                                An Artichoke for Montesquieu


What I want to know is how the heart
got to be choke and welcome and when choke
got to be an opening of a vein-

line to fuel.  I’m telling you I’m the first
to admit I’m as naïve as kindness
in its simplest form: how when the poet,

quiet, pulls back the petals of the vegetable
in her hand to get to the heart
all the while loving each peaked piece,

sucking each leaf, all along warning me
not to go too far, not to mar the perfect
knot raw and trembling (somehow

I miss this the first time) in the palm of her hand.
I’m sure all those among us say
at one time or other it wasn’t supposed

to happen this way--such a cliché--I was
happy I am happy, but of all the fruit in the orchard this
is the one that’s picked:

                                and it’s early in the morning
                                and she’s not allowed to be
                                here so she’s had to sneak out
                               
                                and the night all the nights up
                                until now are shivery kinds
                                of nights, especially the hottest

                                and all the clouds conspire
                                the palm
                                the open cheek

                                the pull
                                the helpless letting go
                                (but...

                                                and the only resistance
                                                is skin
                                                is thinning armor

                                                is the wish for a quick knife
                                                is the sigh under pressure
                                                when that knife

                                                and the next sigh
                                                startle and penetrate
                                                at the same time

                                                and afterwards
                                                if we survive, a nick
                                                of a scar

                                                where the corner
                                                of the lip turns from top
                                                to bottom just there

                                                on the horizon
                                                before a tongue
                                                before blood beads

yes--believe me when I say
I am naïve
I have never even touched

the ground
but oh the dew in the night
yes and the wet breath

against me....

Monday, October 30, 2017

driftwood




Driftwood

ˈdrif(t)wo͝od:
wood that is floating on the water
 or carried to the shore
by water


But not this particular piece, the one caught on the waterline
the one that rises yes, of course like the tide, only bidden by
the continuous teeth (isn’t all work like this) of the beaver who keep
rebuilding, keep the water of their sky from falling too low---

I find I’d like to have known the tree whose roots
shoot up from the pond like two bull moose forever hung
and dead now in their rut.  What was it like for the hunter the moment
he stumbled on the stuck carcasses of them in the woods,

two bulls bled out, defeated, deflating.  Does he wonder maybe
after he says shitfuckJesus what it’s like to die that way, the fight going out
of them like a sudden (but then slow) puncture and the panic (listen, wouldn’t
you?) of knowing there’s absolutely no way out now,

enemies locked together holding like glued fists their almost bones
(how did they get them out, how did they (didn’t they?), the game
wardens, untangle them, unhook the intimate latches and see where the trouble
was and poor bastards their way through the woods and say

never me never me and go home later with some animal
drive to take their wife (and for a crack of a second any
girl…(or boy) would do and make and make and make
and bawl and brawl and strike and lock, their pelvis trembling

their breath on the precipice of their grinding jaw?  Didn’t
they?  And safe in knowing they can get out alive, ultimately
it all gets unlocked.  The bulls die together hours maybe days
apart, their antlers their ballsy prize their undoing and the sky

rains on them and snows on them ravens beat down on them
and for a time they are iceentombed and then melted through
and through and the wardens gift them to the state museum, heads
now and glass eyes and completely absent of life.  I like to think

this tree, roots only now and dull bleach, grey as wet beach sand, has made the best
of the rest of its life, and if we wanted to take it away we’d have
to wade up to our hips we’d have to be willing to freeze
a piece of ourselves, a vital piece, maybe give it up

entirely but not know that was what it would cost
when we got in the water, and then, like those moose, or the man
finding them, panic first at our fall, panic a blazing track laid down
and the scorch on the woods road scars to an old old road only animals

and now us, (there’s no going back from such thrust up
beauty) know.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Spoon


See The V: The Wedge of Geese?



Spoon

Think of all the men you’ve fallen in
love with all their hands all their fingers splayed open
on the table that moment they reach for the warm
cup of coffee how it’s not the hand whose fingers
curl into the handle stiff sitting and settling into
the weight
and commitment of the cream,
sugar, spoon with its little mocha pool (once
it’s stirred) beside the placemat no not that hand
that seems the leading hand but the other one
the one that cups the cup that braces it before
it’s all lips and tongues before it’s all

                                                                sssssssst and eyes the lids are hoods now
that look out over the rim
                                                                remember?  How you still
keep the edge of that left hand (it’s warm isn’t it) imagine how oh
how you imagine warm imagine you remember I know
you do being warmed by that hand
your shoulder the curve of your elbow the curve
of your breast (just his finger-
tip) the curve of your back (the whole hand)
curve of your hip (yes) the curve of your thigh (yes) your calf your ankle your
                                                heel imagine relaxing
letting yourself come on into it without coming away
with a poppy of a bruise (it’s too soon but you go
there right away I know you do just like I know it’s only
a cup of coffee and he’s setting it back down
empty and gathering his things and leaving
he’s the first man he’s all the men you ever
fall in love with but never touch ever as if
                                what the first man said
                                came true
                                when you were seven
                                when he gripped you getting into you gritting his teeth
                                                (who, precious thing (his breath was shit)
                                                will ever believe you ) and he pulls
                                                his thumb out and sucks it dry
                                and you fall away or rather just off
                                like skin sun burnt red red red for days
                                of dry pain before its lifted it comes away
                                milky as clear wet varnish the cowl of your hymen
                                in lacy shreds he rubs on his fingers he stirs into
                                the hot coffee stirs and stirs
                                and then licks and sips, never once asking

                                for a spoon.

Friday, October 27, 2017

When Beside Your Bed Is the Last Time Beside Your Bed






When Beside Your Bed is the Last Time I’m Beside Your Bed      



When we can’t alter ills that upset us,
we will change their names to prevent compassion
from disturbing our unique composure:
                words to deny worlds.

Vocabulary voids original sin;
calvary of the lie reaches Calvary
just in time—to bungle Christ down from the cross;
                But: no nails, no Christ.
                                                                Donald Hall
                                                                Let Us Meditate on Virtue

I

When what? When is what is supposed 
different than what is
to see?  When the wind and water?  When
the rale on the new machine?  When
will they bring it all to measure?

When what’s left of her lungs?
When, after all those months with or recovering
from?  When again pneumonia?
When to cry after stepping on the lit cigarette?  When it singed

and riffs and rims in the bedroom
carpet but also on the bedspread?   When to her chin?
When bit by bit?  When she falls yes,
but when she's some apart or completely?.  When barely barely?  When out of her

woods but when did she start?  When
coughing stops? When again blood? when again piss
and puss?  when again?

II

I think in retrospect

these days (how else)
like Keats who knew before
he left England with Severn
he’d be gone out of there

forever eked squeezed
his fists a lung a lung
his fists a lung and me sitting
near her gurgling it was

like this for his painter
friend the only friend
who could or did or would take time
the time (something profound

was happening
here) to accompany him

all the way to Rome...     and the room
closes in on both of us.  In the end both
all of us will shrink and shrivel
from the body dying

but not before we (Severn’s and me) ink
it all in the brief alive but still
face the stroke on the paper the way
just moments ago

(years and years now ago)
we’d stroke the hair/the cheek
and see now how like April
our leafs one by one and leave

in the beginning but not before they unfurl.
And how quite like late November
they curl and crumble and devote
their numinous pieces
to the wind and soon to come snow—

III

Keats.     he      ...     well    ...    he     ...      why
wouldn’t he
had his doubts close
as he was to the mouth

of the drainpipe close as he was
to the intake of a breath listening
his brother (one gone one gone
to America) his mother




right? he must’ve                            running
or all he could do
in the end was float
to Rome to take the air there

or let the air take him
with Severn tending him a friend
a breath
a fresh word

a string let out like knots
off the
                                what side?
                                                                of the ship

to guess the wind
                                speed
                                                when will she be…

Nurse?  I touch my mother's face maybe
the way Severn touched Keats---pen stroke---going true
while there's still a bit of breath in the throat
in the bubble coming up to the lips
to the nose and so is this the moment?  or is this
the moment?  What about his?  But there’s no one true
left to ask





Saturday, October 14, 2017

I Have to Say





I Have to Say

Part of me dims with pain,
Becomes the stinging flies…
Part looks into your light
And lives to tell you so.
                                                James Merrill
                                                “Last Words”

For Becky B.

I haven’t seen enough

                of autumn—I haven’t I can’t be

                                                content
               
                with a drive by drove through

                                                on my way to

some stop quick slip it all in and make it
               
                                home
                                               
                                                to supper at dusk a dusk under

                the and over the

                                                tree I walk beneath I haven’t seen

                                enough see this girl I knew once she

                                                                came though sometimes

                                                sober

                                sometimes (k) not she’s not

now plain and simple she’s not and won’t ever be

                                again

and I wonder if I hope so she saw

                                on that rainy day before

                she
                                dropped

dead

                if she thought

                                                                yellow
                                look
                                                yellow I love yellow

                                it’s raining it’s been raining all the way back

from Phoenix I’m about to scream see

                                this shits real it’s dope it’s lit look

                I haven’t seen it since I got out

                                I’m clean I’m stayin’ clean

                                                baby don’t not in front of me
                               
                                                                                                don’t I know listen don’t

                I said I won’t no no
                                                                   I'm supposed

                                                                           to stay
                                                        sober

                                                ok                                           ok

                                                                just this one more once one more

                                                                                last time

what whah’d you say too late
                               
                                see all that yellow
                                                                that’s deep that yellow see it the sun shining

                fuck it’s shining in the rain

I haven't seen enough
I've already seen 
                                      (this is number fifteen second one this year)
             enough


                                                

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Today Memory is a Staked Cow Grazing




Today Memory is a Staked Cow Grazing

These days remembering:

                                an dull throb yeah? won’t you say? straight through

memory
it takes excessive

                lengths makes
                                                itself the iron

                                stake we’ve chained

                out our dairy cow every early morning

                                                                she’d steam release the heat

of the night of the barn the links clink

                                while she grazed raised her great

                                                black and white face and made to look

into me and I watched and wanted
                                (but I was afraid
                                                of those horns)

                                to talk her into
                               
                                                knowing me

                the way people should
                               
                                                but would not didn’t
                               
                                                                                want to

straight as that iron stake and she’s the strangest sun

                                dial her moving mowing down

                                                the sometimes green sometimes blond

grass and along the way

                                                random

                                                                and instinctive as need

                her piles

                                of shit;

In the closing

                                                of the day she’d walk

                                right through it she would

                                                                flatten everything she made her way

days soft clay soft warm wax soft
               
                                                making her way now their way

                                                                                                                                falling off

                with each lift

                                                                these days
                                                (we stand and eat we need what maybe we need we press
                                                                the cool two barrel muzzle
                                                                                we use
                                                                                                                to let her loose
and we walk through too
                               
                                we leave
               
                                                                                tracks all the way

                to the length of the chain

                                we’re all every one of us

                                                staked out

                                                                                                on

                                                                                               

                                                                grazing

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

I Think Grief Maybe Doesn't It Starts Like This:





I Think Grief
               
Maybe—Doesn’t It?—

Starts Like This:

Suppose you leave today
Suppose you take all your own
                music and sit-
                                                uate it
in the speakers
of your car loud
Suppose you sweat leaving
the driveway but don’t look
back not even for that
perpetual
                                last
                                                check
perhaps
or Suppose worse you don’t stop on your way
                out don’t even look
or maybe Suppose
you can’t see me or find time for me the time
                a brief rendezvous:
                                I told you they were showing
                                Thoreau not far from here I wanted
                                to take you the last time
                                I called you from Walden
                                                holding you
                                                in the phone
                                                beside an old cairn Whitman wrote
                                                about, setting stones
                                                when he stood here
                                I called you
                                                mud on my shoes
                                                I’d slipped in the marsh
                                                across from the pond
                                                and then taken it all       
                                                back home
                                                with me:

where he walked...

and suppose you went too

                                anyway I’m afraid

maybe
                you are too far away now Suppose suppose

just suppose

you’re supposed to leave today
Suppose you stay
one more day waiting
the snow the wet heavy snow-- Listen it’s just one day
into Fall--the snow
is still
months away

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

For Emeline One Hundred Years Old



For Emeline One Hundred Years Old                                                      


Tonight let us fill
our wineglass without fretting about the futures, which only
sours the Beaujolais.  Forget tomorrow’s blueberries; eat todays.
                                                                                                                Donald Hall
                                                                                                                Camilla, Never Ask

Today you would have been one hundred
years old.  Your hands and feet.  Your
eyes.  All of what you’d heard and smelled.
Your body and the blizzards and the scorch
the constant swell you settled by moving
all the time moving through the world
the way water moves through the world

                                the way you’d rise
                                from the night and
                                light a fire
                                and soon there are warm
                                biscuits and butter
                                and a cup of coffee
                                and the sun’s not even
                                up

Today you would have been one hundred
years old.  You made three babies and they
made their own and some strayed
and some remained and the way was long
for all of them. 

Today you would have been one hundred
years old and it’s giving rain.  If you were
alive you’d take it like a skein of your favorite
yarn all knots on one end clear
for miles on the other.  As it comes.
In your hands brief enough to make it
another row and another row and another
nothing coming undone.  Mother grandmother

we cover our bodies with your body
with your hands and wrists with your garden
green beans your blueberries your soft cheek today
today you would have been one hundred!

One Hundred Years Old.!

Sally




Sally:

a sudden charge out of a besieged
place against an enemy, a sortie 

Today back and forth brief
like batting an eye-
lash and the watery dust
she tells me after they took her
uterus laparoscopically and the
fallopian tubes
and all the tools she’d used
to make those babies
she’d say with righteous
distaste the cancer’s
gone they’d got it
all not a cell seen in all
the other cells all the other
peoples bloods (she’d lost
some of her own some-
where) it seems to have come
quiet to a close after that
assault like a new bully
who’d never been up
against the likes of her
done up like Joe
Lewis or I like to think Sally
Ride taxiing down the run-
way after all those days
in space a lone floating bee
seeing the bloom far off
homing in homing in

Monday, September 18, 2017

Extubating You





Extubating You

to walk out into that kind of cold while holding you knowing I'd walk back, I'd have to, alone...

Because it's inevitable: the tongue on the rim
of the mug touching the newest chip of the now
exposed unglazed clay, or if not the tongue, the lip

yes, the one I cut sliding up against writing
about you even though it was all true and couldn’t be
couldn’t be! truer, like the tree bent from

the left to reach the side of the beaver pond path
gone ecstatic stiff one year in a quick ice and blizzard
wind it dipped its head and shoulders in

the water and it cost the tree it’s entire
backbone so that today walking by is walking
under her arch otherwise it’s water

and who can walk on that or who wants to
even in clean ice that hasn’t seen snow
yet you know how it all slows down and yields

and the chips and the glazed gray eye of it
come later much later, in the  middle where it’s thin
or thinner where it suffers

a bob house and a man where it once fell through
and him too, bed and all but he was froze
solid that’s what someone said but he fished

still living while I drew out slush from the new hole
I breathed back into it and soon the lick of wet
and dry wet and dry split the lip and it bled

and I kept at the blood I kept it all to myself
sometimes between my teeth sometimes a pucker
sometimes nothing but me dreaming I was

walking beneath that birch that went out
and over into the pond and still does it goes out
and over from one edge of the world

to the other they say those that’s starved
of oxygen start to hallucinate like a fever’s took
their brain and they start saying things crazy


things so ok tell me how can any crack
in the glass or the back woods path like that
while I catch my breath to jump be avoided?