Passing Trains

You, with your face pressed,
can’t help but watch them
across such darkness, each
in her own locked box, the celluloid
drawn along the track—and you,
like a lightening,

with your lit gaze as they cross
or uncross arms, yawn
into bright books,
hold hands up to the glass,
you wonder how long
it will take to be gone

from the parade or for it
to be gone from you, their necks
craning, gestures you know
are not for you: a tenderness,
a tiring away, like the turning off
of an empty car, after hours.


(2.0)
Cause for alarm: you, animal,
watching how light
falls through black trees, on them,
hunting one brightness then another,
the beast in you

pacing in a glass cage, finally
the one kept away
from their safety—and they,
beyond this alarm, beyond
glass and ether,

know nothing of you, your
counting down: one
too raw to consume, too
blank to unlearn, animal,
hunting without the hunger.

My Ownly Souldier*

Take this house, this
half rocket mass I have,
and plant it in the ground,
under mounds of brittle,
ungodly sage; leave it only
a page of Whitman; let it
ferment in the paling stench
the dead know to be hell—
that is, until the idea of
bell opens itself that little
in them, helps them mouth
the shape of friend, the shapes
of country somewhere inside
the plenty. Someday we’ll
thank you, but not until.

*A revision, which loses some of the original intent. But oh well.

My Ownly Souldier*

Take this house, this
half rocket mass I have,
and plant it in the ground,
under mounds of brittle,
ungodly sage; leave it
a page of Whitman;
let it ferment in the paling
stench the dead know
to be hell—until the beg-
inning bell opens itself
that little sound, pulls
the dripping curtains down
to hear, what now we know
to be one ending of a show.

*I can't tell if the structure is irritating or refreshing. It's not intended to be a sonnet, though yes there are 14 lines. Instead I saw a structure forming and followed an instict which created a form: the slant rhyme ending the first line ("house," "this") opens up in the next line (becoming "mass" and "have," divided by the extra syllable). The next line ends with the word "ground" which unravels, in a sense, the lineation, since the following line allows the rhyme, separated now by two syllables, "mounds." The poem unwhinds from there, the tightness the use of rhyme usually allows going slack. Until, of course, the number of syllables between the rhyming words allows for a couplet at the end, a natural progression of the lineation correcting itself. I haven't seen this tactic before, though I'm sure it's been done. I'd be quite interested if you know of a poem working like this. Do share!

Jaw Drops

I would kill myself if it would mean life

for you, my kind country, my kinsmen.

Flanks furred and balcony hedging, you are

this side of sanity, with a mouth full of malice.

Still. Somewhere in the wandering

waits a dog, belonging to a young boy.

She knows what is coming and tries to warn him.

Lovely that, lovely the morning after fire

or rain, how the startled world, already having

licked its wounds clean with tongue or fingertip,

begins with a kind of laughter. Begins

the long sigh of frailty, a sort of apology

for being darkened like water at night.

And what lies at the bottom still looks up

as we each look to you, Holy Land,

with your fields of factory and peopled grounds.

You are not death, nor are you only the dying:

somewhere inside a loosened box, the answers

already seeping out, you wait to tell us

what is coming: it is you and it is not you,

my deserter, my forger, my maker, my friend.

It is what will outlive each of these paling mounds.

And inside what we find, finally, between or among,

is enough of an answer, for now. And for that

I thank you. Sorrow, Savior, my opened mouth.

A Poem Is a Walk - A R Ammons

I'm on my way to see a free reading/tributre to A R Ammons. I thought I'd recommend this essay to those who haven't read it. It's a gem.

Some poems soon, I promise.

Counting (On) Another’s Angels / (Counting Off)*

I’ve never seen a touch
so deliberate: it’s like
watching your mother sleep

moments after you’ve been conceived
and her closed eyes seem to say
it’s alright to wake alone.

No mistake, then, that incest starts
with an eye: as if Night itself
meant to cherish me.

See, what surprised him was the calm
of the wildebeest
once the calf had been downed:

misfit, the broken one.
Listen, I am talking to you.
My body, my house

my horse, my hound—
day-hammered fields
of dazzled horizontals:

Yes, I hope [you] hold out.
I love: the black swan, black
swan, black swan; salty bodies

of your half brothers born
residing behind locked doors;
that field of darkness, a second

city lit from within.
How can I say what it is?
The earth recedes from me

with unrecorded beauty:
a more perfect thing, a number.
Out of the rough

locked ward of sex, like a river
dividing the continent
to meet the sea.

Go home, now, stranger.
Turn back. Like rubies of fall,
leaves packed in snow.

[What he could have written]
[What he could have written]
[What he could have written]

*This was written for an assignment to write a Cento, a poem attempting to take in the voices of other poets. For more info, check out Poets.org.