poem a whenever #something

TWO POEMS

I have two poems
And neither is wholly mine
Because I carried away lines
And phrases whole from you.
God, god, they were good—
Which is why I had to have them.
The annals of things
Which I have forgotten are already
Too full to add these few more; so
I have two poems

poem?

Does each choice branch away
from the bough of the one I made
so that by squinting into the distance
can I see, just over there and
faintly, the shadowy, bright, brilliance
of the life my life could be?

poem a sometimes

ON WATCHING A VIDEO OF A RUSSIAN WOMAN SMASHING BOTTLES IN A STORE

Oh, ceaseless fury,
slipping along your lake of spirits
and wine, your feet are pocked
by broken glass your hands rain down.
What systems created you?
Whose high pressure pressed up
your low? And upon which shore
will you land, vapor-drunk,
buffeting against
the mountains until
you disperse, are dispersed,
and wail no more?

poem an occasionally

and, god, how
she dances. once she
said it was the spirit,
and now, in the wind,
you can almost see hands
saying dance in the way she moves her wrists,
how her knee knows to bend.

and you hate the world for conspiring against her;
that, once at rest,
the spirit leaves.

poem an occasionally

THE ISLE OF THE DEAD

In China, Shanghai, they call it the isle of the dead.
Not that it ever was surrounded by the gentle rubbing of water, but
it is an island now, an isle, and the lights
from the city around work
hard all day and the not-quite-dark
at eroding it until
finally

there is only one building
on a graveyard of thousands: easier
to topple just one.

And no one here ever speaks of ghosts--
They have all left to the city's bright heaven.

sadaspojf

EACH PASSING MOMENT

now now you locks shining
in the sun framing each shining
star and the pearls of your laugh shining
in the cold new day all the air shining
each time before along the necklace shining
in almost the same way but now shining
darker or lighter but still
and now now you
in
and
always

poem a blahdyblah

_____________
the word tumbling syllables down
to bounce across your ear drum
you turning and there has only ever been
one word between us
how quoting you spoke phrases
which were like but not
what you were looking for like
oh but they were close and
into a more violent sea and
in remembering your face is so beautiful
and if i could have a word for it
i would speak that word forever

poem a sometimes #something something

ON SEEING A PICTURE OF A MUSHROOM CLOUD, AFTER THE INITIAL BLAST

How the head of it just
floats away, only tendrils
of radiation, smoke, connect
it to the base unfurling like my
neighbor's flag on Memorial Day
snapping in the wind.

These are the things we cannot escape.
The blast, just another
choice made in an unspooling,
knotted sting. The space between
before and after is so thin

the men in the bunker just outside the blast
barely have time
to hold their breath
but already their chests are tight--

already they have forgotten how to breathe.

poem a day #something something

and from the way she
holds her foot when
her legs are crossed (how
the line from her leg to her toe is one
long, straight stroke) you
wonder if she is a
dancer,
if she has danced.

poem a day #...14? 13?

COAL

Oh. My black-bodied, boastful bundle
you have returned again, bringing once again
a body, a barely-bloodied bunch
and declaring in the tongue I
will never understand that you have killed it,
that you have brought it, and
that because you caught it and carried it
it is mine. It is mine.

poem a day #12

HAND, fig. 1

Detached, it is a seamonster's skeleton,
a mess of bones pushed together
by some well-meaning Victorian
who kept piling them in there just
because they seemed to fit. Ah,
but how it would move.
One, arthritic, is called
a different species, a herbivore,
its bulbous joints made it slow.

poem a day #11

SWimING
And.
When we talk we
are in the black Atlantic, your back
to the sandy finger of land and mine
to the waves, so
when I disappear I have been swallowed whole
and have to fight my way back
with my breath tight in my chest, the
memory of what I was going to
or should
say ballooning in my ribs, wanting
to escape and spoil in the salty air
and when I do surface
you are farther away, nearer
to the shore,
cresting the waves
and calling my name.

poem a day #10

PASSERIDA AT MIDDAY
Birds on a telephone wire like
periods when you fall asleep at your computer
buffet away, singing. Theirs
is a world seen from on high, where
shining cigarette cases whiz along
the flat, black, inedible worms. "I saw
a whole line of them today," a finch might say,
"Their many points of light like the sun
upon the water, and I became sick
sick with their beauty and song
I had to fly or sleep and did both."
And no one listens to the finch, so easily struck
by beauty where there is none,
so eager to find song where there is
only the variable hum: the horizon
shuddering.

And I would be like the finch, I
would be life-drunk and woozy
if I could reduce life to a patchwork
of light. But the telephone line is black
and the birds are always dark in the day,
those flittering periods.

poor excuse a day #8,404

NOTE: It is harder to write a poem about Andy Warhol eating a hamburger than you may think. I will return with my results TOMORROW.

poem a day #9

DO YOU KNOW WHEN THE MONGOLS RULED CHINA?
Two dudes, to pass
a test, ask questions by Mecca:
The Circle K.

DON'T FORGET TO WIND YOUR WATCH
When faced with that
which is most truly awesome
always proclaim "Whoa!"

poem a day #8

RECALLING

In Thailand I am standing
on one flat riverboat packed
with the hot jostling of people and
my father is on another, departing,
pulling away. The water is black,
oil-slicked; churning from the way
they pass so close by like bodies
releasing from an embrace. I
know he must have been calling me
because I jumped and I don't remember
the other boat, only
the lip of the right boat:

How the rubber coating had
worn away from other feet
in other shoes, landing. The wood,
water-warped, exposed.

And it is often like that. Nothing recalled
exactly how it happened; only
one moment in transit: a mold
waiting to be cast.

poem a day #7

FORGETFULNESS

In the moment the phrase
--at least I think
it was a phrase-- seemed
so perfect, so memorable,
that it could never be forgotten,
not even for an instant.

But now, trying to remember
something about the way
leaves part around my footfall
or maybe it was the sun on her
kitchen tiles all those years ago or
the feeling that the world literally rushing by
has had at least one person on it
to plant the telephone pole, is
impossible.

Something that rhymes with
Maryland. Something that
sounds like people down the block
hammering. Or
something without a rhyme,
something
that has never cast a shadow,
never had someone call it by name,
never wanted, so sorely,
to be somewhere else.

I would fill a book with those words
if they would reveal themselves,
crawl from their hiding place
on the tip of my tongue.

poem a day #6 (happy halloween!)

RISEN

It hasn't been more than two
or three minutes since I collapsed--
one hand to my neck trying
to stop all that blood and
the other reaching for the door.

And now I can almost hear
you telling me
there are things more delicious than brains
brains
and I wish I could believe
you but

I'm sorry

Were you saying something let me in

please

poem a day #5

THINNING

You are on a balcony, you say
over the phone, and it has been almost a year
since I have heard your voice so
its cadence, the path it used to frequent is over-
grown with bramble and brier and
is snagged and tugged out of shape.
I wish

I could say I had kept it clear. That,
in remembering, it could dance, freely,
down. But that gardening demands
four hands and have only two, too
few. Again, and it is easier: Such
are the fruits of my labor,
such is the mercy of time, of pruning:

How the heading-back shapes the bush.

poem a day #4

ON SEEING A DRAWING OF CONJOINED TWINS

Wondering now
if they should be called "twins,"
for though there are two
heads and two brains, and
four arms, their faces
face each others; always
will they have one with whom to speak, never
will they sleep alone, unloved.

Their rib cages like many
parentheses, transposed. And
I could never live without you
and there is no word
for a life without loneliness,
I will never need a shadow
for you are with me. Our two
feet holding us up,

another foot, useless,
hanging like a tail.