Category: Poetry

There’s a toddler out there
swinging mitts on strings —
store-bought woolen pendula
that shatter water — I can’t
fathom the mystery nor
the malice of it — he
disturbs the peace with
extended grasp and
without frowning adults
stepping forward
three geese rear up
and rasp —
not biting but
hissing venom
(funny how
in springtime
they were yellow —
a mild cycle suffered
scantly if at all)
but again
a soft surface may ruffle —
a sun wanes and makes
an absence known —
breath hovers and
is held and
I must console the friend
whose father’s dying —
our tangled conversation
lags and slaps.

Board like an ape,
chewing on my chin
on the slow train;

face sky like a net,
hauling clouds to ground
for my spear;

and the night is an oil slick,
a real pit of traffic,
so I crab-walk —

to where the windows of my house
are the windows of my house,
and the key fits.

That’s business.

Spreading cross-sections of engineers:
The way we move.
Thumbing the cratered cheeks of farmers:
The way we feed.
Stroking the silken shorts of fighters:
The way we lust.

The hot-blooded toil
Of Thomas Hart Benton
Floods this chamber.
Twelve panels’ worth of big-letter
VISION:

Black sows, white cotton,
Steel ships, electric cities,
Soda fountains of jazz and money,
Furnaces jewelled with sweat
And carbon.

Drink it dry.
Drain the hall.
Make a hole of air.
There’s more, always more,
In this land —
America.



Written after viewing the ‘America Today’ mural at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

make my ears bleed baby
scream yerself raw and sick
pour your woes into my holes
bring it fast and thick

make my ears bleed baby
play a savage tune
shred guitars and bang my drum
from dusk til dawn til noon

leave me quiet baby
theres a coma that im in
a sweptout cell inside my skull
but boy the walls are thin

Flotsam of a morning;
Jetsam for a moment;
Like foam, my breathing’s bursting,
Drawn in deepest blue.

Fling my tendrils; take me;
My limp and drifting endings;
Arms and legs sidewinding,
Deep through deepest blue.

Mesh for messy movement;
Marsh of grid and branches;
Force from far-off places;
Deep-stacked, rolling through.

Ground me on the shoreline;
Wreck where wits may find me;
Scatter mine on warm hillsides.
Sweep in and out, deep blue.

My spine,
My limbs,
The divot above
Each buttock:
These grumble,
But grind against
The pitted,
Man-made shore.

It is hot in Chicago
Where foreheads gleam
Like quarters
And rows of brick
And limestone
Crack open
Unctuous sun.

They carry themselves.
How, I don’t pretend to know.
Their shins, skinned.
Their nails, splintered.
Their lips, cracked.

(Did medical staff
Report these changes?)
On.

Holding no voice
Beyond reedy breathing:
“We are human.
We are human.
We are.”

(Another time,
We would be neighbours.)
On.

That wretch —
If he could stop,
He’d find lung for
Treatise, sermon, song,
Civics or bawdy humour.

(Fairy tales effect
Such transformations.)
On.

Those bones —
If she had papers,
She’d be your sister.
She’d sit your cat, stroking
Vast lacuna…

(But boulevard doors
Swing fast to strangers.)
On. On.
Carry on.

What are you doing
hitting marks,
reciting lines,
after cremation?
Grandfather —
you surprise me,
appearing like this.

Preceding scenes planted you
deep beneath roses,
arrested while pruning —
soiled handprint on vest.
The episode passed
without laugh track
or revival —

Just
reaction,
silence,
credits,
death.
Yet, here you are.
Righted —

corrected in fiction:
cast as a salaryman,
set and shot in Japan.
How irresponsible,
I think, and:
What an achievement.
And, sceptical, self-correcting:

A mere aping actor,
performing in the decades
since you drew breath.
But I’m transfixed by your parting,
creased face, herky gesture.
They fill the screen, ojiichan.
You’re with me, again.

Amber! Amber!
It is all amber.

The wood of the bar
Varnished with sunlight:
Amber!

The porter rolling in my
Glass like syrup:
Amber!

The eyes all around,
Blue, green and brown:
Amber!

Call them amber!
They’re warm enough,
For we are wracked —

Caught in hiccupped laughter,
Creased. Seeping to our edges,
Happiness has drenched us.

May it be forever thus.

Angel raises my gaze.
Angel tugs at my locks.
Angel nudges my chin
Skywards to be struck.

Angel caresses my cornea,
Lit with pale fire and I
Am made splendid,

Saying, “Hold the book so I can see.“

Saying, “Billow wisdom in my hollows.”

Saying, “Let me sneak the ending, apparition.”

“Holy smokes!”