How then to answer so indecent a proposal?
To wage war against it with all one’s weapons:
Rally up legions of propriety
And piety.
Bend arrows of honor
And outrage
From behind shields of indecision
And, all else fail,
Call forth proud dignity
For which all hail.
Now vanquished army:
Strike your banner of battle,
Give up the fight,
Kiss him good-night.
Essentially it is error
To try to understand
Even simple things
About the snow.
Is it male or female?
Does it have a home?
Can it catch cold?
When was it born?
I can’t respect the man
Who dares enough to ask
Questions such as these
And awaits an answer.
In unrelenting swirls and roars the snow surrounds the naked night
And crawls its way between the trees and dares the laden boughs to break.
With venomous and passionate hate the powdered death intrudes on me,
Reviles the thoughts I fain would speak and prods the air to swallow me.
The hill I climb groans underfoot and crunches off behind my tread,
The echoes of my steps sing forth the sacred hymnal of the dead.
Snows pocked with footprints that wantonly wander,
Nights lost in the shivers with nostrils close-frozen,
Glarings from granules that presage sun-setting,
Fireplaces fervent with memory of summer.
Memory now fled with the russets of triumphs
Gone from the field with trumpets outblaring,
Leaving the leaves as the legions left dying –
Strewn after battle and covered with shroud-cloth.
This is the snowtime, the coldtime of winter,
This is the age of the frost-fractured dawn,
This is the hour of ultimate dying,
The eon of losing, the neap-tide now gone.
Boughs capped with patches that heavily linger,
Ice baked in fingers with glass convolutions,
Gaunt silhouettes race in fright from the presence
Of winter, of blizzard, of frostbite, of fear,
Fear now outreaching with dark claws of wanting,
Invading the field with drums drum-a-drumming,
Enraging the earth as the armies of Ajax –
Smote during the battle – then covered with shroud-cloth.
This is the snowtime, the coldtime of winter,
The age of the frigid, the moment when dawning
Is lost, like a whisper, at once and forever,
And spawns in its wake a Springtime reborn.
The street where I live is dull and sullen.
There is an eternal night about its sidewalk,
Echoing from its drawn, frayed curtains.
In the summer it smells strongly of decay.
In the fall of decline, in the winter of despair,
And even in the Spring of some obscene awakening—
Not a poetic birth—more a clandestine abortion.
The city where I live is my street writ large,
In endless, unimaginative, ill-conceived regularity,
The aesthetics of boredom recorded on parchment of stone.
And my city’s people tread the cat-infested alleys,
Pick their way through the fly-infected garbage cans, trudge the circuitous paths from nowhere to nowhere –
Not a poetic life – more a clandestine retreat.
Last night the first snow fell in white innocence,
A hesitant flutter at first, a confident crusade in the end,
A righteous torrent, misplaced and yet welcomed, revered by me.
Its protective arms embraced the rotting hulk
And traced childish patterns in the nooks and crannies,
Never fearing where it flew, nor into whose window –
If not a poetic birth, at least a poetic promise.
This morning I walked the street on which I live.
The soot had stolen the liquid sheen.
Unnamed steps in the night had defiled the unborn dawn.
Even the snow was decaying: The blood of the city
Had melted the will of the virgin to slush by its heat.
Sin shone through the ruptured cover –
Not a poetic death – more a death of poetics.
Three Line Poem
Somewhere a three line poem
Was born but didn’t quite make it.
Poet
Foot and tone and tense and time,
Line, meter and beat;
When people ask me why I rhyme
I ask them why they eat.
Cop-Out
I once was a poet!
I’ll never blow it!
Creative intensity
Feel it
The real it
Record it and save it
I did it
No shit
—–
Cop-out means
a) $20,000 a year
b) $100,000 a year
c) $500,000 a year
d) I can’t write poetry anymore
Poem
A poem is a star,
A hint of truth outspreading,
Transfixed in conception –
The rest is stupid darkness.
This is not a poem that you want.
This is not a poem that you need.
One could view this effort all as taunt.
A random shot that one best ought not heed.
This is not a rhythm that I sought.
This is no catharsis in my plans.
A simple outflow of unbridled thought,
Written by surprised, unwitting hands.
No doubt best that you throw this page away.
It’s either waste or salt upon a sore,
That sincere effort should no doubt defray
Lest burning yet again assail the core.
Well – if you’ve not yet taken my advice
By tossing out this silly little try,
Then listen not to my unspoken voice
To which best efforts ever give the lie:
Against all sense I know I love you still.
Against all sense you know I always will.
The ultimate presumption wends its way:
Without solution, yet I have my say.
Folk Song (Lyrics only –music by reader)
Don’t think I’ll write you poems anymore.
They tell too much, yet make me seem the bore.
(Plaintive) You read, but never heed it –
I guess you just don’t need it.
Don’t think I’ll write you poems any more.
Can’t write a poem that gets into your mind.
You see the words but always come up blind.
(Confused) The words I pick just fail me –
And the hopelessness assails me –
No poems that I write get to your mind.
And I sure can’t write a poem for your heart.
(Angry) It’s an effort that is doomed right from the start.
Your heart shuts up tight to me –
As your words cut wide roads through me –
And my poems never quite unlock your heart.
No poem that I write can gain your time,
You always move away when I try rhyme.
(Resigned) You may smile, and say “how bright!”
But when it comes to spend the night
My rhyme just cannot gain your guarded time.
So tell me why I ought to write you verse?
(Allegro It reaches out, but only makes it worse.
But There’s no way thru your shell.
Wistful) My words just cause me hell.
So tell me why I ought to write you verse?
Happy New Year.
And to all the hurt,
The uncertain pain,
Farewell.
Happy New Year.
Glad to see the old one go.
Not my best,
You know.
You did better, it seems –
Or so you say.
What did we miss?
By how much?
Will it come again?
Or was its essence just that moment,
Real if taken, but
If not, then always gone?
And is it smart to ask
Such things
Just when you’re almost ….?
A few months ago
I wrote an angry poem,
And at year’s end –
Cleaning house – I read it once again.
I’d written it was good –
Not to have to love you anymore.
Threw it out –
Hasn’t been a day I have not thought of you.
Your body,
Or your thought
Or your smile.
So what?
Not much.
Platitudes never bought us much.
Self delusions,
All mine perhaps.
I once thought myself a coward.
Then, in defense, as brave.
Then, assailed.
And now, in this warm December
Wallowing in the muddy sense of martyrs?
Just selfish –
And therefore very cruel.
Don’t have a resolution
I trust myself to keep.
Continued self-confusion
Is all I dare to reap.
Just hoping for the nighttime
To end the day’s hard fear,
They’ll never be a right time
To say “Happy New Year.”
Night View I
I
torn by the promise
declaim to the winds:
Bear me forth
Up to mountains
Where peaks are as raindrops
(clean, unspottled
and not without sadness
unto the fourth generation).
Mark my words, law
is a law
unto itself
and life not much more than an echo.
Why do you wait, and for whom? ……
I
Understood
(once — eons past)
forces:
pushing
inter ac tion s s
BUT
now ho hum well what can I say save
save me lord god yes for I am not yet
of the winds
myself
and want to rest tonight,
lest I lose tomorrow.
Night View II
I
(slit by the claw)
Dug my nails into flesh
and shredded the beast
down to his tendons,
reveling midst blood
of martyred ideas.
I
am sick
in my way
(as who is not)
these days things being what they are and all
that.
I
laughed a bit
(why not, may I ask?)
and scorned tears of death
‘neath thin sheets at night
And fell asleep with fear.
I
know a thing
very worthwhile:
you act it
and feel it
but cannot believe it
inside…..
