abstraction
I think I know
the work of which
you are speaking--
this unthinkable blue
like heaven scraped
clean from the canvas
& a gold like the rim
of a chalice kissed
not quite sublime
its wine lent my tongue
what’s been passed off
as soul since Christ’s death
or perhaps just this
square of linoleum
sun-dulled & kilned
I had blinked in succession
not ever thinking how
some sleep might’ve
done while I held out
for miracles & talk of maps
in the hallways of white
upon white I blank out
on my life as if fielded
only by my eye-lids
& this off-light which
left me wondering how
far less I’ve to go on
w/each moment
I’m taken (in)
as much bloom as I’ve figured
you said we sought out this blessing
so as to wed what we’d thought
we had heard w/our own speech
& though I’d put on more of why
I had come to be mindful of how high
it had been not so much us making do
be it enough or deny all we’ve read about
but that one can get squeamish even
seeming to see past what had been seeded
by the mouth with one’s eye on what’s next for us
first night
I sculpt her
out of what
her eyes light
upon (frozen
& inscribed
by this knife)
water scolded
by wind I
cannot see
but descry
dutifully--
here a scare
where the sun
figures less
& less &
there where the
reason ice is
is dissolved
FL (TWO VERSIONS)
AM: THE TREES ARE INFESTED W/ROBINS
& SOUNDS UNATTRIBUTABLE TO THEM
PM: EVERYTHING (EVEN THE TREES
ONCE INFESTED W/ROBINS & THE SOUNDS...)
SLIPS INTO THIS WORLD WE HAD NEVER HAD
ANY MIND KEEPING TO OURSELVES
the nightest of nights
living here w/little in the way of words
as if we’ve been dragged out some palm
like those ghosts of yours with their fuming
worlds lied of by this effort & why not
my tongue has been hung in your absence
blamed for both the wounds and the buttoned up
here where the epic’s bedded down with the dashed off
I will scribble out remarks on this photograph
where any soul could benefit from enhancement
regardless that nothing has ever been
made of me being long ago emptied
of ink and its abhorrence of light
blinked-by & inky
to wind up my guest:
I’ll see what I can do
w/what you’d left me
the key
let me say--one
if you say you can see
the sky in the sea
I’ll see my own sky--
a sky yes all air but for the sun
an eye on top of an eye
yet if you say it is day
am I not the sun--two
is it not all I can do not to ask
if the air in the end
is all we had to say
if not for ash if not ash
the wreckage
another crucifixion
has been started
on the porch of my neighbor
who nods with a smile
emblazoned with nails
this minutest of histories
side noted yet again between
those most crooked of elbows
& how is it the sun has outwitted
the clouds once again?
going back to its business of beauty
this repeating of what’s already been
seen & then quietly discounted
I’ve been cartwheeled
out onto the front
lawn electric w/ticks
& then x’d out of existence
this instance of insistence
that has shirked me
for most of my life
standing still for so little
not one winterized sigh or
the check mark of a lover
& when chance is I’ve stopped
the one foot never knowing
where the other one’s been
wrinkle
yes this tic
says little for
my mindset or
fortitude, what my
label refers to in
assorted press
releases as “belly-
strength”—most
having seen it
as a sign of weak-
ness, being short-
on-spine—blinks
like those ogles
so low-browed
the brain’s all a-
wobble or some
come-on--a wink
less this blown kiss
than air that’s ex-
hausted, past-spent--
spit-shipped in
a sense, my chin
always this un-
holiest of messes—
never the slightest
twitch of nobility or
the smallest stalactite
of ice-like impurities,
my mind not once ever
given the “skinny,”
or “dope,” nay even
some hear say--tipped-
off about the body’s end-
less conspiracies, plots,
each of my spindly
thoughts not topped-
off or crowned but
lead out under stars--
as if these shimmering
asterisks (their glares
long rung up on my face)
were blurring the line
between omission
& sign, that space in which
all of your gods have
been keeping my score
(sorta) pastoral
you swallow aloud
as you feel the sun making
a move for your throat
walled-in black & worked-up--
resigned to its crow-squawk
w/out even one cloud or
lover w/in hollering distance
& then squint or maybe
peer under a blue sky more
white-minded, blinding
than yesteryear’s b-sided sightings--
trees oft-fringed w/light, faultless
ice evoking some consciousness or other
like a snow plow that beeps as it backs up
from here down the plummet
disallowing the urge to resurface
as the sparrow’s wings thrum--
its feathers mostly likely infested w/mites,
o how time’s bowing out once again!
from any singing or such, further
puzzled by lines about us or of twilight
About the poet:
My poetry has appeared in the anthologies American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press, 2000), Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader (Black Sparrow Press, 1999) and Under the Legislature of Stars—62 New Hampshire Poets (Oyster River Press, 2000)which I also co-edited. This past April I was selected as the seventh Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
