23. AN OLD AUGUST NEAR GREYTON ROAD (07/25/99)

I drift through undeveloped weedy plots.
My bouncing cheerful dog negotiates
Brilliant goldenrod, sneezing and snuffling
In hazy August five o'clock sunshine.

The only sound I hear is scenarios
Of the future galloping among sleepy
Corridors of my heat-sedated brain.

This area whose weeds we tramp awaits
Houses, landscaping, families in the future,
But now only the savory mordant smell
Of dill keeps it hallowed as a meadow.

I think of you, if only for a moment,
Who sifted through my youthful consciousness
To tie me permanently to this earth.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  24. ON DISCOVERING AN OLD ALBUM (12/15/99-01/09/2000)

Two hundred and four sepia photographs
Inhabit this disintegrating album:
Dearly beloved vanished ancestors,
You now return, a cast of characters,
In early twentieth century clothing.
You are the lavish earth from which I spring.

Relatives, so young, now only legend,
Stand above sons who romped at reunions
And later grew to lead their special worlds.

Mother and father, you are beautiful.

Father, your 1918 army drills
In itching wool in July's dusty camps,
While generations of forbearing women
Gaze from the silence of crumbling pages.                                  [Home]

 

 

 

  25. PUSHING STRING (01/09/-03/03/2000)

Life's purpose is management or avoidance
Of pain. No precious goals, no more cheap tricks
Obscure this nagging secret of decline
As I lurch uncertainly, splay-footed toward
Each daily milestone of suffering.

Life's bitter furnace burns. Hours, days elapse,
The rancid smoke of living layers the air,
The panic of the here and now pervades.

This bloody humor may be remedied
On some occasions by a taste of sugar,
On some occasions by meditation,
On some occasions by medication.

The question looms: how long is reality?
The aching answer is: not long enough.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  26. WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET (05/08-10-/2000)

I dread the glass. There you, my adversary,
Stand gaunt and wrecked before me, and should I,
Like Christ, order you behind me, like Satan,
I risk a dark and double apparition.

I speak to you, you mouth words back at me
In mocking silence, you bedraggled ruin.
My consolation in this confrontation
Is knowing that you are no worse than I.

Our manifold stigmata remind me
That you and I have suffered together.

I know l feel your pain and you feel nothing,
That I will close my eyes and you will vanish,
That you will reappear in my mirror:
The only enemy I ever had.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  27. SINGING IN CAPTIVITY (05/10/2000)

Beaten publicly, imprisoned uncondemned,
Bruised and bloody, my feet shackled in stocks,
I remember the resolve of a man,
Old, bald, nearly blind, divinely raptured,
Shattering all restraints by croaking hymns.

Lacking his faith and courage I beseech
The blackness above me in quavering song,
Despairing, asking the impossible:
May temblors loose the locks on all my cells,
Set my soul free, heal self-inflicted stripes.

Yet multitudes of doubts rise up against me.
Even now as my jailer draws a sword
To kill himself because he fails his duty,
I fall, a captive of my newfound freedom.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  28. MILLINERY AND HABERDASHERY (06/11/2000)

Peaks to the west, black against the crimson
Flakes of the disappeared sun below their
Craggy crowns, loom stark on their horizons,
Which they shaped long ago from heaving plates.

Over them from behind flows the sea fog
Which assembles itself every evening
In phantom rivers, rolling toward us,
Eeling its misty trails through crevices,

Curling vaporous orange swirls softly
Draping through serrated spiky pinnacles,
Wrapping like boas the shoulders of the range.

Darker and darker, fainter and fainter,
The failing light barely betrays black mist:
Cascading berets perched on rocky heads.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  29. THE LAST ENIGMA (09/23/2000)

Beautiful dreams bring us tears as we crane
Our necks to look back on our fading life
As it speeds away from our stumbling feet.

One would have thought old is the time for comfort.
Instead, the superannuated body
Disintegrates among electric pains.

We have in our heads the visions we will need
To carry us spinning to that subtle curtain
Behind which is mysterious final sleep.

As we speed we grasp no flying petals,
Red fallen maple leaves, white ibises,
Turquoise sunset skies, rolling green-white surf.
No sights, no sounds, no smells. Our minds shut down.
We check our failing memories at the border.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  30. YOU ARE DEAD (11/4/2000)

In this ornate room I see you, colorless
At first, but slowly gaining tint as you,
Dressed dimly in a frayed and faded housecoat,
Move toward me from cluttered furnishings.
If I am not mistaken, your arms act
As though they would tentatively reach out.

Do I want this meeting? No. From a distance
Far inside my head I remember all
The painful times. I reassure myself
By telling you the truth: that you are dead.

We are surrounded by brilliant colors.
You sit before me on a paisley sofa:
A purple blouse, bright pearls, black stylish slacks.

A single tear descends your flawless cheek.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  31. BLUE WHITE-CHECKED CAFE CURTAINS(01/10/01)

I exit the aircraft with passengers
Who brush on by, translucent, baggage-dragging,
Disappearing amid the gray corridor,
To vanish in ghastly fluorescent glare.

I carry weightless luggage heavily
And, trudging upward to the gate entrance,
Find no direction signs, no one to greet me
In the chill of this empty destination.

Behind me in the aisle is the General,
Tall, old, preoccupied with dusty boots,
He bends down to wipe them with gnarled hands.

We find a vacant airport restaurant.
Seating ourselves by a rain-streaked window,
We gaze beyond blue white-checked cafe curtains.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  32. CLOTHED YOU SHALL BE IN A TUNIC OF STONE (03/10/01)

You stand without defense among the crowd
Of forces who detest you from without
And worse forces who hate you from within.

You glide through them, an insubstantial shade.
You whisper to their undefended souls
Calm words of heavenly reassurance.

No matter what language you speak, no matter
How you tell them the one important message,
You will unfortunately materialize,
And for that brief and horrifying moment
You will be seen by them for what you are:

The truth. This fearsome fact destroys them all
And they in turn murder you with your tomb.

Clothed you shall be in a tunic of stone.                    [Home]

 

 

 

  33. ANGELS OF MERCY (04/07/01)

My father is transferred by ambulance.

I find myself standing in the driveway
Beside his little home, confronted by
Two dark-haired foreign men who speak in tongues
With incomprehensible rapidity.
They, torsos singlet-clad, stand over me,
Glaring, jabbering, gesticulating.

My apprehension mounts, I shout in silence,
Where is he? Why do you invade his house?

I turn my back on them, not realizing
The significance of their appearance.

Without warning time bends around me.
I walk along a gray and narrow street.
The dingy hospital looms in the distance.                  [Home]

 

 

 

  34. THE MYSTERY OF THE GLADE (06/19/86)

There sits a glowing figure on a red horse
Under a grove of myrtle trees at midnight.
Blue lotus, old songs, bright decibels, spirit
Of fire. Pain increases, a stark warning
Of further exquisite torture to come:

Howling in the dark the slingers of stones
Beneath the lightning flashes of arrows,
Gargle noisily the blood of dead foes,
Like warm wine dribbling thickly on the altar.

Seek out your stronghold, prisoners of hope:
Stand in masses and glitter like jewels.
Scream for joy as your king rides out to meet you.

Humble and radiant aboard a burro,
Triumphant and victorious he comes.                    [Home]

 

 

 

  35. MOSQUITO SERENADE (10/26/01)

A tiny high-pitched whisper in my ear
As I walk through rain-dripping forest landscapes
Gives warning of a stinging itch to come
And sings to me of millions dead of fever.

Life-giving torrents splashing from the gray
Shadows of stratus lowering above
Also breed death in pools of stagnant water,

A tiny high-pitched whisper in my brain
Reflects the tiny whisper in my ear,

And sings to me of further millions dead,
Now and to come. The stinging itch of poison
Killing alike perpetrators and victims,
Devouring all the bounty of the world,
Transforming us to reeking swamps of carbon.                    [Home]

 

 

 

  36. I FORGOT TO BRING MY CAMERA (12/14/01)

I wish I could prove to you my encounters
With ogres in the middle of the night,
With trolls springing out from under culverts,
With dread and menace nipping at my heels.

I wish I could prove to you the great halls
Of public buildings echoing with marble
Where I stood formally arranging programs,
Where stars of major magnitude assembled,
Where audiences waited breathlessly.

I wish I could prove to you the lofty stairways,
Where rays of dusty sunlight resonated,
Where miles of books resided in steel shelves,
Where paintings hung on walls in muted light.

But I forgot to bring my camera.                    [Home]

 

 

 

  37. I SEE A GENTLE SLOPE FESTOONED WITH CORPSES (03/06/02)

I see a gentle slope festooned with corpses
Who moments ago in these high altitudes
Battled with other corpses splayed at rest
Not far from them across a rock defile.

Subzero temperatures delay decay
Of these grotesque rag-clad victims, lying,
Deep-frozen meat in frozen filth awaiting
Circling hawks of carrion who will peck
Stiff strips of gelid flesh from gristled bones.

Reason is exiled from this panorama.
The boyish faces of these bearded dead
Reflect the innocence of their enemies
Who lie in heaps across the swale from them.

Both sides were fueled by uninformed beliefs.                    [Home]

 

 

 

  38. THE MIND'S REVENGE (05/26/02)

My mind is harnessed up when I am conscious,
But when I fall asleep it bolts the barn,
Perambulating through the dazzling grasslands
Of memory to reap with clacking teeth
Wild random half-forgotten scraps of mischief.

The slightest hint of daylight is enough
To tweak the springs of my circadian clock.

Then it begins: a clownish procession
Of ill-fitting jumbled images, flapping
Across my invaded retinas, foolish
Embarrassing concoctions, poorly-contrived,
Purporting to make sense, but having none.

I start awake, dismissing them as farces,
Of comical, yet sinister intent.                    [Home]