draft of unfinished poem

CONTRARY

Dawn leaks consequence.  Where it will,
Hovering over appletree or railroad, all
Bright angles, letting the hopes happen.
Maybe the day is blue, meaning south,
Meaning drought can find a path in it,
Lack can offer it reasons for not being—
But if the day were gray, would plenitude
Negate it?  These eithers make me laugh.
They do not consider my wholesome, how
It depends on neitherness's neutrality,
On tepid clemencies and staling bread,
Room temperature always preferred.  See:
My armchair’s placed beneath a glowing
Antenna which even hums a little to ease
The least concern.  Twilight, chores done,
The overflow of panting elevators appears
Frayed, decayed, despite ferocious washing;
A wasteland imposes grateful ants.  Some
Say the afterlife will try to console our taste
For communism: faraway docility, dogma,
Can you restore such douceur?  Transitory
Commeasurate, the body's border throws
That origin an old lens stained with
The road remoteness of incest.  Tilled bare,
Ground mutes me, bored rascal ill;
I maladministrate the war of handshakes:
Sweet rain nets too much pit.  Where covert
Holes perforate air like hints of dark
Guidance—are sky's ways unsullied by
Route or is it all pre-mapped, programmed
By fate?  Here you and I stay loath: we
Conspire with appears, coy counterfeits,
Zeroing in on the spoils that fill spoons
Daily with hesitation while intention
Awaits all festivity.  All reception.  Or else.
I'd sink sulkwise if it weren't such regress.

///

drafts [unfinished

/

an orphan always has the feeling that he is

occupying a position which at any moment

the real child will show up and assume

you wait for that tap on the shoulder

at which point you move back into shadow

while the real child takes your place which

was only a holding-place a space you held

in lieu of the real child whose seat you

were saving waiting for him to arrive at

which point you became superfluous or

worse a simulacrum or worser a timer for

his advent a countdown to his existence

/

The leaves fall barefoot and therefore
negate their prey, though as always I try
not to swallow the dolls that strangle me.

Link between noose and once, 
incompatible as a pair of dice 
and twins I divvy serenity the gods 
once offered daily to Versailles. [

Lacking the juice sense of it what use am I.

Motiveless love, sheerlost hymn of the true,
can I read the seance-meter to see
how thick with ghosts the air will be tonight;

paging my desk or drinking t-square juice,
over the head of my hearing it falls to pose—
the Bride of Tantalus dances with motherly hands

moving side to side, no stagefright bones her
nakedness, they waft like stranglers' pencils
over my imminent knee-dross.  Hydra

at my heels. A tongue lag in the dialogue
resumes.  Erecting arches for now when

each candle bends over to touch its toes

................

that would have freed me vie
some mortality of means. Manic text
hailing a higher theme each scene. But all
agree it's not me the secret signal sends
I'm what's absent
when Columbus shoves a flag in that cunt.
obsequity/ cavorting

*

If a mask remembered all the faces on

which it had been placed,

it might soon be worn transparent,

worn out by memories. 

And metaphorically I should be

faded thin by those that have kissed me,

that have pressed their face over mine.

I should be rendered invisible and I am.

Perhaps it's easier to walk over hot coals

if you wear a disguise.  A costume

helps one avoide the pain of waking

up and seeing someone leaning above you

with pursed lips.

darkmatter bleached by lightyears

explains the cloud of Einstein's hair

and the klepto's keyring explains

all the closed doors we encounter

but in the real world of inexplicable

you can't help it when they align you

with some minor arcana

born of which I kiss

at the exit expo experts explain

how you got here but not

of course how you leave

they save that for the postmortem

I twiddle with fish-thistles

or kneeling to caress a tail-less crotch

remember that the speech apathy of twins

pimple-pleases more sibilantly than ours

the hiss of the S when repeated

as they echo each other's every thought

must lisp pleasantly as it

resounds through the hieratosphere of resemblances

everywhere lying idle or exile I sigh

using beggars to soothe the streets

probably doesn't help the sidewalks

where they have to crouch wheedling

in the sky where physicists live

it operates differently

up there a cyclops swan swallows

the stars that whimper like thatched cymbals

painting the light in parasol colors

the poor beggar pauses to take chains

and explain why capitalism centerstage

her poems always seemed a lot better after cunnilingus

Salome Herod beheaded have a lot to explain

in the bible where clouds have a lot of hair

Einstein's own coiffure

requires quantic disbelief

beauty is backpedal

the continuum spins the pedestal

beneath which I grovel

childhood fades in untold photographs

even the clouds want down please

her iso-splendor of arm pointed out

where stars like gnawed thimbles glow

and dawn dild on my gildmold lids

after the monster drinks the world

he spits out all the people

and they fall into abundance

if abundance is the opposite of this

encore whose enema eats me

don't want you enough to know you

watch my occupant clutch parts of his breast

foundlings of a tweezers species  

embracesomely he was

and felt this random urge to unhand a juggler

unless the cows (those old belgians) were

conveying a debonair vowel

inept attacks swept the barracks

during some antique sleep modes

they kept their demands sultry  

as zeroes scamper across the clock

they scrounged and smoked a lozengeskull

which prompted this roam-colored ghazal

I am an aspirin-old that's all

don't know you enough so I want you

slavish pensive as senile mic succor

though our flesh is minus now the tongue's doubt

your pout (chagrin of suede) led the nation

 divestment empire as that should be lit

writhic and positively full of loll

it's not enough to know you to want you

you know gridlock season of teasers

you see the bottom of that wishingwell festering

hypodermically

shot into strato

spaced and sparsed

sprayed among errata it waters what

to attenuate my trauma

the corruption of cloying devils swathed in sash his flotsam

doesn't want you enough to ignore you

bereave-voids

spittled draped doped fluke finale

 torso fed the marathon beyond shuddering

sullen torn essence across his false perplex of pubes

fear your sedatives will save

///

drafts, roughs/unfinished

 []

often I prefer poetry to be

not al dente but

al mooshy

[]

the waters of going down

and the waters of arising

rush to drown each other while

the carpenter planes at my broken hands

the shavings must be fingernails

that rub barbmime on the moon

while the world unworks itself

disentangles itself from the great thought

that engulfed it in rockets and roses

when a nosecone whimpers at Orpheus' door

and the ocean knocks knocks

on its driftwood to beg

directions home to my hammerlock lair

[]

there was not one wisp light enough

to waft me away to where I wanted

[]

how to build labyrinths

for lip-readers to run through

sprinting toward the riddle

unstoried as highheeled lecterns moviestars

lie slumped across

begging for sardonicisms

[]

to be married like Eva Braun when

after sharing the cake my spouse

shoots me in the head

is that better

than not getting wed

than ending up as a bachelor like me

[]

your blood stains the gulag

not sure what a gulag is

the misalliance of woman and man

[]

pratfall perfect the days

lucid screamings

the stuff that was once so chaff-lost

remains disgraceful descending

a staircase with a harsh-lit lipstick

on its helmet

[]

deflecting biographies

the red bicycle girl leaned on for solace

riding horses laced with kidgloves

and gongs tempo'd by harpsichord

a tame lamp lantern

the last train to bordertown

momentarily limping I went

paisley piano and lassid storm

the estuaries impassable

weeping into your cravat-sash

pearls thrown off in a gesture that

bares the chest for pajamas to purr

gliding fingers over the flesh

and its ballroom blindness

synonymous with cleft

crying silently at gates with black ruffles

launches and nipples entranced for years

at last one dies

shirtlessly noir approaching

the virginal bike-rack panic floorboards random

gleams from white pantages

marred by faceshots and crowns akimbo

receptions led them both to palpitate

expelled from his white lapels he stood

motionless mannered

venue of blue

vein of whore I never loved

venus abhorred a while and stared at passion

internally appalled complicity of

abandoning my birthlings

incompatible as a pair of twins

and a pair of dice

a one-in-six chance of winning

the vigilance of death attending often

the shoulderblades mad-dog lowcut

subtle gowned and drawn to castanets clicking

forgotten your remedies for the basic

foundation cloud clusters or boats

launched skywards
serenity the gods offered only

to Versailles 

///

befuddled

the December 2013 issue of of Poetry (Chicago) Magazine has some very interesting poems in it, and I thought to write a little about some of them, 

and I'll start with Louise Gluck.  Here are some lines from her 3 poems in this issue:

many months away

We could hear

the stiff sheets became

that time of life

—I could go on, and quote many other lines from the poems.  But that's enough for the moment, enough to promulgate my dilemma,

which is, that I don't understand them.  Take the first one for example:

many months away

—what does that mean?  No doubt it's my inadequacy as a reader and perhaps even as a human being that I have no idea what that line means.

Or "that time of life"— again, I'm totally at a loss.  What the heck is she getting at when she writes the line "that time of life"?   

Presumably she has an idea in her mind and is confident that it is being conveyed to the reader when she types out a line like 

the stiff sheets became

—but what that idea is and what she intends by it, is utterly incomprehensible to me.  

///

another feature poem from defunct blog

/

THE RETURN (after Follain: from Merwin/Romer)  

The sun has washed with white the farm that waits

in ways for the stranger who's late to come,

but he whose force was never sure of home

may not even pause when faced with its gates.

Clothed wholly in the mendicant's threadbare,

his headwear the tin lid of a trashcan,

he will know to announce himself as man

the prodigal: Hey guys it's me!  But where

the mule gnaws roots and the mare's coat burrs dark

and the pig guards the last milk it laps at,—

where the dog has a starred brow and the cat

can augur storms, they have formed their own ark.

Unyielding the response to him must be;

the same it has been since edenity.

Note:

I worked from the Stephen Romer and W. S. Merwin translations of Jean Follain's original.

/
This is one of the "transversions" from my book Homages.

In the case of this poem "by" Jean Follain, I worked from translations by Merwin and Romer (they are appended below).   Reading them, you can see what I've changed or added; in particular how I've "put back in" references to the biblical characters Adam and Noah, which Follain carefully left out.

It may seem odd that I've taken a poem which I assume is not rhymed in the original French version (I don't have the Follain text, but based on every poem of his I've ever seen I'm confident this one is similarly not end-rhymed)—why have I taken a vers libre and done this to it.  

But his poems are often sort of sonnety in their way.  Stephen Romer writes: 

"[Follain's] poems, very rarely more than fifteen lines or so in length, are vignettes . . . "  This is from the Introduction to 20th-Century French Poems (Faber, 2002) edited by Romer (see below for more Romer-on-Follain).  

That "fifteen lines" phrase struck me, and I suddenly wondered if quite a few of Follain's poems could be read as sonnets in subterfuge, and if so why not try doing a transversion in that mode  . . .

/ 

W. S. Merwin:

Welcome

On the farm in its full color

it is on a day of bright sunlight

that one awaits the stranger.

Dressed in fine black fabric

and wearing a top hat

he will push the gate open

saying friends here I am.

The donkey nibbling the blue thistle

the mare in her dark gown

the pig drinking sour milk

the dog with the starred forehead

the cat who can sense a storm

before him will be the same

as in hard Antiquity.

*

/

by Stephen Romer:

Welcome

In the freshly whitewashed farm

it is a sunny day

to be waiting for the stranger.

Clad in thin black cloth

and wearing a top hat

he will push the gate

and say friends here I am.

The donkey grazing on blue thistle

the mare with a dark coat

the pig drinking thin milk

the dog with the starred forehead

the cat sensitive to storms

will be the same before him

as in hard Antiquity.

*

*

Here's Stephen Romer on Follain:

Follain catches the instant and preserves it in aspic, or behind glass that is absolutely transparent: the speaker casts no shadow on his poems, which are rigourously impersonal in presentation—not once does Follain use the personal pronoun 'je', preferring always the neutral 'on'. . . . Perhaps no other poet of the century can suggest, with equal economy, such vertiginous and often desolating temporal perspectives.  Follain is also a crucial figure in providing a viable alternative to Surrealism, which he claimed to 'admire' but knew to be inimical to his own genius. . . . By reasserting the possibility of a poetry anchored in the world, and by inventing a new type of lyric poem, scoured of sentimentality and subjectivity, Jean Follain may prove, indeed, to be the major influence on the best [French] poets of the latter part of the century. . . .

(quoted from pages xxxiii/xxxiv of Romer's introduction to 20th-Century French Poems)

///

one more "feature poem" from defunct blog

/

ALOFT

when the balloon bursts
where does all the air
that was inside go

is it bound together briefly
by the moisture
of the human mouth
that birthed it

poor pouch of breath
long expulsion of nothing you
must dissipate too
nor remain intact
no matter how pantingly
against the outer atmosphere
you might try to secure your
whoosh-hold

and what an effort
what heave and heft-work
what strain of frame what rib-rift
to have to lift to shift around
all that oof and uff 

why strive and huff just
to stave off death
to survive
to be a substance a stuff

to live live as a pocket
a cluster
a cloud
to maintain your interior
mode

I can understand
that having once been
contained in bouyance
you'd want to retain
that rare coherence

you'd pray to stay a one
to remain a unity an
entity a whole in
this unencased heaven

but smatter of ghost 
how can you persist

or save yourself
when all us others disperse

so let it slough
dissolve in draft
little whistlewhiff
pathetic kisspuff
flimsiest flak

up into the sky goes
two lungs worth
of earth
unstrung
unloosed
the exhaled
soul of a boy a girl

alloonaloft
aloftalloon
lost



/
The air we breathe into our bodies keeps us alive of course at least until we expel the final lungsful of it and cease inhaling and die.  But in our lives most of the air we exhale is gone from us and disappears unless we blow it into something of some sort that will hold it for a while, a balloon in this case.  And some people have said that poetry, a poem, can sometimes retain it too.  If poetry is a voiced expression its words are inseparable perhaps from the breath that utters them, and songs are (or were, in earlier centuries) called "airs" . . .  to place one's air into an air that will survive is the ambition of the poet.  The balloon must eventually burst, and the air we blew into it will undergo its transformation (or return) into all the space or void the universe contains within its verse.   
In any case (or lack of it), I think the poem above is not that hard to understand, or I hope it isn't.  Except maybe the last stanza, which is just la la.  The dying mouth finds it difficult to form the complete words of what it's trying to say, and may only express their contour, or in its final entropy be able to pronounce them merely as partial parley.

///

feature poem from defunct blog

/
POEM

Soul to sing of all the Suicide-Ins

of the 1960s and how righteous

to invade the avarice palaces

at Evil Inc or government offices

and from our ponchos raise in unison

rainbow-antic canteens and gulp enough

morphiates for a fatal dose, then call

the media knowing that despite the crowd

ambulances and police arriving

to stomach-pump and IV most of us

back to life, inevitably, in the rushed

roulette of it there'd be casualties,

a few of us would always die each time,

peace we'd cry and keel over wondering,

hoping our perish action gained the eye

of a public busy with headline TV

and cause commuters to sip their coffee

slower, or a mom making breakfast grin,
the kids to hit each other ouch that hurts.

/
Someone emailed me recently about this poem, asking if it was based on real events or if I made it up.  The latter, actually.  The 1960s had Love-Ins and Sit-Ins and Be-Ins and Fillintheblank-Ins, which functioned variously as serious protests (much like the recent "Occupy" demonstrations) or as festival-like occasions, or sometimes both,

but not, as far as I know, Suicide-Ins.

While working on the poem I struggled with the end, wondering if I should present an imaginary contemporary version of a Suicide-In, but finally decided to have it occurring historically in the 1960s (which is why it's "mom" in line 18 rather than the gender-neutral "spouse" it would be if I were depicting a similar scene from today) . . .

//
Here's my addendum-attempt at trying to "update" it— you can see how something of this wouldn't have worked:

contrast with how

a Suicide-In would occur in terms of

today: a thousand poets each in their

lair before an iCam could skype gobble

communal lethal nepenthe in simulcast—

sprawled bards keeling over to protest

the NEA's shameful underfunding

of innovative oilspills, avantdrone missiles and
pocket-nukes, not to mention [........]

P.S.
Actually now I've been thinking about this "mom" in the penultimate line, I think I will change it to "spouse," mostly because of the word "ouch" in the next line.  The rhyme-sound of spouse/ouch works better, and I prefer the gender-neutrality of it also—

and 'spouse' is used in its final version, as it appears in my "Collected Poetry" book—

///