Victory
Ours are the only lights in downtown Worcester
Electricity is a fragile touch at 40 miles an hour.
These are the nights of youth for young inventers
With drinks and smiles, like us, and the three ladies at the bar.
Simplicity is the power to resist holding tongues,
to ignore ethical necessity, to allow change to rout
the phalanx of lightless office buildings. We’re the ones
made of stories, eyes of hallow grounds, we’re figuring out
distance means being flightless in our feelings and honesty
means being selective with our sounds
Our night was filled with worlds of swirling smoke,
poetry if not honesty, and memories that fade like city lights.
Ash falls on our outfits, burning from our cigars as we spoke
about health nuts who would never live thru these Worcester nights
with any sanity or soul. We talk about where we’d rather be;
Israel, Germany, Florence (with a lady sleeping next to me) -
But mostly we talk about going back in time and just doing this more often.
Outside, a different building, a different person, a different whole watches
through eyes without curtains too dark to see.They count off
ten orange cones marking a different route home. In their subconscious
they’ll recall 3 men exiting a bar who entered as boys at a birthday party.
Their shared victory would be timeless as they drove back in the dark.
Stockholm Syndrom
Inspiration is back
to steal and reveal
I hope my hands don’t fail my eyes
or the heart they inform
because the brain they conceal
Doesn’t trust our conclusions.
It can’t know what they know.
First Impressions are back.
familiar things are new
as if more real than real
words made material
A girl’s hair, the wind, a moving car,
A symbol, a sign, a detour
they’re being metaphorical.
Imagination is back
like lemonade on a summer day
quenching but conditional
sweet before sour.
Its always eventually sour
like a last kiss
(that’s the one they never talk about).
Impersonations are back
trade one face for another
because nothing is really new.
Besides which it’s easy,
and unavoidable.
Was I supposed to believe
I’m the only one she talks to?
Temptation is back
to call me a king or prophet
to offer me alchemy for ink
gold for words
greatness for loneliness
exile to paradise.
The devil has inspiration too.
Inspiration is back
the called lover in chains
welcomes the captivity
for a change of pace
there is a tenderness in her embrace
despite its inescapability.
Love devouring. Love devoured.
Nitty Gritty
I
I have never felt a baby kick
I know only my mother tongue
I have never lost a loved one to tuberculosis
nor a nation to exile
nor my life to myself.
I have lost faith to philosophy
only to arrive at a new faith.
My generation has never been tyrannized
or oppressed – despite my contemporaries’ belief.
I don’t understand how a tree or stream
Is more eternal or beautiful than a woman’s body
though I know very well that a woman’s eye
loves a flower because she can see herself in it.
I lie to get honesty. I am silent because I wish
to echo. I think speech is a symbol, humans are images,
and humanity is a metaphor. I think people are foolish to fear
what they do not know – but I fear death.
II
I like the smell and feel of dirt,
old newspapers and books, basements and babies.
I read Plato like the Bible
and the Bible like a dialogue.
I talk to myself in mirrors.
Sometimes I lie. Usually I just make sounds
I don’t let anybody else hear.
I love women but don’t understand them.
Though I think if I did, I wouldn’t love them.
Why such graceful ghosts would ever attach themselves
to this nitty gritty world is beyond philosophy.
Why these pure patrons would bestow on envious nature
such honors when waterfalls and whistling winds
cross within them more perfectly is beyond this world.
III
I have written. Now I am empty.
Having removed myself and others.
Again to the trough of reality
with my sister and brothers -
A waterfall of shifting mirrors.
Fullness calls, emptiness cries.
I claw the nitty gritty to be near her -
I wield fables and lies.
She doesn’t mind my voodoo
she likes to smell and feel
babies and basements too -
She wields satin and steel.
I write, she cuts paper to the floor
creators and creations never more.
A Fish Would Not Feel Wet
No footprints, no roads, and no straight lines.
A clear glass world – no windows no doors.
What metaphor could reach a goldfish
what story about travel could pull his soul.
Does he feel the devil in his watery world
as he plays their passions like a lute
or do they just swim in circles knowing
neither whim nor will?
Does tragedy reach a goldfish
does time stand still. Does he know
the plight of his people abroad?
Does he feel the confines of the bowl?
I watch and nod. Wondering
what makes a goldfish whole.
There is flight underwater
unimaginable, indefinable, caged flight
and in that fantastic, freeing movement
there is something small, a floor to put
your castle on, an entrance and an exit,
a golden scale bikini, a miscellaneous shimmer,
a God.
September 10th, 2008
She said she liked my poems better when we kissed
But now our tongues are too distant
and too tired from all the attention they’ve missed.
She said she’s changed her mind. That the ones she liked before
she doesn’t like anymore
and different poems have become the object of her desire.
He said, “the tree appeared to be further away than it is”
I guess it always does. So when he jumped, he fell.
I’ll visit him in the hospital this weekend. (Rather than writing poems)
He said, “llamas give birth too you know”
he would know, he’s seen pictures.
He’ll send me letters in Russian.
She says she loves him. He says lets get married.
I’ll be the best man. Hope at last for humanity.
But I’ll still be alone.
