Poems
9 New Horizons
When the cornermen arrive
beyond any reasonable ledge,
there is always a return
to the scaffolding of the mind,
guided by a single silken thread.
The world is then imagined;
from the confusing spin begins
the order of the web,
in a spidery quoining of reality.
8
She drops
into the endless,
floating just below
the lintel-between
what is and is not yet-
she waits…
7
From the stillness
comes a breeze, and
from the spider springs a thousand things
Instinctively,
she begins her circles
from the outer edge,
insuring, in the end,
after revolution upon revolution,
her returning to the center
of this purposeful design.
6
She begins as if an artist,
growing more and more concerned
with the trappings of perspective,
soon appearing an exquisite engineer,
moving on a well proportioned map,
she becomes a bold musician,
composing tensile melodies
in a frozen mosaic of
blood colored bug-stained glass.
5
With a squint,
the web grows,
like roads from common paths,
the wrinkles in her face
cast in place
the tendencies she has.
Sometimes the map
coincides with the edge
of the mountain,
but mostly its figure
is an attribute of the mind;
From the temple on the hill,
space is plotted and divided,
into an edge that draws no nearer,
a future that never arrives,
as a single point of view
radiates into nine.
4
She tells a truth,
in the angle of a storm
that collects the hillside
and its people,
beneath a common broken roof.
She also tells a lie,
in the making of this town-
in its temples, towers, domes,
and leaky steeples.
She entangles
knowledge with belief,
and in the individual mapping
of a universal mind,
she contrives a bridge between
the statue and relief,
and with a savage symmetry,
she reminds me
of me.
3
Here,
in the cellars of civility,
where the tornado whirls
about the widow,
Here,
where the child walked between the lions,
in the gestures of nobility,
High above the ocean, now broken
into streams of subtlety,
So foreign is the water
with no teeth,
the portent of the sea,
So distant
is the initial idea
from the mezzanine
of the bourgeoisie.
Here,
the pigeons gather
on an empty hand,
just the same as the problem
posture settles on this old,
imperfect man,
who ponders in the colonnade,
swatting flies away.
2
But then,
there comes a clearing,
from the mountain
of her womb,
when the spider is the species,
and the one moving in my mind-
when the oblique reveals
and inherent frontality-
from this infinite orientation,
comes the mood of meaning,
When the world and world
of words,
fall into a rhyme;
From this life
that she has woven,
and confided in me,
from this desire
to understand
a desire,
between these points
of wonder and arrival,
All is just
as before;
continually restored
in the many verses
of the universe.
1
The City
The city rose up in a moment,
but as I approached
the idea of it
was losing stones.
With every landing I staired onto,
another tower fell.
I could feel the floor beneath me
giving way,
the beams growing thinner
and thinner,
spanning further and further
from their material into splinters of meaning;
The columns,
no longer able to support
the image of a portico,
rolling out of their flutes
as they twisted to the ground;
The walls too,
providing no resistance,
breaching their foundations—
leaving their old footings
for new directions;
The facades peeling away
from what they once had signified;
the statues sliding off their bases
into the crowd
of unrecognizable pieces
that now surround me,
Flags unfurling worlds
flapping their last life,
each joint in my hand
tightening into ash gray mortar
fingers chiseled white—
sifting finely through the rubble
for what I could use,
something that will hold—
steel, concrete
brick, tile,
Identity and bone.
The infinite Corridor
Who will inherit this life
that trails behind,
that lingers in the corners
with the souvenirs,
dressed in their conservative attire,
reading crumpled pigeons by the window,
that flutter weakly to the floor,
This life that passes at an arm’s length
in dim relief,
This constant calm restored?
Who gazes on this folded invitation
and gathers in the crease of wasted time,
Whose final contemplation falls
well inside the thought:
will a jacket be required? Will I?
Who leaps, and who remains,
Who is restless-who resigned,
Who moves politely through
in whispers of agreement
in well-conditioned rooms, and
Who will raise their voice
high above these names, and
Who will never try?
Who will inherit this life
lost
between,
lost in walks defined
by streets; in signs
only of familiar things,
lost in dreams
too easy to believe?
This life that lives and breathes,
but both indifferently,
this forsaken time, this lullaby
that soothes the hours into years,
This long extended afternoon
spent watching sunlit patches
moving slowly across the floor,
until, folding into walls,
they are seen no more.
Who will inherit this life
that dies inside,
This infinite corridor?
The Youth of Ruin
Because we have come so far
to begin again,
under these same stars
that lead us to the place
of our inception and
our end,
I can see the pattern
in the mudbricked streets;
through the columns
and the smoke
that rise above
all creative things.
I have found a bowl
with inscriptions from another
time, and place,
that circle towards the center
and begin again,
although I do not know the words,
I recognize the movements
of the hand that
carved them.
I can see a glimmer in the distance
of an aged carcass, but cannot tell,
if it is the first man,
or the last citizen.
Frontier
Before I begin
among the castings
already in progress,
let me not persuade you
or deny you, but rather
let me lend a contour,
I can only lead you through example,
to the place I have replaced
with another version,
and you can only follow
in the sound of incantations
of long ago communions
from the tribe that we replaced
with another form, but still
we are no closer to its shape;
still we do not feel comfortable
here, and not yet ourselves,
but once removed,
in these halls that we have
crowded,
but not yet fulfilled.
With the words
that beat the form
like a drum
repeats the sound
that beats
the shape,
with only words
we have worded
a new tribe,
and here, in this pitiful gathering
of voices still unable to express themselves,
we have come here merely to regret
the progress of our gestures
and the stillness of our company,
but still we rehearse the ancient rhyme;
will we not unmake
what we know suggest—
is this not the habit of all civilized men?
And is it reasonable to hope
our forms will evolve
the shape,
will the mask reveal the source,
or just lead us
to an unfamiliar place?
If there is a frontier, it is a circle,
and we, the necessary traveler,
seem round.
We move within a place within
itself; with words that speak
only of themselves,
towards an ending
that more and more
resembles the beginning.
I have pulled from the mouth
that still recovers, with great pain,
from our wording and our ways,
from the beast we
save ourselves from
the beast we made ourselves,
and I worried for myself
before the teeth, and
I worried for the animal as well,
and ask, how far can we reach
before the jaws close forever
upon a necessary place,
and we move still further,
but with more difficulty,
until we can no longer recognize
the color,
and we can no longer feel
the shape?
I can only offer example
in the hope I will open you
to another shade of blue,
to what end I cannot say, except,
I have looked back and died a thousand times,
I have looked ahead and planned a thousand deaths,
I have held the armless child
and mouthed the words I thought would help,
but now regret.
On Climbing Brooklyn Bridge
We set out
for a freedom of sorts,
something to resist,
and,
needing somewhere
to begin,
We climbed high
above the city’s
crowd of windows;
The thousands of
machine-edged eyes,
holed in the colossal
stone upheaval,
Until,
with the metal
mountain curled
beneath our fingers,
We left the edifice,
and stepped into
The star-pricked silence
of a slowly bending sky.
Rome is
where the buttressed
domes
vault above the
nav
el, oh
and
the necklace
falls
into the valley
of the cross
ing
of the frilly
cotton border
where church bells
in the morning
swing
from knee
to knee;
and
when the
sun
un-
zips
horizons
with
a smile
and
clouds
that drape
the hillside
slo
w
ly
spread apart-
you can see all
the way to Paris-
and
(this is how)
all the world
meets
in her eyes.
Avenue C
A water droplet
swells into itself,
each barb in the wire
beading to a tiny crisis,
clinging for a moment
and then—
your exile.
Outside,
mouthsfull spill from gutters,
and kiss against the curb;
an open fist of flowers
huddles against stained walls
in another word for wind;
vials puddling into
smaller worlds,
wasted at the drain.
A muddy hiss wheels by
in lonely witness:
a yellow cab
finding its way out.
Away from
the trickling crowd,
a gentle mist down on the street,
turns into a storm before the lamps.
10 Easy Steps to Younger Looking Skin!
I
Do not hesitate
for it grows late
below the sagging branches
where little feeted tails scurry by
and sniff and nibble
at decaying limbs
all graying, limp and dry,
II
Avoid the shallow graves
reserved for death,
where the wind reveals
the empty holes for eyes,
and boney fingers crossed
upon a bed of folded ties,
III
Come, lie deeper than the mind,
join the undead
and you will not die,
put your trust in the credo
of our survival:
IV
And you will live again
and revive, always,
you are young again
and forever,
V
Go to sleep
and do not worry of the seasons
you will meet,
rest your eyes
from the scars of pointy feet
of crows with sagging beaks
that pull the skin from bone
unto a heap
and leave you to expose
among the meager carvings
left in stone,
VI
And you will wake always
and forever,
before the dawn,
before the birds
that keep the fire;
that circle upon weakened wings
that never tire,
and fan the fading embers
just enough to keep the spotted flesh
alive,
VII
Do not try to speak,
you will only grow more
tired and more weak,
as the day turns even later
and wraps you in its ribbons
of discolored wrinkled paper,
VIII
Come into the room
for anything besides,
and I will tell you what you need,
and then provide,
IX
Let the snakes move smoothly through
and squeeze against your spine,
closer to your throat
each time you breathe,
X
Accept the shiny skin as if your own
and feel yourself press into the mask;
the tightening of the steel to brittle bone,
and you are one of us,
at last.
You will live again
and revive always,
you are young again
and forever,
dying.
Be wary of gentle slogans,
anything cannot happen here,
this is not a world-
these are not things to be imagined.
There is nothing real here,
no thought behind the pose,
just the air of circumstance,
here behind the drapes
that seldom close.
This is the world of borrowings,
the image of external things
by which we live,
save, the wine and stick of butter,
this is a cold an empty fridge.
The season is of the river,
not of flooding or dry famine,
but the murky sneaking stream
of floating eyebrows over armchairs
hiding stains in antique rugs,
We are the pale lipstick
on the glass;
this is merely an instance
that will pass.
It grows late…
now I must retire to my bed,
with a drink to help me keep,
although I am so tired
I cannot sleep…
then the creaking of the door,
and more dirt upon the coffin…
the slow turning of the head,
and then the empty silent stillness
that pretends
to be something of the mind,
but all the dreams are dead.