Poems new and old
My time in this house is limited
The walls swell, the floors crawl
The doors don't add up
I have driven everyone away
The roof is caving
The chimney's twisted
But the clocks are never wrong
When I leave they'll all come back
But I will not leave
And I cannot stay
1
There are twenty drawers
but only one keyhole
2
bite guard
rubber band
cough drop
3
Assorted drawers in maple frames
stacked on a slant, askant
4
lint brush
lavender
lip balm
5
A warp of wood
hitched in a jute strap
fourteen years in the making
6
night creams
magazines
and dreams
7
“The drawers are the sliding parts.”
“What do you call the rest of it?”
“A nightstand”
8
is empty
9
nail file
paper clip
flashlight
10
“This one’s locked.”
“There must be a key.”
“Maybe in here—”
At times I arrive to find somebody
has been there, raided it, trashed the place. Or water
has tricked the roof, creating interior weather.
Once the front door dropped a pane, waved in winter.
I had to shoo an upstart family of robins
who cursed me all the way to the creek.
One April I took a bath in the creek,
submerged in a pool, current run along my body.
When I emerged my head was as clear as the robin’s.
Someone said, “You know we turned the water
on?” I thought of trees dressing after winter
when three deer appeared, rejoicing in the weather.
Continue with poem...
Cold water, one dollar
Crows calling in the
cemetery
Book about water
Mud underfoot Ferns
growing out of the walls
Cackles, protestations
Free tours
Vaults, sarcophagi
biers Hide and seek
among gravestones
Marble, cement
etched names
A spigot, dry for years
This land, this district...
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Kim-Joy, Malfoy, forget-me-not. Is it poinsettia time?
How near then are we to the holidays again, this time of year?
A study shows that leaving up your Christmas lights, year-
round, leads to a 19% rise in overall happiness. A higher electric
bill, yes...
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What is Alcatraz jazz?
The sound that can't get out,
dies trying.
Mourning doves cooed as
we sailed along
warped hallways paved
in goldenrod...
Backwards beryllium, controversial cesium.
A collection of crows is a murder, of turkeys a rafter.
I could sit here and spew facts all day. The deepest
part of the ocean is the Mariana Trench. It doesn't
even matter how deep it is. It is as deep as twice the
size of Texas. It's filling with garbage...
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Farmhouse fajitas, nachos, Helm at the helm, old time music, fiddles, a nearly full moon, clean cool air. Chucking my banana peel toward the brushline, cabbage shards. My nose is cold and runny. Hat on, hoody, vest, thermal, two pair sox, crox. Hot dog on the stove in foil this morning, baked potato on and then in the stove last night. Splitting wood, getting wood, arranging wood, burning wood. Excursion to Iberia via Brays Church Road, church there at 42, Mount Gilead, cemetery too. Pastures, cows, farm dogs just chillin not chasin. I cut up a fallen ash that wasn't nearly as dead as I thought, somehow still going at a forty-five degree angle and living on and through the v-trunk of another tree, maybe the second hickory species here, without shaggy bark and difficult to split—pignut? The four horses are still here, two white, one black, one...Appaloosa? I thought that word and then Helm said that word so it must be so. A sparse, low fog rolled in. I spoke of Misty at Chincoteague, we talked about wild horses...
Join me mad man, pony boots, crustacean belt, pontoon beached. Answer again, forget it. Bulletin board bimbo, police sausage. I talked to Phil today, I talked to Phil today. It wasn't a wash, we really, rarely talked.
I may live on untilI long for this timeIn which I am so unhappy,And remember it fondly. — Fujiwara No Kiyosuke (translated by Kenneth Rexroth)
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