White flower, Dahlia,
though you’ve withered,
still smell sweet
from the waste bin of withered flowers.
From deep buckets that squat like rotting
stumps on the puddled tile floor,
drops of water that have fallen through
the soil-roofed ceiling echo faintly.
From whence exclaim the dead:
“We too once listened
to wind rustle autumn leaves;
and the sensation of breathing
cold air refreshed us too
out of our [...]
Monthly Archives: June 2009
Dahlia
Posted in poems Leave a comment
Empty Buildings – Night in New York
Illuminated by plane-warning floodlights,
clouds wisp past the tops of tall buildings
whose insides are empty of life at this hour.
Walled-in halls and rooms sectioned into
squares leveled stories upon stories above
ground, fixed as firmly as centenarian
trees by their grappled root structures,
are dark and unseen, though lit ambiently
by light that has somehow crept like vine
up the walls and [...]
Posted in poems Leave a comment
Carnation Ave & Edgecliffe Dr
Three one-clawed toes that stem
from wrinkled, stick-like legs
are all that’s left to indicate
this tiny pile of red plastic sun-baked
grey-feathered gore is the squished
remains of a little bird, beside which
lies a fallen spring blossom, brittle
and browned; protected from the wind
that threatens to blow it away.
The thorn tree
She climbed the tree whose bark was spotted
everywhere with thorns.
Out of the punctured skin of her palms
a hundred tiny wounds bled.
Her body though she tried to bear it
lightly weighed and hung heavily
as she grasped and pulled her way from branch
to branch. Her clothing got caught and tore.
When she reached the top she sat
and the thorns [...]
Posted in poems Leave a comment
At the bottom of a ravine
You lie broken-boned and cold, unable to move,
Among the smashed pieces of what were
Your earnest dreams for the future:
to disengage yourself from them and see
if you could crawl out of this hole liberated
you threw yourself down here.
But in all the reflection the dark emptiness
Here lends you you find there is
No [...]
Posted in fragments Leave a comment
Orange trees grow in the other-
Wise empty area surrounding
The blossom sculpture. Someone hungry
Picks one that seems softest
And tries to peel it but the skin won’t
Give way to perfect edible wedges;
The thumb’s attempt to break the epi-
Dermal layer cleanly
Yields a gaping hole juice
Squirts from. It seems best to simply
Hold the hole with the lips
And squeeze the [...]
Posted in poems Leave a comment
Pop songs
Pop songs from twenty years ago
Have played on a million occasions
In places around the world.
A force drives the human mass
To go to great pains to preserve
Remnants of culture’s past.
With every inexorably mounting hour
We’re being brought to unprecedented
Moments in history
Where the past increasingly looms like
A mountain of trash impinging the limits
Of our peaceful city;
Obstructing the view [...]
Posted in poems Leave a comment
Street Scene
The square sidewalk stone chipped
In one of its corners is smeared
With the shit some shoe’s slid in.
The tree rooted in the dirt pit
Situated contingent to the stone
Is sickly and bent, supported by a beam,
Also bent, of wood cut in a lumber factory,
Fixed to the tree’s thin trunk
By twisted wires so thick a mischief-maker
Would be at [...]
Posted in poems 2 Comments
Skylit
To the dark space,
Beheld in wide sleepless eyes,
In the high-ceilinged skylit room:
Skylit
No moon tonight
The cloud that hangs over the city
Never lets the starshine through;
The light that renders visible
Walls and the black shapes of furniture
Is streetlamps reflected in smog;
Reflected
As hunger or cold or heat
Are reflected in the cat’s yowls;
As unintelligible violence, unassuageable agony
Is reflected in the [...]
Posted in poems Leave a comment
Temperature Differential
The plant leaves shiver
In the draft coming in through
The crack in the open door
Due to the temperature differential.
In a bar across the street
A boxing match is on television.
The boxers’ movements are graceful.
The view is blocked by a bus.
Posted in poems Leave a comment