Back in a Few Days

I thought it might as well have been
god's shadow in the sunset
coming down the basement stairs

he brought us orange juice
candy bars and cold cuts
and clean T shirts in a shopping bag

boys I had some fight left then
these scars I got from throwing
all my weight against the chains

it was strange
I thought he looked so proud of me
as he smeared petroleum jelly on my cuts

"next time
maybe next time son"
I still get these restless dreams

but so yes boys yes I know you're angry
I know that you don't understand
but isn't this called love?

so yes next time boys
I should back in a few days

Forecast

I think that it could snow forever,
      she said.
I did not reply but watched
her cigarette smoke slowly rise
into the lamp shade.
A plate of bones and crinkled tin foil
grew cold and sticky on the table,
the windows black
like blowholes in the frozen arctic.

I thought of a painting I once saw,
a sailing ship its rigging thick with rime
propped up on white jagged shoals.
Tiny men were dragging boxes
of hardtack and brined meat
      out over the bulwark
down onto the vast ice,
strapping blankets round their pant legs
with thick rope.

It might, I said,
There's places
where the snow has never stopped.

It would be very silent.
She crushed her cigarette.
I listened and the windows whispered
with the voices of the city.
      Cars
and creaking bicycles, people
singing, drunk already, music
from a bar across the street.

There had been snow in the forecast.
We would have to see.
You ok?, she asked.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead.

I had never been so scared.

Another love song

but go out in the hasty silence
of the town that rains

for now
to be a witness to the beat of time

a child
will answer echoes in the concrete underpass

as her mother
waits the rain out in the blue mist of her phone

ride on
past the cemetery and the soccer fields

ride on
when a roebuck leaps across the road

bridging the canal
out into the fields where distant sunlight

lying
like a pall over the far edge of the land

is held
by wind and water in a thousand hands

it never stops
this time but the rain does

and there is nowhere
to hide

(edited 26052015)

De Babbeldrook

Exactly unlike crystal

a lady walks by
at seven thirty
every day

she's dressed in shades of sun bleached lichen
carrying a plastic shopping bag

her styrofoam bright hairdo
immovable
despite the morning breeze

everything so arbitrary
but incredibly precise
-in almost every way
it's exactly unlike crystal

life spills
from the magpies’ chatter
as the morning lady turns the corner
into other streets

it soaks the early autumn
of my skin and bones
watching from their concrete box
stiff from slightly overthinking

it all depends on everything
and in the end?
-but nothing ever ends

man there ain’t even a beginning

(an earlier version)

Summer Showers

a spider's waiting out
the summer showers
in the corner of the window

though I have nothing to wait for today
still -out of habit
and a deference to nature-
I too will watch the raindrops smash apart
from behind my book and coffee

it turns the street
into an asphalt mirror
reflecting the first blue bits of sky

much later
when I do not sleep

the rolling thunder

Bowing

rain stains
the evening
with its whispered secrets

so returning
life to roots
that the clouds had borrowed

leaves and grass
stalks hurried
cyclists bow and bow incessantly

so courteous each
on their heart-wide
rainy corner of the night

until they disappear
from sight

Cuckoo {or 'Dordogne Tonglen Song'}

for half a breath
the whisper-thin world
seemed real.

a cuckoo called in the forest
and the stars slowly set
above the hill.

but mist rose up
between a thousand grasses
and took it back again,

dissolved it into prayer,
the living heart
that holds all momentary things inside.

we’re all alone with everyone
and every thing that digs
and swims and flies.

the breath turns endlessly.
a thousand grasses hand it on
to every mist soaked life.

it’s calling out across the valley,
across the slowly turning sky

______cuckoo
______cuckoo

Gifts

The evening gave
a cormorant’s reflection in the reeds,
flying past the world
at sunset.

The morning gives us fog.
It closes off the brick ravines
to everything except the chill,
the sound of cars

and the new leaves
on the branches.

(pic and earlier version from my tumblr)

Snow

yeah so everybody dies
but in most ways
no one does it best

and now snow covers the branches
so for a day at least
you get to be the first to walk somewhere
and look back at the tracks you made

wondering if anything
but time and logic
makes them
yours

still

January

a blackbird sang at five today
when the sun set

but it’s january (we say)
should it not be colder?
should it not be winter yet?

we desperately want
for something to be wrong

even if it’s just a bird singing

I thought it was too long down the year

I thought it was too long down the year
for geese
              but midnight throbs
with their slow wingbeats

their calls above the freezing mist

foto

Sabre-toothed Tiger

now take this life’s record
of dreams and wishes
out under the same cool moon
that watched the tired
sabre-toothed tiger
                      crumple
at the end of his trail
of twisting paw prints

and in all directions
only blinding snow

Ten Thousand Mile Dream

I will bring from this life
a hat full of ashes

*

remember when you hit your elbow?

before I felt like that but then
it didn’t stop

until it did

sometimes you fall for so long
it almost feels like flying

*

as I watch a man
wait for his dog
lifeless muscle
starts beating
a ten thousand mile dream

Rain like this

rain like this
could last forever
but it never does

crows return
and inspect the new leaves
in the gutters

all things wash away
each other's traces

such is the kindness of the world

Wide fields

now it's the time

for mists to rise
for leaves to turn
and fall

the geese have passed
and now the sky
gets silent

our city didn't bother them
geese sing just for wide fields
and the south

-

down there
in the bright light dreams
and in dry stone dwellings

we stretch our lives
as thin as spider silk
from the walls and corners

we say we're hunters
barely a rainbow
shimmer

shifting in the draft

-

the time has come
to wait and sleep
and for dreams to catch us

may they keep us
this time
may our dreams be kind

and sing for wide fields
in the silence

(edited 10102013)

This Thursday (Lampedusa)

This Thursday has had many voices:
starlings scattered from the poplar trees,
a kid that swung her disappointments like a hammer,
      the library rustle of dry reeds in the breeze.

I listened to two German day trippers trying to decipher the menu
but then you, far away, off the coast of Lampedusa,
you echoed over my carrot cake and coffee,
      from the breaking news.

I may not understand the starlings´ chatter
but no “not understanding”
has a hold on death.

To you who are stitched to a time and place now
you had no hand in choosing
and lie stripped bare of your name
      and of your joy and sadness,

wrapped in plastic on a concrete quay
in yet another place
that never wanted you,
      to you,

who are just as much to praise and blame
for what you did and said and wanted
as any one of the rest of us
      on this sun-whipped rock,

I stretch my hands out to you,
in hopeless imitatio of God
whose love and sadness must be so great

they extend beyond all evidence and reason
into the silent eye
of every moment of the world,

      and blindly grasp for anything that holds
      like anybody drowning.

God's children with their rain face on

I opened the windows
to let the summer through
and heard a dog's barked warning
get passed from street
      to street

yet it's not that long ago I went
to the shelter at the bus-stop
to see God's children
with their rain face on
      the rain face that is strangely
      so close to the bone

I watched them chase their bodies home
slicing oily puddles in half on the bike lane
and blinking their hearts
at the distance

I too have thin dreams seep
through the wall of morning
but you said every step
takes us out of the world

before it's flipped on its back
and pecked apart by hope and fear
in a seething desert
- none of which is really our concern
      now is it?

and it's not like there is anywhere to hide

look at her
      the angel whispers
and slips back into the heat-stained crowd

a silver lady in the cool shade
next to the sliding doors
sits with one surviving leg slung
over her wheelchair's armrest

comfortably watching the rest of us
lug beer and toilet paper
and wearing a single
      bright red
high heeled shoe

the only sin is distraction

Dead Dog's Jaw

I read Ko Un today
       the news of flowers
       eases the poverty of this world*

still
even as I walk the town
to chase the shivers through my skin
I feel like a dead dog’s jaw

slowly
season after season
days of rain after days of rain
it sinks between the thorn bush roots
deaf in its own slow winter
even to the blackbirds scratching
in last year’s leaves above

you could say I do to time
what a bone white glacier does
flatten out the land beneath it
holding back the centuries
in my dog’s jaw sleep

but today I think
I heard the warm flesh sutra
it reaches that deep down

along the train embankment
the world flows through the apple blossom
       all of it
       one stamen at a time

*) Ko Un, The News of Flowers
Note: some edits since first posted, thanks DB, JTS. 

The waiting song, the crow song

this is the waiting song
the crow song in the branches
the dog song clicking nails on asphalt
it is the high heel song
the duck song and the game song
the car song at the traffic lights
the spring sun song
          unzipping my coat
          on a warm park bench

the path's a hard black ribbon
blown in from somewhere else
hardly a barrier between us
          a dead seagull and me

behind him is the pond
          the wind scatters handfuls of diamonds
          on its murky thrift shop mirror skin
and then poplars
and the new brick church
a road I think and football fields
etcetera etcetera and all around
          the city

the city that lies face down
in the salty clay
whose fingers still stroke rivers
that it drank six hundred years ago
breathing fear and money (as cities do)
pumping a thousand million whispers
along thread thin arteries
back and forth into the world

but you all still die though?
the seagull asks

and it rises from the deep roots
from the sand grains and
the diatoms
          the waiting song
          the breath of birth

          of springtime

who am I to defend all that?
who am I to answer?