Postcard 196

September, Thursday of the Year

At a certain low angle of the sun
the day's genesis of water-striders
glitter with inscrutable drive to eat
to fuck to die. The crawdads too decide
to leave their keeps with shallow scurry blooms

Batteries of clouds charge the horizon
Ancient, how many dragonflies have been?
Shooting over the valley's high anvils
bullrush, thrush, collapse, clap, thunder drives us in

After the funeral, I danced dirty
with with widow of the father who died
in the house-fire. All God's children orphaned
desolate, bereft, clipped and beating

Of all this we make music

Postcard 195

 

The time
is finally here
time to leave

The birds
are casting off
their moorings

The trees
are casting off
their leaves

wind
feet
rake plow


I curse the day
I threw a handful of poems
like dragon's teeth into the sea

Even there
you reap as you sow
every word its own demise

I skip
as the stones I throw
And do I wobble

I dont fly
What are these black wings seeking?
to flutter? to beat again?

Word to the wise:
when the waves retreat
don't go looking for the sea

Postcard 194

 

The Moon is weary of all this.
The perpetual motion and perpetual monotony.
The moon feels forever held in tension between the pull of two mighty bodies.
Though if the Moon sits in ts darkness it senses a third, bodyless pull
                                                      -- a pull to void.

The Moon certainly entertains this pull,
but it is just suggestion. The Moon finds itself in a situation
it cannot escape without plunging fully
and catastrophically into one of its two seducers or
                                                       ripping itself apart.

And what of the two beguiling forces?
Are they as subtle as they feel,
or is the precarious balance between them
the source of the feathery elliptical tugging?

The one is distant but so impossibly radiant.
It makes the Moon feel seen, but is the Moon being seen?
Or is it just reflection? If only the Moon could know it was
its own voluptuous curves, its own time earned scars being illuminated,
                                                          rather than just the other's brilliance...

And the other... upon this one the Moon teased effect,
had tickled blue -- with its own small force -- to brown and green.
But what was given back? The close embrace seemed more a projection
of desire. Now? The Moon hangs so tautly
                                                        -- madness

Postcard 193

Father Song
1 January 1988 Pasadena, CA

On new years day
the cold split of ages
my father walked me out
you'll thank me, he said
on a morning, a nascent day, a dawn
to shake the Champ's shaking hand

to hold
to be held
to behold
to be beheld
to be beholden to

You are your mother's
son you were is this
I am split in your river
I see I in you, rift of mothers name
Child, you see you gone

to hold
to be held
to behold
to be beheld
to be beholden to

The Greatest bereft
of fallen roses the bite
of time the sting a flower
float away, will I even
can I have I ever tried

to hold
to be held
to behold
to be beheld
to be beholden to

Like the daughter of the father
who follows him into the ring
I wonder if I echo
the wrong thing