Kevin John Hart Poems

Say wood and everything is clean again.
The word is all around you, like the night,
Impossible to grasp. Your mouth is dark.
...

There is a silence words can’t touch.
There is.
And there’s a name inside my name
Though one my mother never said out loud
...

There is a radiance inside the winter woods
That calls each soul by name:
Wind in young boughs, trees shaking off thick coats of snow,
...

It is my house, and yet one room is locked.
The dark has taken root on all four walls.
It is a room where knots stare out from wood,
A room that turns its back on the whole house.
...

Dark One, it is the summer now: the evenings feel
Beneath my shirt, and it is good.
The trees, they sway a little when they get high,
And higher still the nests and stars are quiet.
...

(after Tu Fu)
All day fat brooding clouds blow by
But you, old friend, don't come to town.
Instead, you're lit in dreams three nights
As though your spirit's running down.

When we must part you always sigh,


'Wife, kids ... it's hard to leave the fray,'
'Besides, the dough ... the fuckin' flights.'
Your smile says, 'Life's just gone astray.'
DC's new crop of boys gets high
While you, sad friend, stand still and wave.
And you, don't prate of 'Dream' and 'rights':
My friend can't dream inside the grave.
...

'Two boys are hanging there,' my sister said,
Ind'Two dirty ones like you.'
'Our father strung 'em up last week,' she said,
Ind'By now they'll be quite blue.'

My parents' room had curtains always drawn
IndAnd shadows flush with ears,
The wardrobe lived inside that darker world
IndWith shouts and cries and tears.

That wardrobe creaked across my dreams all week
IndIt knew where bad boys are,
Its door would spring full open in my face
IndAnd fling a smell of tar.

And then one day, when everyone was out,
IndI — slowly — turned the lock:
I saw the dead boys in my winter coats
IndAnd ran right round the block.
...

If there was only a hunk of bread, days old,
If there was only a glass of something strong
(And candles feasting in the simple cold),
If there was only a woman, hands like song;

If there was only an evening playing blues
(And fireflies flickering along the road),
If there were only trees that froze in queues,
If there was only a heel of bread, days old ...
...

My gentle father died when day was young,
When there was very little left to take:
Gray face, a raft of bones, a bitter ache,
A word or two still living on my tongue.

There's bread that only dying men can eat,
Worn words that only weary men can say.
Sometimes those wispy words just slip away,
Sometimes that gritty bread falls on a sheet.

In those last days my dad ate nothing much;
His words were mostly gnawing at warm air.
Dark One, I'll be the one to smooth his hair.
You be the one who lets him know my touch.
...

There is a silence words can't touch.
There is.
And there's a name inside my name
Though one my mother never said out loud

She never said it, never once, although
She knew there was another name
That sleeps inside my name



Sleep now, old name,
For no one wants to know of you

My mother, she is dead these dozen years
And she is grown so small
She sleeps inside my name when it is said

I think she sleeps
Within that other name as well, more deeply, far
More quietly, turning only once or twice
Inside that paradise



Sleep now, old love,
It is too late to say a word to you
...