Madmen
They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.
Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
The Far Field
I
I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Sadness
1
Dear ghosts, dear presences, O my dear parents,
Why were you so sad on porches, whispering?
What great melancholies were loosed among our swings!
As before a storm one hears the leaves whispering
And marks each small change in the atmosphere,
So was it then to overhear and to fear.
2
But all things then were oracle and secret.
Small Frogs Killed On The Highway
Still,
I would leap too
Into the light,
If I had the chance.
It is everything, the wet green stalk of the field
On the other side of the road.
They crouch there, too, faltering in terror
And take strange wing. Many
Of the dead never moved, but many
Of the dead are alive forever in the split second
In The Naked Bed, In Plato's Cave
In the naked bed, in Plato's cave,
Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall,
Carpenters hammered under the shaded window,
Wind troubled the window curtains all night long,
A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding,
Their freights covered, as usual.
The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram
Slid slowly forth.
Hearing the milkman's clop,
his striving up the stair, the bottle's chink,
Creatures Of The Night
Creatures of the Night
.
iron grates over the street drains
roofs for the poor
refuge for the creatures of the night
darting across intersections
shying from the hungry grinning grills of the eighteen wheelers
hungry for something besides butterflies and the splatter of bugs
dark shadows flickering and glimmering
through the glare of headlights and the red glow of tailights
American Sketches
CROSSING KANSAS BY TRAIN
The telephone poles
Have been holding their
Arms out
A long time now
To birds
That will not
Settle there
But pass with
Jasmine
I sit beside two women, kitty-corner
to the stage, as Elvin's sticks blur
the club into a blue fantasia.
I thought my body had forgotten the Deep
South, how I'd cross the street
if a woman like these two walked
towards me, as if a cat traversed
my path beneath the evening star.
Which one is wearing jasmine?
If my grandmothers saw me now
Just A Little Dry Run
.
Did a dry run to see
if I could drive at night.
Joe didn't think it was such a good idea
since I kept covering up my eyes
to shield them from the infernal glare
of those oncoming halogen headlights.
He must be getting old-
he wasn't having any fun at all!
But since I'm looking for adventure
Homecoming
I am no longer myself as I watch
the evening blur the traffic
to a pair of obese headlights.
I return home, tried,
my face pressed against the window
of expectation . I climb the steps
to my f lat, only to trip over the mat
Outside the door. The key
In Hospital
They stood, almost blocking the pavement,
As though at a window display;
The stretcher was pushed in position,
The ambulance started away.
Past porches and pavements and people
It plunged with its powerful light
Through streets in nocturnal confusion
Deep into the blackness of night.
Tamar
I
A night the half-moon was like a dancing-girl,
No, like a drunkard's last half-dollar
Shoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill-range,
Young Cauldwell rode his pony along the sea-cliff;
When she stopped, spurred; when she trembled, drove
The teeth of the little jagged wheels so deep
They tasted blood; the mare with four slim hooves
On a foot of ground pivoted like a top,
Jumped from the crumble of sod, went down, caught, slipped;
Dark Poetic Mind
This poem bleeds dysfunctional desire,
Blood stains through the dirty streets
Mark the paths we trod,
Urban avenues of despair,
But I was still romantic for you,
Your thin unattractive body
And unwashed stringy blond hair,
Your ghost stare in the headlights’ glare,
Your wish to blend into streetlamps
Of non-existence,
Pumberly Pott's Unpredictable Niece
Pumberly Pott's unpredictable niece
declared with her usual zeal
that she would devour, by piece after piece,
her uncle's new automobile.
She set to her task very early one morn
by consuming the whole carburetor;
then she swallowed the windshield, the headlights and horn,
and the steering wheel just a bit later.
April Showers
It is the season of new beginnings...
Spring removes her winter robe
And fades into rainbows of hope;
The sun shines its headlights into April-
And in the garden the effluent scent
Of multiple blooms delights the nose;
The naked trees are no longer bare
Clothed in egg shell, pink and green.
Now entertaining the sometime visit
Of the butterfly and bee;
Shooting Rats At The Bibb County Dump
Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride
to the dump in carloads
to turn our headlights across the wasted field,
freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish.
Shot in the head, they jump only once, lie still
like dead beer cans.
Shot in the gut or rump, they writhe and try to burrow
into garbage, hide in old truck tires,
rusty oil drums, cardboard boxes scattered across the mounds,
Affair With Various Endings
I. Kempton, Pennsylvania
Perhaps the last of the light
lifting this evening from the field of wheat
means something. Perhaps the view
includes us, and we are not errors
in the landscape
Extraits
The Man Closing Up,' from Night Light' (1967),
would make his bed,
If he could sleep on it.
He would make his bed with white sheets
And disappear into the white,
Like a man diving,
If he could be certain
That the light
Would not keep him awake,
Dear Room
1
Are you still Chinese yellow?
Are your blinds still drawn
against prying eyes on the tops of buses?
How well I remember you,
perched beside a traffic-light
on the corner of Ladbroke Grove,
our tree-house lookout post,
shuddering and shaking all night
Let's Not...
Let’s not...
Everything’s ghostly-
the blank windows watching,
the snow reddening behind the stoplights of the cars.
Let’s not...
Everything’s ghostly, lost in mist,
like a garden in March emptied of men and women,
paraded by shadows.
Let’s not...
I stand by a tree,