first time that story was told, three-thousand believed.
Came once as a babe.
Came twice (from the grave that time, three witnesses)
When He comes for the third time,
it'll be the third time
for the last time.
"was
is
is to come"
sounds like the sounds of trinity.
Hail Mary
they caught me laughing
chuckling to myself on the two train
headed from Brooklyn to
Upper West Side
couldn't hide it,
but I tried.
Some old cat flopped on
caught me off guard
buckled over on the two train seat
head in my hands
he stroked
not long ago
paralyzed half his side
half his life
Plummeted like buzzards do
wife, three kids, house and home
now, though once a metal worker,
left to plead with
unions for a lame job called
"time keeper"
six ones in hand, beggar's plan
no one raises a buckled brow
after a bushel of minutes
one more, one more gives
maybe he'll live
gimp through
maybe not.
he had a line, a rhyme:
"thank you, God bless you for your generosity
I hope your kids, your family's well
and thank you for your generosity?"
he left.
some hag named,
i dunno - Martha?
ragged on him:
"They're all like at,"
to an audience of three
"I see one every Thursday
trying to get to Babylon
told her I'd drive her
buy her a ride
to get to her dying mother
Butter mother's still dyin
every Thursday. Fuggitaboudit."
chorus (hers) laughed
tailing her path to 42nd
time'll square'm out
maybe not...
next stop, a blind woman got on,
- true story
come on with cuppa change:
"I wasn't born blind, but I am
now thanks to my mother.
Hail Mary, full of grace.
Can you help the blind?"
she shook her change.
"Hail Mary, full of grace.
Can you help the blind?"
she shook her change.
"Hail Mary, full of grace.
care to help the blind?"
she shook
seized
on the ground there
in front of the three
no change
another stoned
no
hailed
Mary
, yes they refused
to flinch
for fletchers that feather
The darts of their coming deaths.
My Consolation
Boethius claimed badness or the wicked
Or evil is a disease, even as weakness
Wanes the body. Well, then, I
Am so sick, my friend. See my shakes?
See my quaking? Soothing balms
Of wiser words evade my mind
And its dreaming machine. A dry and an arid
Landscape was seeded along the trenches
Of my river valley, my rain cisterns
Than once evoked green. Why has the grain
Gone to be ground? The golden things moldy
And silence from sound? Spring will heal
The deserted and the dead: drink oh bulbs,
Come up in an anthem and empty the silence
Of all of itself. Evil is a disease
Like a weakness wanes us. But the weak things heal
And errors are evened and even corrected
And minor minds made Major.
Curtain Call
Beauty came to me
in the still dark of the day
shining as a caretaker
slitting her gown in play
I found a freedom in flame
the burning of my youth
I covered it all in a kerosene fume
And wrote with a match as I do with a plume
And carved out her name on my tooth
Before that the people would cheer
When I danced for their praise and coins
Each song and each melody turning their ear
And I changed for their girls, for their boys
upon that black-thorned limelit stage
I stared my death in the eyes
If I danced one more dance with the fury that's "Lance"
I'd impale my own self with my thighs
So I stopped moving each little limb
And I patched up my tambourine wounds
With the sealing of lips how a whisper was heard
And it moaned over crowds and their swoons:
Each empty stare echoed the sound
And every eye watched it in awe
I dropped every instrument, silent in crash,
And I joined them by buying a ticket with cash
And my heart felt as washed as with caustic potash,
tearing up all the sights that I saw:
Beauty came to me
in the block marks of the play
shining as a caretaker
And nude-stripped for ballet.
I found a freedom in her flame
the burning of my youth
I covered my mind in a kerosene fume
And wrote her with matches as I had with my plumes
And called out her name, told the truth:
both a whisper and YAWP ambled up
to the foot of the blackthorn's dead stage
with the still of the audience hearing it clear
And I'm one of them now by my clap and my tear
While performing though dead like a British life peer
There alone on the stage like a black marketeer:
I perform what I learn while backstage.
Passive Agressive
I'd rather take warhammers to the face
Pickaxes to the kidneys
Straight-slander & libel
Murder of my firstborn
Rape of my mother
Blasphemy of my good-intent and
the word:
"No."
Than let these whisperers sweet-talk my face
Gossip behind me while
Stealing my cars and
Pouring sugar-water all over my desk
my books
my laundry
my looks so that I
Awake in the morning to find not a sunrise or feigned
Sweet calm of morning dew,
not even sweetness, but
Ants
--ANTS--
Eating everything.
Beyond the Mountain for a Week of Weeks
Aftertastes
I've wondered at the flavor
of the tastes of hidden things
I've licked the air to savor scents
unknown – from palate, wings.
I dipped my thumb in The Thick Of It
and stuffed it in my cheek
and held it there till it dissolved--
tobacco, so to speak.
I bite into unbitables:
like loss and cost and death.
The tang of loves unreal and gone
as my monastic breath
reminds this old saltlicking stag
(whose senses ever gray)
that tastes be
hind the tastes exist --
stagehands behind our play.
I'm waiting here till every food
tastes equally of dust,
then all those tastes behind the tastes
will bloom and make us blush.
Fallen Autumn Playhouse
originally published at SP Quill
A hardwood floor below the lamps
of yesteryear's array of scenes
I yield to wind--escorting leaves
through double doors we've opened here.
The theatre of yesteryear
brings sweat and chill and feverish cue
malaria of memory
when lines forgotten plague my dreams
of song, of line, of love life lost
unmattered now, for untouched scenes
have whispered in with whispered leaves
and formed a novel, gold frontier:
an incalescence in my heart
restarts my spirit, paints the hue.
Hysteria's no emery;
my quiet soul's at peace with me.
Greenwood Cemetery, Midwinter's Night 2015
solid ice erected a sheen over
thousands of shipmasts, hundreds of spires
I looked again through black wrought iron
spikes beyond their frozen ocean wave
to the light some faced – others ignored –
beyond the second wall of steel.
orange warmth washed over mistless masts
stark-set against blued half-things, vapors,
half-trees, half-stones, half-beasts there roaming
over that frozen wave of bones.
Above, Diana cloudless waits, her
dogs loose, her virgins hidden, weeping
for those taken too soon – said simpler:
for all taken.
The sea of the dead, they've moved each night:
I notice McCullin further down
I notice Harris on higher ground
or do some stones share names?
But tonight -- everynight -- frozen
bones-made-stones-made-masts from where I stand.
I can't unmake the dead, their deaths.
I can't unsee their ends. So Progress
for those few I see fighting the wave
of ice to light is not a fight. It's
gifted. And we who stand behind grates,
behind black iron plates watching all the
roiling waves of the Styx – clips, slides, snips,
negatives left on the darkroom floor –
have no more to say or show or score.
So we watch. We watch the dead play down
into frozen darkness, their motion
off stage left
set in stone set in ice,
frozen momentum
or ride the rigging up into light
tower and its thaw.
Dark Towers
At the end of every alley their stands
A timeless tower. Top of the Rock
Rises rustic and rearing tomorrow's
Artisan deco amateurs and their visions
Of gilded ages. Glimpse it at the end
Of an alley or walkway. Empire is there
At the end of Broadway or as the aim of Macy's
Herald Square. How did the Trade
Center's Tower sneak to the end
Of Avenue Six? Ask how Long
Island City ends in the Tower
The King of Kong climbed in the old
Black and white. Bear with me
As I ponder the pillars -- the power of the Dark
Towers we Rolands take as the aim
Of our journeys' end. James said that faith
Without works wearies, wilts and then dies
So we take in the towers and the turns on the road
And we recognize no roadway map
or landmark and it leaves -- the little old
Thought of a road trip or a voyage
That we sit back and savor as one
Would a cruise to the end of alleys where stand
The timeless towers. Tops of the rocks
In the crags where we cower and call out for aid.
Bible College as Told by a Liar
A cold shower
A packed vanity
Two snooze slaps
An alert friend
His own sound
The light of his desk
A clean pain
An empty class
That fills up some
A cold prof
Who must check
Out of his own lesson
He calls role
I write on
Prayer's an epic fantasy
For the Christian ficitoneer
Spirits rise
To the right
In the periphery
Adrenaline: the fear
Endorphine: the comfort
Who is the ghost?
Who carries the ghost?
What on earth always remains in our periphery?
And am I still on earth?
"Schaubert!"
I look up.
"You're off in your own little world again. Tell me: what was the difference between Brother Lawrence's and St. Benedict's positions on prayer?"
I pray before I answer.
I answer before I check out.
I check out before I write some more.
Burritos.
Underfoot -- the skin -- the clover
-- it's winded -- the orange
In the sky as the last sunbeams squeeze through Kansas dust storms
Tulsa smog
I return having spun silver lies
Into things made in the image in which I'm made
And therefore true
The fish I caught was thirty-three feet long not because it was thirty-three feet long.
The fish I caught was thirty-three feet long because I was the one who caught it.
To catch is a marvelous exaggeration of human passivity.
Catch for us the foxes
The White Stag calls:
"Come and catch me."
His antlers had to be at least thirty-three feet long.
A hot shower
empty vanity
no snooze relapse
And dreams of things to come
That come true
But who is the fourth man in the furnace?
Fantasy's an epic prayer
For the pagan reader
Spirits rise
And am I still on earth?
To the right
In the periphery
Endorphine: the fear
Adrenaline: the comfort
Who is the ghost?
Who carries the ghost?
The Solemnity of Elemental Weaves
The Ballad of the Silent City
I.
Before the sounds of summer came
Among cold Rocky Mounts,
The City of the Silent grove
Was spun (by one account).
Before the cries of citadels
Besieged by brigand bands
The City of the Silent grove
Signed sonnets in the land
Decades on Amerigo's coast,
Scores of centuries spent,
White horses crashed upon his shores,
On the Still City went.
Still City knew the Union
When brothers drove apart
She heard the shot heard round the world
Saw Chinook Ship Monsters haunt New World
And hushed her bleeding heart.
For the end of their world came long ago
When pirates stole their bay.
Like children of an afterbirth,
Now we who walk on sand, on earth
Came long after judgement day.
Yes the end of the world was long ago,
But not what the Chinook saw
For the whore on the seven hills will rot
By her own damned martial law.
When Rome unwrapped her pax Romana
On her margined fiefs
She set herself up for rape and pillage
By foreign peasant thieves
Oh it came upon a silent night
It came on a midnight clear
That in the borderlands of Rome
Where asps and locusts make their home
Our coup d'etat appeared.
But when every roadway bends to Rome
When every state declines
Poor people rise to take the throne
White horses chew thawed cannon bones
And the city-state resigns.
For a wind blew down from the northern lands
To freeze their molten blood
Unleashed from her ancient bulwark cage
By nameless terrors beyond age
She brought a frosted flood
Where warriors stood upon the gates
To shield the city's lost
Their migrants painted on their brink
Archangels passed onto others, drank
Their sacrament of frost
For wind blew o'er from the eastern lands
To topple anchored spires
Roused from his ancient slumber cave
To wake the dead, upend the grave
To the tune of grisly choirs
Where mourners kneeled afoot the hill
To rue her dead by the wailing will
Nor'easter twisted every sound
To bleat like the weep of a basset hound
By cyclone, squall and gale.
For a wind blew up from the southern lands
To burn away the chaff
Stirred from his gilded feasting-hall
Annoyed and armed with his mace and maul
He sounds the cry of the curtain call
Where mockers mocked their wounded peers
Inside the palace pyre
South wind removed the flaming sword
Hidden in Eden once sheathed, restored
Let loose Beginning's Fire
When ashes settled, snow on sea
When twisters slowed to sighs
When hoarfrost melted, flooded rivers
New earth dried, now baptized
When those left hidden in the caves
Some camped on mountain peaks
Remembered what incited all
Rome's storms and rising creeks
They wrote it down upon the scrolls
Passed down to us today
A Jewish child past the Roman border
Born upon the hay
But that, I said, passed long ago
'Fore pirates stole the bay.
Like children of an afterbirth,
Now we who walk on sand, on earth
Came long after judgement day.
And every native of the land
And every painted face
Renewed a vision that tidal rose
At the spearhead of their Anglo foes
Which silenced every space
Between the death of Chinook babes
And wind-blasts of the whore.
A silence settled on the isle
Up from the sand in a twisted smile
To still the City's shore.
II.
Once was wood fort of the frontier's men
A bulwark formed of tall
Timbers felled from cold virgin woods
By lumberjacks sprung from Titan axe-men
Stood strong, the wooden wall.
Late by the gate under gleaming moon
One wise man brought to us our boon
He whispered our unsung fear
His twisted words hit twisted ears
Of the counsel of our doom.
Yet we don't speak of silent things
Spoke under night's gray light.
We'd rather nod or point or stare
Or kick folks out forthright.
That wall grew up from wood to stone
From stone to marble halls
From marble grew an obelisk
To mark our starting stalls
One chipmunk ran around its base
Five cattle came behind
One general's legion followed them
Then cars and trains combined
Our street ran by the sharpest stone
But it had a nameless face
Until one gambling troubadour
Who grew up run aground, unsure
Wrote "Wall" upon the place,
They made a sign from the polished timbers
That once preserved the fort
He wrote four letters in the wood
First one for winter, "L"s for good
The vowel for anyone,
Our people flocked to city gate
Before the obelisk
To bid and bet and stake and risk
For family, love, or fate.
The Wall-street ran across the river
Over the western shore
It turned into an interstate
And gained its own rapport
The crowds, they came from Baton Rouge
From Vegas, Saint Louise,
With tickets, tickers, ticked tick-tocks
For money labeled "free."
Deep beneath the obelisk
Which marked a massive grave
Where bones of Titans carved with wood
Marked for the others bans and shoulds
Howling to all "BEHAVE!"
A noiseless stir awoke the woodsmen
Under our credit crypt
Boring holes their hoard arose
When breached streets surface, thorn of rose,
Tranquility unzipped.
Now in the room upon the floor
Within Wall's sepulcher
No man nor woman nor their child
Stood in trading rooms tamed wild
From silence, we infer:
Where once the sounds of wealth pealed out
Into all city streets
Now quiet rests the heaving chests
Of lovers who know the stillness besting
Gambler's loud receipts.
III.
Before our Dark Knight haunted Gotham's
Trasylvanian wings
Before horse racers chase big apples
While warm sirens sing
Before the Fort of Worth could gamble
All night, dirty, cheap
We knew our city's moniker
As one that never sleeps.
But I have slept above the town
Where horns and pigeons flee
Where screaming victims' cries grow still
Under the churn of the tower's mill
Beneath a storm cloud's knee.
At morning, at three, with no souls out
I woke to look below:
The cars lay dead, the kids in bed,
The sewer rats left much unsaid,
Streets smooth like fresh-turned snow.
I jumped out from my window pane,
I fell ten floors in secs,
Past dozing grandmas, snoozing dogs,
Beyond the peace of subliming togs,
fiancees having sex.
As I fell, then I looked down the avenue
To north, to south again
No lights poked out of the black alcoves
For the city gagged itself in droves
Unlike frayed Baharain.
I cried out to the quietude
Which bore me to the park
I stood among the sleeping squirrels
Nestled in the dark
Then flying up among the treetops
chanced upon a grove
Which others named, "the place of titles"
I just called it "love."
One lone Hawthorne inside our park
Drank up rare central soil
Its rich life shined
out in its bark
Shaded calm like the tight-lipped lark
Beyond all other foil.
Tapped thrice did I upon the trunk,
Waited three seconds more.
This tree had known to give the names
Of the world, the elements, the games
That all of us play ashore.
But Hawthorne kept a silent stare
Shut up his whispered mouth
When asked I for the name of Gotham,
She pointed west by south.
So flew I down to the Island's point
To listen up some more,
Yet hearing now the city's voice
Known by all run ashore:
She is not like the Vegas whisper
Not like the NOLA bands
She speaks not like a Texan's swagger
Not like the Cali hands
Before the sounds of winter came
Among warm Appalachia
The City of the Silent Grove
stays quiet: ... ... ... ...
Before the cries of citadels
Besieged by bitter bands
The City of the Silent grove
Signed sonnets in the land
Decades on Amerigo's coast,
Scores of centuries spent,
White horses crashed upon his shores,
On the Still City went.
IV.
(an interlude)
Oh hear the sound of the wakened beast!
Oh see her rise from the coast!
She knows I've called her to her feet!
She knows her silent toast.
Oh hear her wait for the coming calls
The woes have not yet passed
Let her fall, let her flail to the wailing wall
For the silence, still, will last:
V.
The King of England landed
With troops armed at his side
His standard scarlet-branded
By the anvil, polished, sanded
Leave the wounded flailing, stranded
On the heels of his wake, his pride.
The Lords of Norseland mooring
North of the island point
Ten thou ships collided, shoring
With their breakers ripple-roaring
One by one I called them, "boring!"
Charged he south to make a point.
The Aztecs marched from southernlands
Glazed skin, soaked from their sun
Gold-plated armor will withstand
Poisoned darts, feigned shows, and slight of hand,
The brazen battalion's cold command,
And the ever-gattling gun.
Unspeakable foes came
From west, fog, mist, murk, drizzle,
Hammer down upon our flame
Malign the others, kings defame,
Beauty of subtle bleak war-game
Seared flesh stank from the grizzle.
Met all four foes and my life there
Upon the silent isle
Quadrumvirate hemmed me in
Yet on my lips, a smile?
The King of England gasped a breath
The Lords of Norseland panted
The Aztec tow-dyed huffed-blew out
The Black Cloud disenchanted
Prepared all armies for their speech
Drew up they words for telling
Composed they rhetoric for slander,
(Thought they themselves compelling).
Yet stood I there beside the tree
O. Henry in the forest
We muted out our words from them
And with our muzzle, held within
the words they hoped would stir us.
And when they spoke, I sucked it out
The whole lot of their voices
Inhaled I every vocal chord
That curses or rejoices
And when they saw the silence here
A grove primeval, virgin,
The Quartet throng let tacit deference
Sing all best left unsaid.
A full half-hour heaven hushed
To hear the island's prayer
Their hearing washed us, living flush
World's foursome turning tail to rush
Mail, horses, sabers, buckles brushing
Past taciturning air
And I and I flew back to home
And I then dreamed of war
And I heard crashes on the coast
White horses on the shore.
VI.
Awakened I inside my bed
Stirred not, to bind the heat
It shifted under piles of sheets
Hoping to find a way to flee
Warming my chest, my seat.
Succumbed I too the restless wind
Aside my covered core
Breaking out humidity
Upon my shameless nudity
My mind ached, tired and sore.
Leaving out front still city's streets
Pajama pant-legs long
Vast puddles licking at my cuffs
Climbed the cold to scarf, to muffs
Heard I their slumber song:
Multitudes passed my striding
Walking past in droves
I went downtown among the lights
To see fare, shows, bar-brawling fights,
Ten million treasure troves.
If you were there along with me
And waited several years
You'd only just begin to mind
That sound that hit my ears.
Ten million people in five miles,
Ten million five beyond,
But one sound shifted in that sea
Of people moving busily
On our side of the pond.
A decade past, it holds the fort
A century, the wall
Deep in the soil ten thousand years
You hear the roar? The call?
The song sang long before the White Horse
First hit Britain's rocks
The anthem of our generation
Preservatives and liberation
Pandora's music box.
Stand with me in the corner now!
Stand Times Square, Wall, our park,
Hear rat, ant, true man, rosy sow,
Heifer, eagle, lion's growl,
Both mockingbird and lark:
Sing onward, isle! Intone your noise!
Belt out your eld refrain!
Listen, my friends, unto her now--
I'm telling you her name:
VII.
(Once the seventh part existed, now it is no more. I wrote it, turned it into braille, pasted it before I'd copied down this section's words into some other file. So when I used a lesser font, it turned it all to dots so disconnected, so un-brailled, the meaning there was lost. I tried five online tránslators, I tried it note-by-note, but when I finished I had lost the sound of what I wrote:)
VIII.
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Halves
To-day:
Half-day through Salem
saw them at my reception
Yester-day:
rushed through a half-day
a wedding day
with him there
Half-Christmas-day
they drove to me
six-hundred miles for a
half-day.
Three of us
wish the snow had kept them.
Even frozen them like Han Solo.
Does that make me Jabba?
Before all that, who knows?
Today's letter came
(three weeks late)
I'm proud...
I'm happy...
I'm sorry...
I love you,"
Cried out the other halves.
Mist Drizzles in Brooklyn
A drizzle in downtown Duenweg is something
Like my wife waking and the water of her shower
Misting me while I make my chin
Clean with the cutting. The crisp mist
Is a walk by a wayward water fountain
Or a splash pad. Spread the mist
Over the evening and aim it at me
And my head for an hour? The hell of The Mist
Is in taking its time and turning her loose
With a hose in hand. The Holy Lady
Of the mist maybe makes light of
Freezing her folk -- I found Niagra
Dipped and deafened in the dark of wax
And a yellowed ice. A yard in the mist
Is a play date. Place it over
The plodding pace of Park Slope
Or the Manhattan miles or make Brooklyn
Meander aimless under the years
Of her mistings and maybe she'll make the nightly
News in drowning our novelties slowly.
Concerning the Halfway Mark by Turkey Creek Where I Parked My Bike and Turned Off the Noise
As water when in droplets formed
falls winded down from leaves
when rain returns cold fire upon
two breathless, dusty forms
as liquid courage quickens lungs,
roots feet upon hot hearth
invokes our subterranean fire
by song, by spit, by drink
as chill Noreaster wets her brother
Southern Wind's dull heat
begetting the brimstone pillars, hail,
the whirlpool's aery twin
as boiling baths break grime with steam
as stew evapors three
as books can ground an untamed blaze,
break blizzard's bite, stop sea
as salt, as watered wind, limelight,
as sun breaks burns to rays
as wave, as particle, as bright
as solar winds in space
as lack of water, air, no heat
as absence of a sphere
of water falling through thin
air to ice the burning bear
she blows.
Awakes forgotten storms
from willowed memory.
She rains them down upon hot flesh--
our break from trails or sea.
Clothes
My wife wanted me to write a poem
For my shoes and shirts. Shucks kiddo,
I got the good ones from the great dead
Guys that gathered our growing need
And fed it feebly forward to their memories,
The gratitude of their garment garden's scent
And aura and ether. Evanescent --
Mutilate, the moths, these musk ox
Wools and weather wear like the camel
Hair I happen to eat honey and locusts
While prophesying inside, or the petty boots
My grandpa gave me that gave when the dry
Rot ripped from the right foot's heel
Or the tear in the tread of the third pair
Of tennis you bought me. Turbulent styles --
How fashion is fleeting. Feast, I, on the
Strips and strands of styles abandoned
in the gutter of God. Grace is when the
Clothing merchant's kid disowns him
And strips and states, "Save me, Our Father,"
And the priest empowers the prince of cloth
Who leaves them looking at his little naked
Asscheeks and he enters an overcast winter
To find his faith flowering on the ground
As a robe and a rope -- rending there
A uniform for ages of open-handed
Friars whose fashion is feeling the cold
That the hoary homeless helplessly endure
The elements that sublime almost elementally.
Black Market Milk
Were I to film a movie,
a documented show,
I'd make its name, "Black Market Milk"
so everyone could know
that once upon a time there lived
a people of the land
who walked on dewdrop-laden blades
of grass and soggy sand,
who churned their butter, washed their bread,
who fattened up their sows,
who threshed their grain on threshing floors,
and milked their dairy cows.
These people, older native babes,
sucked straight from utter tits,
like fathers fondle helpmates' breasts
in nursing time, in wets.
This somethin' only fathers get--
that taste of gentle mom
when naked in the darkened vat
of master bedroom, mime
and mouthing like their offspring did,
like Denison would say:
She offered him her mother's milk,
he made a milky trade.
Both Amish men and Mennonites
exist outside the law
by charging nothing for their milk,
(still less to use their saw)
but few are Amish in the land,
and fewer still before
Columbus crashed the Native party,
steel upon soft shore.
But still they traded milk for music,
mayonnaise for mead,
mint for metal, dark merlot,
then marble, marksmen feed,
a pound of orange marmalade,
molasses, mead again,
then back to music for the milk,
closed circle, grace and sin.
A thousand years would pass before
the dairymen would find
hormonal additives to blacken
up their dairy kind.
So now to get the mother's nectar
free of toxic touch,
to find the milkman set to barter
milk for wine and such:
First buy yourself a skiier's mask,
a camo gilly suit,
then let your money trade some hands,
prepare yourself to shoot,
and armycrawl your way to farms
at midnight in The States,
exchange the goods for lady's fare
(be sure to close the gates).
Then, when at last you're safe at home,
when no soul dares to wake,
drink up, drink up as ancients did
the raw, unfeigned white lake.
Is Your Mind Meaningless? And other thoughts to mind in ordinary time...
On the Instance of My Wife Sleeping in
She will sleep till her spine revolts
And then kick herself for caving to the accrual of fatigue
Type ones take as the normal
Day to day. Devastating
How the body rebuffs, rebuilds with scraps
Of remnant rests. I renig on the scoffing
I have aimed at her ovum and beta
Cells and their shames. Somehow I sank
Into thinking the thunder I thresh was harvest
For the helpless hers and the hardened organs
That needed a donut nightly or the shaking
Up that empires owe themselves
Here in the hateful harrowing of Great
And Vital Virtues. Evict my malice
And let me let her be lost in the sleep
That body and brother and bare nation
Require in these queer and unquieting times,
Oh God Almighty. Grant me a willing
Spirit to suspend the insane impulse
To delay the light and leave her to rest
Like an intimate elf or an injured sleeping
Beauty basking in the broth of a time
When the weak were welcome and wondered strong.
Five-Pronged Eyes
You saw me in the kitchen washing all your dishes
Cutting my hand; I bled upon your counter
In that bloody mess, soiling your wishes
As bland, crimson rags silenced our encounter
Dishes screamed onto red tile shattering
Your eyes, your cold gazing for the battering.
You saw me in the vineyard plucking grapes
Joining harvest, each one told rain's love story
From which we agreed Houdini can't escape
Bottling vintage juice for wine's old glory
Corks would shoot off to the moon, shimmering
Your eyes, your warm stares now simmering
You saw me soon holding Enid's baby
In that hospital rocking chair's slow dawning
We met each other's eyes thinking "maybe...'
That young boy interrupted us by yawning.
Blue cigars inflamed, then subtly searching
Your eyes, which cannot hide your heart's lurching
You saw you through a ten-foot ancient mirror
I came to stand behind you, fully aiding
All your image, pulling you all the nearer
Yours is one which never seeks the fading
Crystal surface captured every moment
Your eyes hesitated at shame's torment
You see us through an album full of photos
Each shot caching past days from our history
And when you reminisce (your face aglow)
You prove our love, our shrouded mystery
Faded frames revealed the thoughts behind
Your eyes that walk the hidden trails that lead back to your mind.
I see your eyes in five mottled prongs
Which form a trident of your liquid gaze
that forms the noble, evanescent songs
Which, when we hear them, start love fresh ablaze.
Jaded names are ours within the scene
Your eyes direct, each second caught between.
You saw me in the kitchen washing all your dishes
Cutting my hand; I bled upon your counter
In that bloody mess, sifting your wishes
As sand, crimson rags--pilonce soaked in color--
Wishes pleaded with the red tile bartering
For prizes meant for the dreamers and doddering.
Twoem
The following poem was posted on Twitter under the name "Twoem" with the handle "@ReadTwoem" between July 26th and July 27th of 2012, obviously long before my wife and I quit social media. To my knowledge, it still exists on the internet under that name. Each line was posted as a single tweet, one hundred and forty tweets in total.
ReadTwoem: a #twitter #poem by @lanceschaubert
One forty I wake, stomach's in pain--ulcers usher in fissures again. Try taking alkalis, take pills, but mouth won't consume, yet articulates
Words flow from adrenal heart along my bloodstream into lungs, vibrating vocal chords, which vibrate columns of air and come out like words,
When I hear me speak to myself in the second person invocation possess eight savages, two brutes chained to two wrists, the literature labor
First I type in [user]TAB[password]ENTER or longer process of registration for more online real estate & tweet reverberates, song and siren,
My first shares all-too-personal info about gastric abscesses, medication, choking precautions, left no room for rhetoric, but I'm warming up
It comes- something like #poetry but not, creative limitation to the beat of $140million or something-can medium subvert itself from within?
I disregard doubts as all artists (if they participate in eventuality) & I rage, text & verse, lunacy: mechanical terra firma, soil & tools,
What comes surprises me, a chance at something undone, at undoing something done wrong, meaning in restriction, in forcing lines into limit-
wrote this one first on my smith-corona to prove it's still done. no power in my house except AC (that may still be weakness) comfort crutch
so I type a few to prove value as Hemingway or King would've done in his early days, for I'd refuse myself apps, open windows, notifications
I refuse this mirage of connectivity in this desert of woven, webbed hard drives, at least for the time being, for this breath, intermission
There's me, a ribbon (that's no metaphor) and letters forged from iron or perhaps aluminum, permanency as if to say, "When punched, then meant
Not only does ironed typography transfer straight to print, subverting processed words, but they burn, they engrave both onto wheel and page
So yes, I still rough draft whenever possible on my typewriter, for the value's in slowdancin with the words, in not writing but typewriting
This'n in pen-green ink, moss & vine shoots conquer concrete & her digital cousin. Artery of exnihilo power: blank page & order out of chaos
I took pictures of my poem and that makes it meta I suppose, though such a thing's value is in the vegetation to follow
Meta for meta's sake's like oil change for oil change's sake--proof's in the pudding, value is in the vegetation-that's what I meant, I think
That we might see the tropes, systems, forms we find swell or form something substantial, that happens like layers of mold in the coffee pot
Layers (not just one) plurality of mold, mold upon mold, films stacked- Hollywood archive of decomposing greats-mixed metaphor and spectrums
Anthrax on black on green on white on grits on brewed water below, sedentary or anthropomorphic layers of rock, statues buried and born-time
proves inevitabilities & disproves ideas of proving those soul-things, those layered forms, those poetries. For what is soul is undefendable
It's unattackable, unattainable, inconceivable (to the extent that cult films come to mind at the mention of the word) No we few who #poetry
, #Poetry hermetically, cloistered off, lobbing chocolates like Molotovs over these city walls. We few canaries stuck in our mine a'tweeting
I believe poets still lay breadcrumb trails that lead from the witch's house to the woods, we work language into katas: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY
but Hansel and Gretel favor houses built from objects that cause root canals, tables loaded with torture devices, something a little more...
_____ _______ _______ _______ __ __
|____| |_____/ | |______ _/
| | | _ | ______| |
I plead the fifth, your honors, and in pleading chose that precise moment when I will testify against myself in favor of the cause, the word
#inspiteofthepresenceofabsurditieswherepeopleinsistonmakingeverysentencesearchablequantifiableorotherwisecommentaryonwhatneedssaidorpoetried