For my friend

I did not write this poem. I thought my friend should have something better. This poem is by William Carlos Williams. The Academy of American Poets has a lovely recording of this poem being read by Ron Silliman which can be found here.


A Love Song

What have I to say to you When we shall meet? Yet— I lie here thinking of you. The stain of love Is upon the world. Yellow, yellow, yellow, It eats into the leaves, Smears with saffron The horned branches that lean Heavily Against a smooth purple sky. There is no light— Only a honey-thick stain That drips from leaf to leaf And limb to limb Spoiling the colours Of the whole world. I am alone. The weight of love Has buoyed me up Till my head Knocks against the sky. See me! My hair is dripping with nectar— Starlings carry it On their black wings. See, at last My arms and my hands Are lying idle. How can I tell If I shall ever love you again As I do now? -William Carlos Williams

Wilma's Saint John

My long hair reaches backward in the river.
Already, now, it twines around my ankles.
Her hazel sorrows strangle me before I drown,
and I will have drowned before I'm dredged from the clays.


Their questions rain on my street and roll to the gutter
where they pick up grease and garbage and bring them to the river
so that her moans are gurgled with plastics and wire
and it is her punctuated throat music that knocks on my sleeping.


The place where he's going already has a name
so that it's like visions of him are there
so that it's only like a vision that he's here
giving him residence in the habitat of dreams, memory, and ghosts.
Just so, the woman upriver is taking my hand by the name, performing a deep water baptism 
in the salt Lethe, that we might peer through such kingdom irons.

The tintinnabulation of the river
slips its silver tongue inside my ear,
it tells me


shine water whispers
mercury propaganda that, even, from your heart I wouldn't hear,
quivers, laces, weaves


into, through, and around
threads my skeleton with web stronger
than steel


bridges plunged to the clay
holding no water
crocheted the steel rusts with you


and to me is unreachable marvel
forbidden, violators will be prosecuted
persecuted though


I have been to the river's bank, that is
I have walked the water's edge, that is I
have been drawn,


long, by the current, poured
into it, bled into it
and became, and remain, there.

The Practice

When it is
                  after midnight
and I am
                  alone
when I am
                  honest with myself

I take my cynic by the hand and tuck her in.

There is then my cup of coffee and this collage:

     your body
                                 something I once wrote
                     her body
maitri
         yellow walls

beautiful, [to follow], starved in an open grave, purple electric, warm and free

"... is a placeholder term for the thing I so want which will complete..."

I deny myself-- please,
I do need your permission--

it is no mere term and it is no term

it is a practice
                            and I need your permission

to do it.

Let us consent
                              her body
let us consent to
this practice which we afraid do want.

The temple of my imagination
                      suffused with purple electric-- think

about the world like that
                  not the world but this
                                                              only

a yellow room and us practicing there-

and then there you are again
because I am a string of hypocrisies
              if I am

so, I am not.
                       except nows

        when poetry

25 June 2010

dangerous

I wrote to the man, but I did not send the letter, I wrote to the man:

"when I focus on the thing, it abandons me."

dangerous

I went to the water, but I did not swim, I went to the water

and put my gift in, and the present disintegrated in the sea.

danger

I chewed the apple, and I swallowed it, I chewed the apple

and it became my body, so it's carried wherever I go.

four out of five poets agree

a terrible thing is happening

  or has happened oh god is time out?

except it is a lovely thing

it rotates in blue roses

  ah, yes, those,

outside my bedroom window while I seek sleep

what tragedy to be lulled by it

for we must always

  except once

wake

perhaps the predicament itself contains the answer

  four out of five poets agree-

that fifth poet

he has led the revolution

  by keeping his eyes open

of thorny things