July 26, 2024. The page on which I was posting my published poems apparently has run out of cyberspace, so I 'm starting a page for my poems published from 2024 onward. As of today I have posted three poems below, Fall From Light, Lahaina Confession, and The Word That Burns on the Tongue. Pallete Poetry posted the last one on their website with some very nice artwork. The link is here:
Two more poems are in the pipeline and should be out in a couple of months.
Fall From Light
A hanging hunger is where it starts, an expectation
hammered into the celibate head, a rebirth
in the air of imagining, a faith in a thing
inside all things. For that we celebrate
old masters, kiss relic, chant holy rule, turn
to sages of the astonished
moment, learn to make a light that burns from fear,
yet when the hour arrives our stomachs, skin,
skittering senses wander rooms into endless
rooms, but exits are scarce, so the hatch
that slides open is a gift, cautious compartment
to immense air ocean. Crawl out headfirst, crustaceous
in helmets and goggles. Claw our way to the wing strut
and fall,
dancers
on the verge –
a ragged floated
human sprocket, genders
erased by wind, faces and races
drag behind our tails
of ruin, now a little gear
inside this inside-out cycle
of time: lock away
past, future, alive
only in ravenous instant –
beyond words to say who we are
three miles nearer the stars,
as words like
mass,
air, dust, god,
whip by, too thick in the thin sky
for the tongue to capture
or the eye to catch –
invisible, weightless, but able
to break us, we are strung
together, naked
words, sentenced to be nothing
and the heart of the universe. From above
clouds upwind look like snow fields
but as we pass they become our terrible
tender dreams, bulge with battered images –
angels blaze to a strange garden; still
we sink, we shedders
of skin and scale,
our bones to settle
their galleon ribs low
in the twilight deep.
We plunge through the poem
of the boy who painted a trail
of waxy feathers that tied
the sun to the verdant sea.
We now fall from the sun fire
like comets
and the world dawdles on
as it did then, insensate to our joy
or his crushing fear
of the rising green blanket. Oh, oh
the land – the dim dark land, a firmament of felt greens,
mottled umbers, silky leaf canopies, final drafts
of roads. An indifferent town dissembles, and the lie
of a coherent map slowly magnifies the detailed debris.
Its dark Manitoban resplendence is scarred
by an archipelago of puddles mirroring muddled flaws
in our expanding forms, and we finally know
all our hopeless wounds may still heal.
Scatter like starlings at terminal velocity, pull cords
to greet the drag of our bodies, and glide in, each
to a fresh broken plot. Our chutes flare
for a light landing, toes to graze grass tops –
we makers of the moment, lovers of fierce light.
Inspired by “Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich and “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden.
(First published in the 21st annual edition of Oberon Poetry Magazine, 2024).
Lahaina Confession
We lit the flame that flares
from Haleakala hills down.
Houses cremate to tumps,
rage of dust throttles town
in industrial orange as
slags fret footmarks.
Ember galaxies blow on
a burnt dog in soot spark
but the sea does not mourn
this manufacture of ash.
it keeps its secrets, it takes
our falseness with our trash.
Terror comes in unique waves
under indifferent smoke.
Legs and lungs fight-
each breath chokes
between the life of life
and the life of death.
The ocean is the buffer,
fire the living death.
As the last cinders smolder,
as the slow census of blight
is taken by grief-shaken crews
shifting corpses in shivelight
warnings coat the earth:
yesterday Pompeii.
Ash hisses on rising surf,
tomorrow today.
Thermophiles in hot vents
push up from the worn ocean.
Under diamond hard stars
imagine us the eruption.
(First published in the 2024 issue of Crosswinds Poetry Magazine).
The Word that Burns on the Tongue
1. Dawn.
Haev i not consiedred the lihtg? /Haev i not sene how its star fier / laiveshs istelf itno evrey coernr, peres / itno the guliteist chaebmer of uor hartes?
Waht haev i thougth of the gifts it buqeathde / bofeer ist paissng – bleu byod of the moinring, / pnik gowl of magogts to decay the foerst folor, / a déacollge of feacs to dercoate the eivenng of the harte?
Do not the deespet engeries of the smaellst cell /and the pilan feac of evrey sonfluewr /
cycel with the ruternnig lihtg and perais its paissng?
Why deos the lihtg hold back the drak, yet alowl a flaem / to brun as it will with raidance? / If you aer wietherd embres, why blaem raind or win, / when all gaerdns grow wuthoit faer udnre the lihtg?
In the gloma why do we gaethr rievr stoens / itno cnotours gerater than uor flownig midns? / Wheer do our thotghus run of the pouirng abandunce / beewten the beinginng and eindng of the lihtg?
2. Dusk.
Have I not considered the light?
Have I not seen how its star fire
lavishes itself into every corner, peers
into the guiltiest chamber of our hearts?
What have I thought of the gifts it bequeathed
before its passing – blue body of the morning,
pink glow of maggots to decay the forest floor,
a décollage of faces to decorate the evening of the heart?
Do not the deepest energies of the smallest cell
and the plain face of every sunflower
cycle with the returning light and praise its passing?
Why does the light hold back the dark, yet allow a flame
to burn as it will with radiance?
If you are withered embers, why blame rain or wind,
when all gardens grow without fear under the light?
In the gloam why do we gather river stones
into contours greater than our flowing minds?
Where do our thoughts run of the pouring abundance
between the beginning and ending of the light?
(First published in Palette Poetry magazine, June 2024).
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