Sunday, April 17th, 2011 (For Gramp)

when I learned you were gone
I was at the top of the hill

when my shoulders began to
quiver I had reached the bottom

robins bounced along
the ruddy grass so insistent
on its verdance

clumps of colors or flowers
passed their lives
under clamor of cloud
and April gustings

what a day to have
your soul
lifted beyond

when I knew I would miss you
I walked to the market
to caress the vegetables,
to purchase cured meats

Sunday shoppers
jostled sleepily against me
and everywhere
colors kept insisting, inserting

when I finally cried for you
I was home
slung deep beside
the warm hearth
of your memory

dinner on the stove
made by my hands
that just last week
held yours

A Month Of Beasts

gullet of March
vessels the vacant
claps of trees

March, my face
lifted words against

March, your lamb
snagged in teeth and
hollow hoof,
shoulders slung
with punctured winter

March, two beast maker
fleece my feet
with fever and chill,
sweat pelts
in your brackish afternoons

March, a skin of talk
words mingled
amniotic,
swapping genetics

March, quiver me
in crocus beds,
epidermal fissures
not pelt
but column of speak

March, plain robes
of sky, bare back of earth
unsure of inevitability
talk with the wool of
your eyes
talk soft

March, hush your mane
March
March
March.

Press

what press is that
on skin
and vowels, tight
hunger ?

(skin before color)
such as sinking
motions or comets
in lazy trees,
when light ruptured

memory, you,
a lump in my spine
press,
press tight

cramped behind teeth, eyes
words
coils
a breath resumes
words as saddles
some things
buckled to
my tongue

to know
snow in lungs presses,
a blue truth
architects our flesh
tighter

time like a coffin
at high speeds
through joyous winds
makes
it over, or if only
pressed
tight

how big the ocean when you wish to be far away

at night
he oceans
softly beyond horror

in waking
a body’s cursive skin
remembers laughing

then the act of morning
resplendent with apology
afflicted with new

walking into a
three-legged day,
each time, bells everywhere

luxury of forging memory
concrete and steel collecting
in the corners of cities

put some blood
to those bells
as he oceans
coming clean away

never the cut that healed straight
mind the life going infinite
in forgetting

a life rendered
from fat of moments
is thus shouldered by skies

missives or letters
plain speak in first waking,
how hungry for the past

still
he oceans certain
all moments
unbound to him

Midnight Stubble, Dreams of Grandfather

Born in the quicksilver
of living and deep earth
born to you
I come to learn
you’ve been up at night
visiting the dreams of
your blood

Once, seated as Buddha
in a woolen robe
you peeled an apple
and cast your love
so it wound tight around
the bone

Last night
I sat on your lap,
a child again
clamped tight in
bear-like arms,
you told me the
troubles of your
old-man heart

and now to wring out
words to say
your cheek was like
the firmament, tangible
beyond even a last touch,
I am lost in blood,
taking my first breaths
on the day of your birth.

Waiting on the Winter, Writing it out

would wish it
open palm of
the thought, it
was blue
and then tasted
of mallow

the thought
that was the most
beautiful

I make the window
a home, when you
go by in a sketch
of legs
of teeth

I am fetched
I am underneath

perfect, plain
entirely too lovely
in the cold-smelling
wind,

your face
festooned with
a promise.

Drinks and Ponies sometimes go together.

But poems, ponies, and drinks always go together....

http://www.changinggears.info/2010/10/04/reinvention-recipes-manhattans-two-ways/

Fox Hunting to the Memory of George Carnaghi

grandfather,
known mostly
by absence

I know now
that I love something
we could have loved
together

and I see you
in the low, fog-saddled
fields just before dawn

or in the bright shouts
of late fall trees

often, I hear you call
my heart
by the voice of a hound’s
long, throated cries

and grandfather,
when I gallop,
I know you gallop too

glacial decisions

a glacier
tucked under
a tongue
the expanse of
melt, lost
out of mouth corners

that was the saying,
the chewed gristle of ice,
rubble, and freshly formed
speak

that was what you were
hearing, dripping
out of face and heart
and everywhere

the melt of making up
a mind
there gnawed or pawed
spat through that you might
see that flat awful
of white resolve

Untitled

In this home of my body
there lies scarcity,
my chariot mouth
carries nothing profound
when it wishes to say
‘beauty’