“When I wear this hat”
I said
“I can read your mind”
“That’s nothing”
she said
“When I wear these shoes
I can read
your feet”
“When I Wear These Shoes”
Reply
Category Archives: story
Sestina for Hero and Dragon
I.
Out with you! In Christ’s name, dragon,
Out! Come from your hole and face my blade,
For I would try if dragon’s-blood be truly black.
From grieving lands beyond the sea
A hundred hundred dead cry for your death.
Hai! Out! I’ve not come such a way to face but empty air!
II.
O erring, misinformed! This so-called empty air
Is rank with camouflage, could shelter many a dragon.
Shall I appear? Do you so earnestly seek death?
For face me, and you die — nor brightest shield, nor sharpest blade
Can alter that. Heroes have come before across the sea.
They lie about you: armor shattered, bones charred black.
III.
A cowardly reply for one with heart so black,
A murderer whose very name befouls the air.
Come, worm: between the mountains and the sea
I stand to challenge you! Will you not try me, dragon?
Your claws against my shield; your hide against my blade.
Or do you fear to meet a test of death?
IV.
I having slain a hundred hundred men, think you one more death
Means aught to me? I come. The sea boils and the clouds turn black
Before my coming. My mouth’s a cavern, every tooth a blade;
My breath a conflagration, and my wings breed hurricanes into the air.
Man, behold a dragon.
My bones are stronger than these mountains; my blood is older than the sea.
V.
Dragon, behold a man! The clouds and the sea
That feared your coming shall rejoice to see your death.
These mountains are not so strong as my rage, dragon,
The sun is not so hot, nor Hell as black.
Could you but hear, the wailing of my kindred dead fills the air.
Now they will be avenged. I swear this by my blade!
VI.
I shall unbind your body’s several elements; come, try your blade.
Your bones shall mingle with the earth, your thin, cold blood dilute the sea,
The smoulder of your burning dance inconsequent upon the air.
You speak of death? You have not learned to speak of death.
Death is mightier than your rage, hotter and more black.
I know this, who have killed a hundred hundred men. Death is a dragon.
* * *
The dragon claws for purchase in the sky; the man holds tight his blade,
As clouds scud low and black above a furious sea.
In one of these is death: the dragon’s stoop; the bright sword that cleaves the air.
10 Poems Written with a Found Pen
1.
Between the gray sky and gray
earth the darkling crowds
of those who
don’t and won’t look up
swell the concrete streets but
no cement can hold back time
no built thing can support the sky and
the earth holds me, but
I hold nothing:
holding nothing
back, again,
still.
2.
I can’t even
get lost just once, I
got lost then
right away
did it again. Later
that place I was headed for
changed into another, so
I never found it.
3.
Hip hooray for the Brooklyn Bridge!
A comic book for the Bowery Kids!
Nobody’s lost, nobody jumps,
We all stand up & take our lumps.
From here to Brooklyn, never back!
And into the great wide world at last!
4.
Never can remember
the endings of movies
quite right and then
I’m afraid to watch them
a second time
since what if the whole world
could come undone
just like
that?
5.
I used to love rocks and
talk about them. Now I don’t
remember why
I thought I knew so much, why
I thought the world was all
about the rocks.
Kids, huh?
6.
If the bay froze – right now, right away –
I bet those sharp gray
waves would fetch a pretty penny
you could cut up the bay, not have any
thing left but sunken wrecks and fish
skeletons, and everyone would wish
they’d bought a piece while they could
yeah, you best believe it would be a good
deal while it lasted, buddy
7.
I have this friend
let’s call her Chris I
haven’t seen her in
a while and I
forget if I owe her
a call or if
she owes me so
anyhow it’s pretty
late now
maybe in a day or two
I’ll remember
again
8.
She got her world from
Headlines, so was always in
Despair, or shopping.
9.
That creek meandering through
the grass doesn’t want
a thing and moves
always. That bird poised like
death on the bank
wants what it can
get; it doesn’t move
but once.
10.
This morning she was up
before me, who used to be
my slug-a-bed, my slow waker.
This morning she has
opinions, who used to
wait and see what things
would be like.
This morning as
I reached for my
coffee cup I realized
wait
this is no dream
this thing is real.
Fear Dreams
Fear dreams, and sleep makes dreaming real.
I do not like to rest. I stay up late.
From the inchoate room sleep builds, where syntax fails,
I know one day I’ll find I cannot wake.
The Nightmare
Beast hallucinations claw my face
from inside, seeing now’s their chance:
the gate of sleep begun to swing, the beckoning escape.
Dreaming, dreaming makes them, makes them dance.
Dream Song #1: I Dream of Flying
O does your living make no sound?
The world is large for you to see.
They fly who never touch the ground.
The dream shall pass: it was a dream.
What are the words I have not learned?
I stand before you clean, too clean.
The world has turned before, and turns;
I am unmoved, but fly in dreams.
The Pathetic Fallacy
David and Anne are playing chess.
The game of kings.
David’s thinking tactically,
While Anne’s mind is on other things.
Anne plays White, but loses ground
In the center, and her concentration wanes.
Outside the room, the easy darkness
Presses at the window-panes —
She softly gazes out at it
As David launches his attack.
“Your move,” he says, and jars her back
Into the minding of the game;
She had been wondering at the way
The darkness called her name.
Death by Drowning
(for Theodore Roethke)
We die of love, or anything at all.
I drew a million breaths, but could not sing.
My bones are of the earth, and heed its call;
I’ll dream a sun, and feed myself on ink.
Be still, be still: a color’s in my eyes.
What’s sleeping? Will I wake? Have I a soul?
This water’s cold. A stone does what it likes.
My breath is gone. The sea’s song fills me whole.
She Makes Them at Home in the Land (Monster Slayer part 7)
She called out that one’s name,
Four times she called Nayenezgani, Kill-Ogre,
And the canyon walls answered back,
And the rocks heard it.
She called out that one’s name,
Four times she called Tobadischini, Water-Child,
And the canyon walls answered back,
And the water heard it.
“Now you are part of this place.
“The rocks have heard your name,
“The water has heard it.
“Here you will always have a place.”
I Visit Qiantang Lake in Spring
(after Bai Juyi)
I could go north to Gushan temple, or west to Jiating.
I could. But here… here, I am between the calm water and the drifting clouds,
Where the young orioles squabble over perches in the sun,
Where the swallows have returned, and now are harvesting the spring mud.
Unruly flowers sprang up while I was looking elsewhere,
While my horse waded through the new grass.
No, I’ll go east again, where I long to wander
Beneath the green poplars, on White Sand Trail.
Bag of Anything 