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.
The Nightmare
Reply
Tag Archives: poems
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 Poet’s Lament for His Mother’s Death Has Won Another Prize
Most get an afterlife that isn’t much
for having had one’s soul pried out and kissed by death.
Oh, yes, it’s heady for a while, everyone suddenly
so sympathetic to one’s finished life,
so seeking lessons from one’s progress, or
so plucking-out-the-moral from one’s last decline.
It’s not bad while it lasts,
and everyone makes nice, but honestly
it’s mostly straight from gravestones and condolence cards:
“Beloved mother, Loving wife,” and how
she loved her kids, her husband, animals,
was pleasant always, liked to dance…
Most dead folk get that taste of it.
But later, after the tepid food and drives back home,
after some hours or months of reminisce,
one’s absences become less notable; one starts to fade.
And then what’s left of one? A nice obit, scrapbooked;
a stray memorial card stuck in a dresser drawer somewhere.
But this!
If there’s a heaven, oh! She’s gloating there for sure,
knowing she’s in it for the long haul now;
the mortification of her outraged privacy
is nothing to such pride! Such an I-knew-it!
Her own death, the source of his triumph!
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.
“Avoid the righteous”
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
John 8:7
Deplore cast stones? Sinner, avoid the righteous;
Likely they are spoiling for a fight. Just
Follow Jesus’ counsel: in a throng, us
Common folk are safer with the wrongeous.
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.
And Winter Yet to Come
I prayed for sign of spring
A leaden sky was all
And my desire was cold
I saw him yesterday
He stood as close to me
As if I were his soul
When yesterday was chill
Tomorrow has no sting
A leaden sky was all
I prayed for sign of spring
Rilke Said
Rilke believed in making
continual poetry but
I think he never spent
much time here.
“O do not fear!”
O do not fear
The teeth I bare
In such a merry grin;
I eat men’s lies
And that is why
My teeth are stained with sin.
Bag of Anything 