12:47 am

I like poetry
I like the company of it
the gathering laughter
the calmness of it

I like silence
and the lightness it wears
I like its chest,
the full embrace

and I like the night
especially its eyes
as it blinks itself awake
and as it sways
like an old woman
in her prayer

I like body too
how it tires
and how it jolts up again
its sweet sleep,
the strangeness
I like the geometry,
the dual nature of it.

12:30 am

today I am not
what I was yesterday
and I know it sounds bold
but it is really
a simple thing to say

as a vine coils a little bit
with every wake of day
so do we children
slowly on the way

and something of night
always remains
even as it turns
from us away

and something of sea
visits unchanged
upon the changing bay

so, today I am not
what I was yesterday
but some of me lingers
and in future it will stay

12:36 am

Lord, this night does keep its quiet
not of our silver gyre does it tire

a thousand times I watch it rise
a thousand slips of its drips

up-down-up-down-up-down town
I watch its crowds black and brown

I watch the trees, the silver bees
Lord, this night is not night quite

bed:
blood
in us
of mud

shed
the rust
muscle
of dust

red:
tongue
wrung
strung

said:
run
the run
begun
(we did)

-

head
of toil
of ours
in soil

bread
of skin
soiled
in sin

led:
we went
say, patent
we went

wed?
ha, sweet
pleased
bland wheat

bed:
pillow
above us
below

bed:
black hand
fragile
and

you write like a sea
I see

gyring and free
stubbornly

flapping only
to be

easy
to see

your profanity
holy

in its naivety,
wholly

scanty,
heavy

with plenty,
empty

like sea,
pretty

for me
for me partially

for you only
hesitantly

for world boldly
bare to see

you write like a sea
lady

toiling sweetly
to monotony

and plea
howling all free

free
ah, lovely

like the slavery
of a sea

this earthly gaze
still so stirs
even now the face
something kills

mountain eyes
still do peep
upon all that dies
and then do leap

on our frail fortress
in the green
you do not rest
your golden keen

say some fable
invite
if we then are able
do bite

unclothe sheep
unearth meat
your secret keep
we will in sweet

bliss of moonlit bit
turn then all away
and lure with just the wit
of a silver bay

laugh faceless
sound of sea
on grey impress
the sound of sea

sight of shadow
gallows' scarf
in gusts then flow
call on the calf

row a waving
seeing and still
move the boat-wing
down the hill

down down
we do come
smile now the ivory crown
do we you become?

I have just spent one-hour-and-a-half
handicapping tomorrow's
card.
when am I going to get at the poems?
well, they'll just have to wait
they'll have to warm their feet in the
anteroom
where they'll sit gossiping about
me.
"this Chinaski, doesn't he realize that
without us he would have long ago
gone mad, been dead?"
"he knows, but he thinks he can keep
us at his beck and call!"
"he's an ingrate!"
"let's give him writer's block!"
"yeah!"
"yeah!"
"yeah!"
the little poems kick up their heels
and laugh.
then the biggest one gets up and
walks toward the door.
"hey, where are you going?" he is
asked.
"somewhere where I am
appreciated."
then, he
and the others
vanish.
I open a beer, sit down at the
machine and nothing
happens.
like now.
from the 1997 Black Sparrow New Year's greeting, "A New War"