arise vehement sea
and hammer
with your suffering fists
all the crags
and lonely stones
upon the shores of
the naked coast

where crouches
at edge of bluff
the foundations raw
cantilevered walls
and the arcing buttresses
that shelter dreams
held secret

hurl your agonized and
eager waters
at stone and mortar
shake the bedrock
on which rest
the touchstones
in the deepest cellars

let your echoing tremors
buffet and rebound
within the resonant chambers
hidden below

your ululating winds
calling to memories
in their veiled towers
peering from windows
narrow and high

their fluttering lamps
clinging to the light

they search the tumult
with eyes fearful and uncertain
cloaking forsaken desires
that thirst without end

The sun is wondering
if it should dive into the sea
while two wanderers still play
on the edges of the dark
beckoning it to stay
just a little longer.

For just a short distance away
the bright gold lingers
in the shallows
where they could tiptoe
into the iridescent rippling.

The shimmering surges
on the margins
where the waves have lost their energy
and the tide is a glassy placid.

I am wondering
like the sun
if it is time to set
or if I should wade into the rippling light.

I move through the woods in ritual
The trees have shed their leaves like
Third sons and eldest daughters,
They cling bravely until the wind uncurls their hands
and bears them away from home.  
A scavenger, I search them out, hold them between finger and thumb,
Their last embrace.

Sometimes I will pluck a fading life from a branch,
melded amber and crimson,
the dregs of sun in their veins,
offered in the last vibrance of summer’s heat.
At home, I press them between pages,
tiny spells of weight and gravity
cast to keep their color.
I know this magic,
Autumn and I are kindred in this,
Our eyes are the same soft green and sepia of hiraeth
cradles of remembrance,
nets always cast back into memory.
Like all memories
There are a thousand useless,
The umber of old blood, trodden underfoot,
the seconds that dripped by unmarked.
But we hold the fragile, happy few,
High upon a shelf
the glowing phosphorus of laughter
The currant red of a last kiss
Returned to and returned to
Like an unanswered prayer.

His eyes were headlights at midnight
The unexpected dawning of a new world
Snatched away as suddenly as it came
Leaving in its wake,
The blinding stare of blue-black patches
Staining the asphalt like spilled paint.
Oh, my dear,
You flew, too fast, too high,
the reckless wantonness of youth
grasping through your wings,
The way her hands once ran through your hair,
what do you have left
But the drag of gravity,
The silver blade of the scream
Just before
The fall.

The glory of busy
Isn’t lost on me
The shame of time
Seeps down like rain
Drenching my lank hair
how dare you have
The luxury of restlessness,
I whisper to me.

The way my hands wring
And feet tap, toes cringe,
Teeth bite dry lips
And eyes glaze over
With this lack of action,
I feel my body revolt
When not called to duty,
To serve, to provide
To do the most.

Shivers travel down
My spine, enter my heart
Pumping electric blood into
Shaking limbs,
Quivering muscles
Empty throat and squashed
voice box, ears
Ringing, singing
Jingles to myself
In disgust and fun

I need help.
Save me from
The indignity of a frozen
Mind and a body too stiff
To act upon all
Those tasks that could
Make me so perfect,
fit and thin
Clean and together
All gathered into one
Human who didn’t forget
How to exist in the moment
Because what might I do
With the next?

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
     finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
     throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

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"

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)