"quartets" poems
The short-order cook and the dishwasher
argue the relative merits
of Rilke’s Elegies
against Eliot’s Four Quartets,
but the delivery man who brings eggs
suggests they have forgotten Les fleurs
du mal and Baudelaire. The waitress
carrying three plates and a coffee ***
can’t decide whom she loves more—
Rimbaud or Verlaine,
William Blake or William Wordsworth.
She refills the rabbi’s cup
(he’s reading Rumi),
asks what he thinks of Arthur Whaley.
In the booth behind them, a fat woman
feeds a small white poodle in her lap,
with whom she shares her spoon.
"It’s Rexroth’s translations of the Japanese,"
she says, "that one can’t live without:
May those who are born after me
Never travel such roads of love."
The revolving door proffers
a stranger in a long black coat, lost in the madhouse poems of John Clare.
As he waits to be seated,
the woman who owns the place
hands him a menu
in which he finds several handwritten poems
By Hafiz, Gibran, and Rabindranath Tagore.
The lunch hour’s crowded—
the owner wonders
if the stranger might share
my table. As he sits,
I put a finger to my lips,
and with my eyes ask him
to listen with me
to the young boy and the young girl
two tables away
taking turns reading aloud
the love poems of Pablo Neruda.
4.9k
My home sits atop a lonely wave
Basking in the sun
My home of flora and sturdy nave
Of which I am a nun
Lilies grow in white quartets
Jasmine from every crevice
Spiders sew their thoughtful nets
Dust on every surface
Here my pilgrimage ends
At the waistline of the coast
The lemons that became my friends
Will now observe my ghost
Sep 5, 2023
Sep 5, 2023 at 5:14 AM UTC
Delicate tang spritzes the air with a sunshine kiss
Peeling so gently it's lady-like tenderness is an elegant tea party with white gloved fingers and daisies on the mantle
Her majesty will be pleased!
A romantic encounter of citrus delight and sun-bathed security in ever loving om and happiness
A candidate as sweet could never be asked for such a casual Sunday outing and for you my dear we are but a shared slice of raspberry accented pie
So powerful but yet so softly subdued...
Like piano ballads or string quartets it is here simply for our glorious consumption
An ode to you my Sunday sweet orange!
May my taste buds always dazzle upon your arrival
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 9:20 PM UTC
.
Scurrilous birds fly by,
To nest in the little painted
Houses left clear for them,
In awkward circles they romp
Their peculiar dramas
With ****** wings.
Do they even witness
The skies revolving canvas,
New masterpieces each day,
How the light shimmers
In the sparkle rays of sun,
How the golden fields,
Of vales in sighted sweep
And dance, airy etudes,
By the windfall gusts
So suddenly arising?
These visions are marks
For but few, who hear time
As it plays in stepped quartets
Of the spiraling seasons song,
For the lone mercies, gifts,
To ones most gentle, merest,
Spirited eyes who gaze deftly,
Deep in sacred days,
From a window.
.
Dec 22, 2018
Dec 22, 2018 at 7:36 PM UTC
Wrought-wide eyes from catching clouds on the safety of our backs
Who's lifting who dried-up with the fossils, tucked away at Jack's
Can you capture the oily maze of Perla, Gary, Glen AND Dee?
We should cap the treasure trove. Just one shell. Alright... three.
Passenger mats drowned long ago in quartets of sandy shoes
They're coming around to dukkah, but beetroot's an ongoing feud.
We'll find our way back to purple-brown after art class in year nine
Until then just squeeze my hand when they see **** every time.
Curse words stowed beneath our necks, cellared with the red wine.
Pull binoculars out in twenty years to seek parrots in sun spines.
Trick them into dusking walks, the promise of ice cream at Kateri
Squealing across Eileen's golden grain, I hope they pick Rasberry.
He swirls the sand beneath him and burrows his sweet brow.
She builds bridges for fairies and writes names in stick-crayon.
I'll say they're just like us, one day when they can stand it least
Until then their just like you dreamboat, floating down my east.
Feb 15, 2021
Feb 15, 2021 at 10:39 PM UTC
They fall upon us over the spillways of time,
Burbling at us through some Radio Free Nostalgia
Courtesy of some college station sitting at the far left of the dial
Or streaky CDs at the rear of some forlorn shelf,
And we know them to be to be, if not outright falsehoods,
Among the more variable of truths
(As all truths are, if we’re being honest about the matter)
For when someone sets out to create the Great American Whatever,
It becomes quickly apparent that such paths
Are not straight and clear, but wind and double back upon themselves,
Replete with thorns and weeds with bladed edges;
Egos must be stroked, revenue streams and margins considered,
Leaving one’s primary legacy as a testament to compromise.
But to be a casualty is not necessarily to be a fatality,
And through the narrowness of a three-minute window,
Purveyed to us by quartets of chanteuses
Who were no strangers to compromise their ownselves
(So many staged photo shoots,
So many hokey Christmas songs and cosmetic-sale jingles)
We can glimpse momentary epiphanies,
Crescent-moon slices of the verities,
Which, if not the whole truth and nothing but,
Provide us with something to hold, something to hum
As we go about the tortuous business
Of making some sense of the whole **** thing.
Apr 7, 2017
Apr 7, 2017 at 9:41 AM UTC
.
Scurrilous birds fly by,
To nest in the little painted
Houses left clear for them,
In awkward circles they romp
Their peculiar dramas
With ****** wings.
Do they even witness
The skies revolving canvas,
New masterpieces each day,
How the light shimmers
In the sparkle rays of sun,
How the golden fields,
Of vales in sighted sweep
And dance, airy etudes,
By the windfall gusts
So suddenly arising?
These visions are marks
For but few, who hear time
As it plays in stepped quartets
Of the spiraling seasons song,
For the lone mercies, gifts,
To ones most gentle, merest,
Spirited eyes who gaze deftly,
Deep in sacred days,
From a window.
Apr 29, 2017
Apr 29, 2017 at 2:31 PM UTC
I recall the evening invocatory call to the will of the 'Almighty' by
a visiting Pastor .. Ladies with fans , gentlemen waving hats .. Thunder
hammering the next county over to the west , streetlights filled with bugs and the occasional brown bat ...
Babes crying out , children becoming restless , his oratory becoming louder with each concurring "Amen' from the crowd ..
Tent ***** swaying ever so gently , the sweat on Dad's forehead and the smile on Granny's face , a stick of gum from Mom to get me through the evening sermon on a humid southern night ..
Tables lined end to end filled with potato salad , fried chicken and baked beans .. Ambrosia , peach pies and cakes .. Sweet tea ...
Evening dinners with gospel quartets and old time bluegrass bands ..
The kids receiving their Vacation Bible school certificates after the congregational feast .. The drive home ..Carried indoors , tucked away in bed with fond memories ..
Mar 18, 2016
Mar 18, 2016 at 10:02 PM UTC
1
In the year Victoria
came to the throne,
on 9 acres by a river’s bend,
(bought for £490)
Joseph Dover built his mill.
yarn
to weave,
wool to knit,
the raw fleece
washed, carded,
scribbled, tentered, dyed,
spun and woven
(back parlour or
mill shed)
finished,
sold.
Today the fleeces are
burnt at the farm,
and the sheds and lofts
display colourful crafts.
The past is collected in
sepia photographs,
strange heritaged tools.
The present hides in
figures on the footfall,
those costings for the café.
In an August
of grey cloud
and persistent rain,
the sun on occasion
shakes the building into life;
it filters through the tall riverside trees,
makes swathes of coloured light
swim across the wooden floors.
2
The studio, cool
on the hottest day,
is graced with garden flowers,
and the business of making everywhere.
Days fold work into the pleasure
of small gestures of care,
Satie’s tenderest song
a litany under the breath.
When toes meet
beneath a table shared,
this touch registers
the slow wonder of it all;
that ‘being here’
in this expansive place
of stone and wood,
textured always
with the white noised
rush of water.
At night we steal back in
to sit together by a single lamp:
to decipher Henry’s mimetic prose
of estuary, moor and river;
ponder Robert’s quartets in A,
every phrase singing Clara, Clara . . .
Later, lights extinguished
we move in the pitch of darkness
through the long galleries,
carefully down the invisible stairs.
Outside, in the
coloured silence
of the river’s run,
the hills carry the sky
cloud-haunted, star-strewn.
moon-lit.
Jan 7, 2013
Jan 7, 2013 at 1:30 AM UTC
You deafen yourself with the billows of your mind.
The infrared waves ebbing
that crash and bang against your brain corners,
leaving blotches and scraps and holes
of tattered exhaustment.
My dear, you delve and revel into dark waters
rivulets of teardrops and insanity
travel down through your nape
as if they are atoms that constitute
your whole existence.
Clashing with the demons and phenomenal apparitions
that reside within your internal gates of hell.
Hear the clang of brazen swords
of mind thoughts and spilled ink.
Hear them paralyze you from the mind
to the futile pinky finger of yours.
Dispersed souls and impenetrable
stringed quartets of words.
Love this.
Embrace this.
This room wherein you caged yourself
With detrimental insanity that sale past through
seas of thousand madmen’s minds.
This is your all.
This is what composes your all.
Greater than the universe that
your knowledge has managed to stretch its feet upon
and all the elements you ever know combined.
Greater than all those fed up imaginations
of your childhood.
See them with your eyes,
see them and bask in its beauty
that has its venom sink down
to the ivory crystal of your bones.
This is your all.
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 11:38 PM UTC
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Jul 15, 2016
Jul 15, 2016 at 3:03 AM UTC
A girl from the north country with eyes deep as the Great Lakes (if the Great Lakes were green).
Writers in numbers too great to mention.
The truth and those few who have the guts to tell it.
Contrasts and textures like white wine and black satin or the brown and white of tan lines.
Burgundy, my favorite color. Strong coffee and good bourbon. Garlic and spicy foods. Yuengling Lager. Pall Malls. Evan Williams.
Classic movies. Indie movies. Movies.
Mozart, Warren Zevon and Bill Evans. Beethoven's late Quartets. Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. An endless list.
Lingerie (but not on me). Women in hats. Women in dresses. Long kisses. Women with souls. Women with brains. OK, women, though very few good ones seem to exist.
My sons. Tibetan art. Champagne. Apple computers. Cats. Space travel. ****
Quantum Theory. Buddhism. The Tao. Burning Bushes. Shiva and Vishnu.
Ghost driving aimlessly to see what I find. America is mostly off the interstates and mostly dying.
Young people who listen and know I'm real and like them..
Blueberries: food of the gods.
Breaking any rule I think is chickenshit in any way possible.
And so on.
Apr 17, 2015
Apr 17, 2015 at 9:04 AM UTC
I love solos.
The courage to stand out front, in front of those consigned to the choir, acknowledging the support they provide with a gracious wave, but not afraid to take the acclaim justly due, front stage.
I love solos.
They celebrate breakthrough, on cue drawing attention away from the typical duets, the quartets, the ensembles, tempering a tendency to celebrate humble, to focus on a singular achievement and an agreement that this is a voice worth listening to.
I love solos.
So step out, take a bow
and make it loud.
Sep 20, 2023
Sep 20, 2023 at 4:29 PM UTC
This poem was written
For you, in the key of F#,
At a persistent tempo of 160bpm.
So, will you bring the timpani,
And sousaphone out from the
Back of this page, and let the
Brass roar at forte. It’s a glorious
Sound despite the clumsy trombone
Sliding off key; that my shaky hand trying to
Get it down right this time. The
Notes are there, and the feeling is
There, but it takes a lot to get it right,
And for one second we will feel the
Same thing in unison. I fear sometimes
My eye has surpassed my hand.
This poem was written with the passion
Of half drunken midnight karaoke in a
Bay Area China Town, but the audience still claps for the effort.
This poem was a song transposed for
The coyote barbershop quartets, to
Sing me awake at night.
This poem was written, because
I don’t want to love you anymore,
And I’m trying to love us, in all
Our beautiful discord, and for
The one time in a thousand where
The notes fall in to place,
As the wind instruments hum
And the choir sings at fortissimo
And for one second you hear what
I've been trying to get out, like a bad singer
Finally hitting the right note, we will feel the
Same thing at once, and our minds swing
Together in time.
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 2:00 AM UTC
let the water
trickle past your fingers,
like memory,
falling through the holes in your
head, cloudy, tattered.
let your head,
as fluffy as clouds,
brush up against stars,
constellations of
legends, of sodium
and potassium hallucinations.
sometimes people lie.
let the air
brush each
and every alveoli of your lungs,
each gyri and
sulci of your brain.
taste the salt --
sweat, the sea, your blood.
let the iron,
stable, sunbright
iron, carry itself
with the poise of
a red giant --
both radient,
striking, bleeding vermillion
and crimson.
stable, like a mountain,
letting rain run
itself over with the gentle
caress of an old lover,
who knows the contours and the
dips of the body,
and yet is getting --
reacquainted with it,
after a long time away.
the sweat of the
maker sticks to
the threads that
weave to make the library that makes
you, that
holds information, holds itself
in letters,
quartets, spirals.
taste the salt.
the wind sounds like the sea,
outside my bedroom window,
when it's too late
for my eyes to have
not made
their coupling of
the night.
imagine the salt-mist,
bright and cold on your
face, like the
splatter of blood,
leaking out of a nose;
like a river flowing
from precipitation, mist,
downstea, rejoining where it once
came from, where it was
always going to end up.
fate is a funny thing.
they say that every cell
of yours gets replaced
every seven years.
i wonder how long it takes salt,
iron --
to rise and to
fall,
like the eight minutes
the light of the
sun follows to get
here, to our
little pinprick eyes,
to our dopamine
and norepinephrine,
the spikes and
dips of neurons, firing.
how many heartbeats, breaths?
how many crashes of waves?
Jan 29, 2025
Jan 29, 2025 at 12:26 AM UTC
Yehudit looked back
at Benedict-
at the back
of the classroom
more with
that boy Rolland-
but he looked elsewhere.
Something the boy showed.
Titter of laughter.
Miss G, the teacher,
looked at them.
Clapped her hands.
Her bespectacled stare
silenced them.
Yehudit looked back
to the front, the blackboard,
something written
on Beethoven's life and music.
Miss G walked in front
of the class
talking of the last
string quartets.
Yehudit thought
of Benedict and her
by the pond
the previous day.
Sun warm upon them
as they sat on the grass.
She talked of the ducks
and swan and the heron
that landed nearby.
He listened,
but thought of kissing
and holding or so
he later said.
Miss G put on a record
of a string quartet.
Yehudit looked back
and Benedict smiled
and that made her day
and she never heard
the string quartet
of Beethoven
as it played away.
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 2:28 PM UTC
Scurrilous birds fly by,
To nest in the little painted
Houses left clear for them,
In awkward circles they romp
Their peculiar dramas
With ****** wings.
Do they even witness
The skies revolving canvas,
New masterpieces each day,
How the light shimmers
In the sparkle rays of sun,
How the golden fields,
Of vales in sighted sweep
And dance, airy etudes,
By the windfall gusts
So suddenly arising?
These visions are marks
For but few, who hear time
As it plays in stepped quartets
Of the spiraling seasons song,
For the lone mercies, gifts,
To ones most gentle, merest,
Spirited eyes who gaze deftly,
Deep in sacred days,
From a window.
Jun 10, 2016
Jun 10, 2016 at 7:49 PM UTC
Scurrilous birds fly by,
To nest in the little painted
Houses left clear for them,
In awkward circles they romp
Their peculiar dramas
With ****** wings.
Do they even witness
The skies revolving canvas,
New masterpieces each day,
How the light shimmers
In the sparkle rays of sun,
How the golden fields,
Of vales in sighted sweep
And dance, airy etudes,
By the windfall gusts
So suddenly arising?
These visions are marks
For but few, who hear time
As it plays in stepped quartets
Of the spiraling seasons song,
For the lone mercies, gifts,
To ones most gentle, merest,
Spirited eyes who gaze deftly,
Deep in sacred days,
From a window.
Sep 22, 2015
Sep 22, 2015 at 7:20 PM UTC
You equate me to a murderer
Because I smoke some cigarettes
I guess we'll all be down in hell
While you play harp in winged quartets.
Sure, I reach for stars just 'cause they burn
my soul's a maze so I can hide
I've scrambled "god" with **** and ****
Each day my head and heart collide
But art's knowing when to break the rules
And life is art, so do the math
You think I'm just a 'talking corpse'
'Cause I reject your 'purer' path?
I'm a mess but that's just fine
You live your way I'll live mine
But tell me how you can define
The One True Way to live?
When you look at minor heresies
and can't even forgive?
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 5:21 PM UTC
Scurrilous birds fly by,
To nest in the little painted
Houses left clear for them,
In awkward circles they romp
Their peculiar dramas
With ****** wings.
Do they even witness
The skies revolving canvas,
New masterpieces each day,
How the light shimmers
In the sparkle rays of sun,
How the golden fields,
Of vales in sighted sweep
And dance, airy etudes,
By the windfall gusts
So suddenly arising?
These visions are marks
For but few, who hear time
As it plays in stepped quartets
Of the spiraling seasons song,
For the lone mercies, gifts,
To the most gentle, merest,
Spirited eyes who gaze deftly,
Deep in sacred days,
From a window.
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 2:23 PM UTC
.
Scurrilous birds fly by,
To nest in the little painted
Houses left clear for them,
In awkward circles they romp
Their peculiar dramas
With ****** wings.
Do they even witness
The skies revolving canvas,
New masterpieces each day,
How the light shimmers
In the sparkle rays of sun,
How the golden fields,
Of vales in sighted sweep
And dance, airy etudes,
By the windfall gusts
So suddenly arising?
These visions are marks
For but few, who hear time
As it plays in stepped quartets
Of the spiraling seasons song,
For the lone mercies, gifts,
To ones most gentle, merest,
Spirited eyes who gaze deftly,
Deep in sacred days,
From a window.
Dec 7, 2017
Dec 7, 2017 at 5:45 PM UTC
Are you some kind
of Schopenhauerian?
Abela asks,
peering over at me
as I read
a Schopenhauer book.
No, but I like
reading the guy,
I reply,
looking at her
over the book.
I want to go out,
she says,
see that string quartet
play at that hall;
they're playing
Bartók's string quartets.
Just this one paragraph
before we go,
I say.
She sighs loudly;
stomps around
our hotel room
like an elephant
with piles.
Ok, ok , I'm coming,
I say,
and put down the book
on the bedside cabinet.
She looks at me and says:
you haven't got to go,
I can always go alone.
I am ready,
I say,
and put on my jacket
and comb my hair.
She smiles and says:
if you're good
we can have
a good session tonight
and that foreplay I like.
I smile and watch
as she puts on
her small white coat.
She has a slim neat figure,
dark hair coming
over her shoulders,
and a nice ***
She picks up
a glass of white wine
she had begun
and finishes it off
in one swallow:
just to warm up,
she says.
I know her warming up:
the night before
she was so warmed up
she feel asleep
on our bed fully clothed
(except for her shoes
which she kicked off),
and I slept on the sofa,
listening out for her
in case she threw up,
but she didn't,
she just mumbled,
and once at some god knows
the early hour,
sang a Mozart aria,
until I said to hush it.
We leave the hotel room
and enter the elevator
and prepare to go down;
some Schmuck enters
with his wife
who is wearing
a black fur coat
and made up
with make-up
like some female clown.
Oct 19, 2016
Oct 19, 2016 at 3:39 AM UTC
Sonya talks about the Monets
they have seen
about the rain they got caught in afterwards
and how they ran for the nearest shelter
and how they laughed
and others thought them mad.
Benny thinks about the waitress
in the Parisian cafe
who served them lattes and cream cakes
how the waitress smiled at him
and how her hips swayed
as she moved away
how he could imagine her
embraced in his arms.
Tonight Sonya says
we're to see the string quartet
play Bartok quartets.
He nods and smiles
and have dinner after
in the restaurant we like
he replies
taking in her eyes.
He preferred the Van Goghs to the Monets
and that line at the back
of the waitress's stockings
all the way up and out of sight.
She talks about that horrible fish meal
they had the other day.
He listens to the Mozart sonata on the radio
in their room in the cheap hotel
as Sonya undresses out of her wet clothes.
He imagines it is the French waitress
preparing for him removing clothing piece by piece
the Mozart is done
and a moment of peace.
Sep 19, 2017
Sep 19, 2017 at 3:36 AM UTC
Abela managed
to get back from
the concert
(Bartók’s string
quartets 1 &2)
without imbibing
too much *****
but she had had enough
to make her merry
and coming along
the corridor of our hotel
she begin singing
her favourite Mozart aria
I walked beside her smiling
but wishing to hell
she'd keep her voice down
a door opened up
behind us
and a man said
please keep your voice down
it is getting late
and my wife and I
are trying to sleep
I nodded and said
sorry just getting
my girlfriend to our room
Abela stopped singing
and looked back
at the man
whose head
was sticking out
from a doorway
go back to your **** wife
and give her some
that should
get her to sleep
Abela said
swaying side to side
I took her arm
come on Honey
I said
to bed with you
she pulled her arm away
and said
it's a free country Bud
even if Tito runs it
with that she walked
swaying along to our room
and went in
I shrugged to the man
and followed her
into our room
I don't know
what the guy did
to his wife
or if they went to sleep
but Abela and I
got undressed
(she singing that
Mozart aria again)
and got in bed
(she forgot
the foreplay)
and cuddling up to me
talked about our day.
Nov 22, 2016
Nov 22, 2016 at 3:06 AM UTC
These days are for the daisies, accented with juniper and babies breath
A gazebo beneath a tree like shade on a cloudy afternoon
With our glasses more vertical than not; I drink you in and swear away the day
She smiles, because I stare off for long periods of time
Reasoning, that I don't want her to catch me gazing at what I have no right to love
A gardener's guilt
Plucking the ripe and ready
It's the time of season for cessation
The paradoxical harvest
An event of sustenance and death
A consumer has no sensation other than taste
A carnivore only taste one flavor
Your flesh on the vine
A rare and coveted commodity
Past vintages become quartets of meaningless digits, like discarded combinations on a constantly changing tumbler
The fortuitous ones will eventually get their chance, but only after the
horticulturist has gotten his fill
For I have forced breath into you
Developing your unique character
With subtle augmentations to your composition; and experience above all else
Only the most bitterly tortured fruit becomes wine of notoriety
A sadistic vintner periodically sampling the evolution of his wares
Very often the inflictions are bored by both master and slave
I feel it in you
It's the only time I do
Feel
Misery is contingent upon company
A fool's philosopher
With flawless adages and quips
He is no different
Eventually we all will be met with the contradictions of our exasperated convolutions
Then where will you be?
Why, you have been made golden!
A hopewell beacon amongst the treacherous and ******
You are now nebulous and immaculate
Like the figure encased with in the marble
Does the sculpture recall the stripping sensation induced by the artisanal hands of the craftsman?
Or is it's ears filled with the clamoring?
Ingrates and dolts who only appreciate the product rather than the steadfast passions of it's means
Amongst the gawking gazers I am indistinguishable; as you are now to me
Aug 2, 2018
Aug 2, 2018 at 2:14 PM UTC