Category Archives: Poetry

Poetry

Arcadia

Just for this evening, let’s not mock them.

At least they had ideas about love.

Mary Szybist, The Troubadours Etc.

heavy New England sunlight floods your apartment.

in the mornings after, your bed is too small for us both.

the only music — faint — from your old phone in the shower.

it’s always Sunday, somewhere.

contrails fade into clear, blue sky.

the porches of the nation creak beneath

bluejeans and familiar conversation.

faded pastel flags above the strip

mall flutter in the breeze.

and somehow I am in a scratchy grey sweater

a schoolboy in a long forgotten —

now urgently familiar — corridor.

it is winter yet I am not cold.

something burns within me:

it is the thought of meeting you.

but every step is time, time, time.

Heraclitus’ curse.

decades pass.

I grow estranged from my self.

the music grows louder.

the bathroom door opens.

what’s wrong?

you ask

why on earth are you shivering?

The Cloisters, Fort Tryon

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Poetry

Celestial Mechanics

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears?

Shakespeare, Sonnet CXIX

Two thousand years ago, Ptolemy

traced the vagaries of the stars

and was left immortal for that

and I, too, yearn for the taste

of ambrosia. So here I lie, on

moonless nights, writing my

own Almagest, as I trace the

constellations formed by the

stardust of your nevi.

Howard Pyle, “The Mermaid” (1910)

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Poetry

Giants

do you remember the tiny

balcony with the single,

swaying bulb? of

course, she said.

the cheap wine,

the red paper

cups.

how every Fourth of July

I leant there against the

gunwales of your heart,

watching the fireworks

flash in your

eyes.

yes, we lived like

giants, she

said.

P.S. If you look out the window, you might see a train travelling to tomorrow. 

P.P.S. time, she says, / “there’s no turning back, / keep your eyes on the tracks” / through the fields, somewhere there’s blue / oh, time will tell, she’ll see us through

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Poetry

Summer Begins in Whitestone, New York

(a haiku)

summer rains, stars rise —
taking the long way home I
am mugged by fireflies

Image result for primitive radio gods

and if I die before I learn to speak / can money pay for all the days I lived awake / but half asleep?

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Poetry

Camelot

Every love story is a ghost story.

David Foster Wallace

in a flyover state where

the trains do not stop

but chug on toward the

hills, a quiet chord drifts

out over the darkling

plains and is lost for ever

to the wind and rain and

perhaps we are only

this: ghosts before our

time burning through

books burning through

women burning through

ourselves hoping to find

Camelot.

oceans away — a place

where nobody speaks the

language of the heartland

— you wait for the Q44 to

take you home. lights

alight. church bells toll

the hour. tonight the

street is empty and the

night is empty and the

moon will not rise and

there will be no stars to

guide you home. only the

dumpster fires rage on,

filled with the debris of

yesterday.

I got this window that looks out to Orion / I paid extra for

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Poetry

Icarus

It’s only ghosts here in the winter.

BoJack Horseman

When you’re in love all this

“life” stuff feels like a play —

a game; a dream. And when

you’re not, it’s not. That’s just

how it works. Nights like these

I feel like I’ve forgotten how to

dream. I used to dream of flying.

I miss the wind in my hair, the

sun on my face. But most of

all, I miss your sighs; how the

longing in them would rise up —

up through the zephyrs and comets —

dissolving into stardust that just

might, with a bit of luck, power

the universe for an-

other heart-

beat.

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Poetry

The Fifth Season

Slaves in the realm of love are the only truly free men.

Ibn Ammar, Seville, Arab Andalusia 

And I’ll love you like the sun loves California.

Beth Hart, My California

it demands a new vocabulary for

it is the fifth season

it is deciduous

it is like those flowers in the desert

that bloom once in a blue moon after long

nights of rain and fade away in the face of

solar slaughter leaving behind

the singing sand dunes

to tell of them

to tell of us

 

i

read book

after book

after book

and yet

i

can not find the words

to tell of you

to tell of me

to tell of us.

 

what us?

(she said)

what words?

there are only

twelve keys

seven seas

and

four seasons

yes

(i said)

yes

and yet…

and yet.

 

like an addict Gilbert begged the gods

“let me fall in love one last time”

he said and

i get it.

it can be hard to live so long

in the grey to live so long

that you yearn for the colours

because you’ve — almost, almost —

forgotten what blue looks like

what you look like

 

these are words on paper

these are pixels on a screen

one of these days they’ll upload you

to the web and stream you to the stars

you’ll materialise on the other side

a little tired, a little bewildered

but pretty much the same except for

what was it?

it’s right on the tip of your tongue

it’s all that they couldn’t put into

ones and zeroes because

there’s no language

there’s no lexicon

(yet)

to tell of you

to tell of me

to tell of us

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Poetry

Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy

A rough sea!

Stretched out over Sado

The Milky Way.

Matsuo Bashō (1644–94)

The classical masters of old say it is bad 

luck to play the wrong tune at the wrong 

time. Every raga echoes a certain mood, 

they say, in tune with the colours of the 

hours and the watches of the night. The 

old haiku masters of Japan agree. Every 

haiku only belongs to a certain season, 

crafted with the words particular to that 

season. So they spoke of summer rains, 

autumn loves, winter dreams; and — 

beneath it all — the call of the deep, deep 

north. And here we are, ragas out of time, 

haikus out of space, trying to find our way 

home while in our tired hearts beats the 

call of the deep, deep north.

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Poetry

Ad Astra (II)

in a hinterland galaxy 

by a mid-sized star 

on a strange blue world 

a hairless ape stands up and 

gains sentience and 

looks up at the stars and 

is never the same again. 

and somewhere 

far out at sea 

it is raining. 

it has been raining for 

many, many days 

and there is no one to see 

the Homecoming. 

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