I think of many things
that I want to say,
to scream, to sing, to shout,
with/to/for/at
all the people
who might stand around
and listen.
0
In Sherwood Forest, Santa Cruz Island
Posted: June 24, 1992 in PoetryTags: Forest, Leaves, Sky, Trees, Water
I half-awoke, standing in a forest
bark peeling in long curling strips
from the shivering trees, mist
hanging like moss in the higher branches
leaves layered thick under the soles
of my feet, and I just listened
to the dripping of water
falling like bullets from the sky.
I Take Time to Tell You
Posted: June 24, 1992 in PoetryTags: Cloud, Crickets, Moon, Porch, Road, Smoke, Time, Trees
I saw the moon come
From behind a cloudbank.
It took time to see this;
I take time to tell you.
My pipe glows cherry-red
Deep inside; smoke drifts apart.
I watch it fall away,
Clasping this time to me.
Faces twist in the veils of smoke
From the cauldron of my pipe
Melting to the orchestration
Of so many crickets singing
Farther and farther away.
I tell you of a porch somewhere
And a row of old trees
Stretching up down the road.
I’m no poet; I’m not quite sure
Of what to say.
Untitled Poem #131
Posted: June 22, 1992 in PoetryTags: Forest, Moon, Night, Ocean, Salt, Sea, Tree, Untitled, Wind
I slunk from the sea
late last night
to stand in a moon-dappled room
under a broad-leafed tree
to write these words from the ocean,
dripping and streamered
with ribbons of seaweed,
leaving the smell of wet salt and wind
behind for the forest
whose paper this is.
Laura Swings Her Skirts
Posted: June 22, 1992 in PoetryTags: Boy, Butterfly, Dream, Eye, Flowers, Girl, Laura, Memories, Tears, Time, Tree
I will sing you a song softly
of a little girl I remember dreaming,
who would wink into the faces of
the flowers to see them smile,
perfume tickling her nose all the while
as she would wander secret places.
this little girl I did love
as I seemed to quietly spy
from the trees into which I’d climbed
as a boy, eyes opened wide.
dreaming her leaving colored footprints
skipping in the parted grass,
laughing like the flight of a butterfly.
and I’ve been dreaming ever since that time,
drugged with memories more precious
and sparkling than her diamond tears
of happiness when she chanced to find
the too-shy boy in the tree tops.
it’s a wonder that all of the leaves
don’t get up and trundle around
with all of the creatures that live
just barely above the ground.
the rocks and sticks on the earth,
the streams and fields that I
have crouched in, turning stones
or wistfully hurried by
hold the secret lives of things
to small to see with ease;
they’re working behind the bark
and playing under the leaves.
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Posted: June 15, 1992 in PoetryTags: Geoff, Glasses, Memories, Mermaid, Ocean, Stearns
Geoff Stearns rose dripping
from the ocean strung with
seaweed and shaggy hair
but without his glasses
which the mermaids claimed
for the memories.
stepping from mushroom top to mushroom top
I find that I am smaller than I had thought.
looking around for anyone looking at me,
I grimace and kick myself in the ass (grimace
meaning turning purple and fat and shapeless
and hanging out with Mayor McCheesy).
I then continue on my way,
sighing across the tops of the funky fungi forest.
the impulse is to touch the heart;
just a gentle breathing
with a mist of poetry,
enough that if read to one’s self,
you would read it over again,
and maybe cry a little
to see the same beauty that I see in you.
Untitled Poem #-19
Posted: May 20, 1992 in PoetryTags: Cloud, Clouds, Dreams, Light, Ocean, Sand, Sea, Sky, Spider, Stars, Time, Untitled, World
once upon a time I was a youth,
no corpse dream thing, tiny and small,
but I was as big as the world,
bright and unbuttoned like metal.
so anyways,
I bend and I breathe.
the sieve of my skin leaks the sand
of my cloud life;
strange clouds, odd clouds
for people far away on cliff tops
to comment on and guess shapes in,
to play drums into rhythms for.
clouds of youth dreams;
light pouring through in great angled falls
touches the ocean far below me.
in awe, I flood across the sky.
a spider slowly connects the dots of stars
to build constellations of ships
for wistful sailors of empty seas.
Imitations of Bunya no Asayasu
Posted: May 5, 1992 in PoetryTags: Breakfast, Divinyls, Touch, White
I
in a gust of wind the white man
on the autumn grass
lies still with a broken neck.
II
in the dust of mind the sight crew
on the bottom glass
matters like a token breakfast.
III
I don’t want
anybody else
when I think about you
I touch myself.
-Sample Courtesy of the Divynls
I
the wet skirt of a salt girl
looks a lot like
maybe, a fruit roll-up.
II
the salt girl
with the wet skirt
is Madonna.
I think of you always.
III
it is a pretty picture,
but now this salty girl,
whom you have thrown in the ocean
with your poetry,
must go change her clothes
and take a bath.
Imitations of Sakanoe
Posted: April 28, 1992 in PoetryTags: Anger, Dark, Love, Smile, Volcano, White
I
do not scowl to yourself
like a volcano
erupting orange saliva.
people will know you are angry.
II
do not smile to yourself
like a child who has
thought of something naughty.
people will catch you.
III
do not smile to yourself
because you are pleased
with all your talents.
it is not allowed.
IV
do not smile to yourself
like a white wall
splashed with dark paint.
people might notice you are in love
tadpoles, grow fast and strong
in the light of the eyes
of the boy who kneels
by your puddle,
shrunken from the heat
of the dry days
after the rains.
standing, the boy can see
the river running, chasing
through the jumbled stones,
just over a ridge of gravel
several yards away;
miles to legless tadpoles
and semi-frogs still retaining
stumpy tails in a pool of
brackish water, bursting with life.
wriggling tadpoles in the sunlit warmth,
waiting for the legs to leave,
for throats to peep tiny songs
on their way to embrace
the river bed.
This is the way to build muscle:
Haul the rope from over the water
Up to the rocks and stretch to reach
The knot; tensed and poised
To swing out in the air,
All around you, way beneath you
Becoming the wind over the rocks,
Then over the water;
A hole in your stomach,
Muscles strung on the rope
The weight of your legs pulled up
To your chest,
Not to drag you into the water
The guitar strings of your arms
Hauling on the cord,
Grafted to the fiber
Shrieking cables at the bottom
Of the arc of the swing;
Relief at the end of the pendulum,
Weightlessness and falling
If you can let go.
I, Theobalvs, dedicate my next trip to the wilderness to my patron Saint Timothy Leary, friend of painless falls from high places.
Brian Two Two and the Rock of Fang
Posted: April 26, 1992 in PoetryTags: Bear, Bones, Brian, Car, Geoff, Joe, Laura, River, Rock, Sun, Water, Wind, Wood, Yellow
Geoff, Laura, Joe, Brian and I
went to the river to play outdoors
and to sing, sing ho for this, the life of a bear.
warm rocks, chilly water, and a rope
were for flinging ourselves through the air.
the sun and the wind bathed us in yellow hues.
music from the car ran its fingers
through the roadside oaks,
anticipating every curve,
and setting the bones that Brian broke.
wriggling our way over the mountains,
we witnessed a weaver of wood.
Falling Violin-Strings
Posted: April 26, 1992 in PoetryTags: Clouds, Dance, Music, Rain, Sun, Water
the rain-sheets of water are hung out
like grey laundry from the clouds.
she dances through them
like they’re stage curtains,
smiling to the waltz, the music,
of the hidden sunshine and thus
for the joy of the rain.
Frog Haven
Posted: April 20, 1992 in PoetryTags: Blood, Frog, Green, Sand, Spider, Spirit, Stone, Stream, Trees, Water, Wind
I
the splayed hands of the roots
stop searching when I walk past,
but if I listen I hear them quiver
with life blood, holding boulders
when I climb down. unwrapping
and fanning the wind into life
are trees with green springtime leaves.
they swept me along like sand in an undertow.
I scramble and slip down through the branches
and jumbled rocks of the stream bed,
listening to the pianos of the water falling
into each other, over moss sewn stone.
II
beside a sheet of embroidered water
is a cavern of dripping stone:
Frog Haven, hidden behind
a bead-curtain of hanging roots
dipped in the creek,
pouring and pooling away.
III
we are the spirits who define this place.
here, the fall of clear water
is the curve of a spine;
here, the thrust of smoothed stone
is the swell of our muscles.
speaking with the voices of the different cascades,
with tongues of roots and leaves;
breathing out sunlight and forest dust to see by.
here, a trough has worn in the rock,
running happy with songs of mountain stones;
here, several strands of spider-thread,
or elf-hair, to be plucked by the hand of the wind.
On coming to a brook I think I’ll find
A way across from rock to slip’ry rock.
The gaps between are wide and hard to time
When jumping ‘cause they’re just too far to walk.
My strides are longer with the nerve to leap;
A sure-foot method always startles me.
Even though I am not the one to creep
From stone to stone, then on a fallen tree.
The brook is lovely, dark and deep in those
Odd places where stones sit with mossy hair.
To run across, split seconds’ grip with toes?
To plot and place my soles with ginger care?
Still no one minded the time that I took
To doff my shoes and socks to wade the brook.
I have always wanted a telescope
To drag to a high place to see a star
Or two, rubbing my cold hands together
And shivering with my breath down around
My shoulders, waiting for the chance to sight
A poet, Robert Frost and friend, themselves
Looking through their star-splitter for a glimpse
Of something magic, some merry treasure.
I
a cricket
gets eaten by my
black scorpion.
II
a cricket
wonders what Robert Frost
is doing.
III
a cricket
is waiting
for a blackbird.
IV
a cricket
digests my poetry
thoughtfully.
V
a cricket
chirps loudly somewhere in
my dark room.
I have been marked
as a Dreamer of Dreams
by the slow writhe
of the One on my skin,
by the keen pipe,
the language of the whisper.
I have been marked,
or so it seems.
Untitled Poem #-17
Posted: March 6, 1992 in PoetryTags: Clouds, Dark, Light, Rain, Shoes, Storm, Trees, Wind
light is spilling through the clouds,
and the whippoorwill wind is getting louder;
a storm is coming.
I can see the line of rainfall
blurring the trees across the way.
the dark is rising,
and my shoes are untied.
One from the House of Bedlam
Posted: March 4, 1992 in PoetryTags: Boy, Cage, Clock, Crickets, Ezra Pound, Mad, Rock, Spider, White, Wind
this is the box that the spider came in.
here is the molt
of the mad spider
who came in this box.
this is the rock
from the cage where I kept
the spider, who was mad
and wouldn’t bark
after he left the white box that he came in.
these are the pictures I took of the box
that the batty spider came in
before I found that it was not him
who barked.
I am the boy who also came in the box
with such a grizzly spider,
put was not put in a cage
with a grey rock and a clock.
this is what happens to the crickets
that my spider hunts around the rock
by the light of that ridiculous clock.
this is Ezra Pound; a sailor, a spider,
who winds the clock in the closet of crickets.
here is the ward
where the mad spider and I are,
full of wind and white sheets and flat paper hats
and a rock.
here is the boy that bought the box
and found the rock for Ezra Pound,
that mad grizzly spider who wore a paper hat,
who gave it to me for the molt
that lies in the House of Bedlam.
this is the box,
the House of Bedlam,
where the spider molted even though he
was supposed to be hunting by the light of the clock
that Ezra wound.
I am the clock that tells the time
that the closet crickets die in the white box
– the cage in the House of Bedlam.
these are the legs of the mad molted spider
who ran around the rock in the white windy ward
of the house of the box with a paper hat.
this is the picture of grizzly me,
the boy Ezra and that deadly spider
who still wouldn’t bark after returning
to the House of Bedlam.
here is the box that is all that is left
of the boy, the spider,
Ezra and me.
[based on a poem by Elizabeth Bishop]
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