On Reading Eliot's 'Preludes' or After the Jam

1.

You spoke of me tonight,
in nineteen hundred seventeen.
I did toss the blanket back
this morning. Now I write
and in the kitchen lean.
Only no cab horse stamps.
I've come home, made quiet
and a half glass of juice.
Unblocking the sluice
a daffodil wind blows
in soft glows over the alley
over voices, smoky, drifting hushed.
No light eager, no hand rushed.

2.

The half glass is orange,
the plants wear earthenware.
My energy's to spare-
thank gOd you came drumming.
The carpet felt my humming!
You brought guitars, whole voices
finally graced my room.
The room where I teach
and have craved the reach
of a new vibration: harmonies
of three- we- a constellation
in blues, making the merry way.

3.

We connected. I read
until my jewel of Indra's net
was still, afire, set
in synch with yours.
My slow city tours
passed cornered men and cats
owning their respective hats.
All fur and ears-
all rattles and cheers! Thank goD
you spoke and heard;
so evenly drummed;
I at last with evening hummed.

4.

The place I toil was beset
with newness of old sound.
A soul clean rising
and voice come around.
All my musical workings
hung like raindrop lurkings
over the day, the green.
There is so much to mean
in a city at rest;
classrooms made holy;
simple eyes
beholding what they see;
night, like words in time,
stealthy, slowly, free.

To Embrace

I cannot predict my next great joy.

Will it be poetic-a subtle flash of ink?

Will it be at school- preparing a child’s question?

Will it be walking upon a ceaseless beauty?


I cannot know.

Nor would I.


* * *


There is no stopping, no end to the push.

For Art, for Work, for Love, I remain

the eager boy. Only a hoper

of endings, a seeker of stoppage,

can I cease to be.


* * *


On we flourish,

rapid, sang-froid, silencing.



No kind of end is possible,

save that of fear.



* * *

From Here

Tonight, silent, calm,

I face rage.

Within me lives
a lurking beast
eager to injure.

It has ushered forth
unhalted

toward lovers, loves,
lost days.

Burned away, shunned,
no pity for the beast
remains.

* * *

From here,
only the hush.

A quiet sinking in.

A silence nearly mistaken for death.

* * *

My living is raging.

Wise ones

at a distance unearth

my song.

Heard in me

it seeks a way.

* * *

A tempting sleep may come.

The ease of rest.

Tiptoe of youth.


I will recharge

to rage.


Will it be anger?

Madness maturing?

* * *

Theirs is to uncover,

mine to see.

Mine is to open,

theirs to be.

Reminder

The scar begins like two roads
emerging from my hair,

then intersecting into a jagged "Y"
that slopes below my brow.

The odd feeling of nerves where
there's none is a decade old.

* * *

I remember nodding down, gripping
my snapped arm, then only red.

Must have been quite a gape
before 76 stitches laced

my forehead back together.
I don't remember any sewing

just awful tugging, needles
injecting more as I screamed.

* * *

We were on a bender, I drunkest
in the passenger seat

banging out a song on the dash,
no seatbelt or cares

for an icy night on roads
fortified by granite walls.

April Alyssum

Despite doubts
and cold rains

you came up.

In fact, you were so wild
to join my world

you bunched in, crowding

bodies and heads
like clamoring beasts.

I worried
your many roots
would battle and rob

each other,
a soil box being so
finite.

So I began to thin,

thinking maybe the greenest,
best leaves, or the longest

stems. A few

spunky little ones too.

For the emerging.

The Trouble With People

The trouble with people
is they say what is not

when you think it is.

Or else they say what is
when you think not.

Alone I know what is.
And I have what's not
to frame it.

Which is why

most days

I need people.

A Little Too Cold

I sang about her.

I sunk the seeds.

Wind and partial spring
hold the reigns.

* * *

Smoke.
And quit.
And smoke.

If it were hot
I'd stop.

* * *

April, are you cruel?

Are you merely a month,

and I a man, embryonic

within you, waiting?