Poems: from "Selected Poems 1972-1992"/ ChamberFo
Posted: November 19th, 2004, 4:57 pm
( from ChamberFolk Press/ London and Zagreb 2003)
Sun Village Donuts
The last of the morning
remain here
the lord of the laundromat
and his flannel lady
smoke over coffee
the final butt screwed
into the ruby jelly
when they finish
the Koreans blend silently
with the pale oven glass
they know enough English
to deflect the skateboard cowboy
menace of the Mall
while they work their grease paddles
rowing the morning donut batch
oil bubbles under parked tires
the sun treats the crumpled
napkin faces brusquely
the Sun Village group
works its jaws as a team
around the silvered sugar
while the washers churn
up the sheets
spotted with last night’s love
Cry
the bite of lust toothing samurai terrycloth
while my hand sinks an inch into your buttercup back
Slate Town/ Snowdonia
A forge in which hammered
brass dumbs down slinky tin
all that bronzes grief black
bypassing green patinas of smoke on cindered pillows
ashy hair flung down on slate town
where workers water armoire-dry shoes
wading toward the next wave of ruin
chipping no funeral stones, not tiles
cast for roofs
whatever comes down the sky
will do
microchips, grey gruel, Christ’s picketed sheepsgate
today we chose their road
puddled off to their red thumbs
sawing rock pages scribbled with ice
but just beside the road
green paradise
vines up cozy to its grey lip
Epistemes
1.
Learn every trick you can
you will always trip on
the bruied stone
of your father’s crimes
he leans into a far wind
smiling
rise up and follow me, he says
in spite of his punishment
you still want him
2.
Like a white flower
mudded
on peatbrine-black Celtic rock
all these pictures count
less than the first grain of my forgiveness
carried in the gannet’s beak
3.
Being less than it is
my request dossed down
my last chance to save our mutual life
should sluice like mercury
but spirals up instead
like a lesser messenger god
4.
With the care of someone
removing a needle-small bone
from a mouthful of boeuf forestiere
you declined our last time
even our touch glaciates
your last amen over a gold plate
strangers on a train
getting off at last
5.
Only when it’s official
will every animal
in mute disarray surrender
their heaven
hooves and feathers alike
thundering, beating
our breath short for our crimes
we invented forgiveness but
it is a crude invention, a flapwinged windmill
walking away is their only politics
but instead they come
6.
Birds eat from my feeder
dripping utopian rain
seed-fever
like commas in sentences by
H.G. Wells
Rebecca
West lying in the enseamed
bed rank sweat and dream jets
of perfect sarcasm in the Surrey air
--ZW
( Amazon.com link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books )
Sun Village Donuts
The last of the morning
remain here
the lord of the laundromat
and his flannel lady
smoke over coffee
the final butt screwed
into the ruby jelly
when they finish
the Koreans blend silently
with the pale oven glass
they know enough English
to deflect the skateboard cowboy
menace of the Mall
while they work their grease paddles
rowing the morning donut batch
oil bubbles under parked tires
the sun treats the crumpled
napkin faces brusquely
the Sun Village group
works its jaws as a team
around the silvered sugar
while the washers churn
up the sheets
spotted with last night’s love
Cry
the bite of lust toothing samurai terrycloth
while my hand sinks an inch into your buttercup back
Slate Town/ Snowdonia
A forge in which hammered
brass dumbs down slinky tin
all that bronzes grief black
bypassing green patinas of smoke on cindered pillows
ashy hair flung down on slate town
where workers water armoire-dry shoes
wading toward the next wave of ruin
chipping no funeral stones, not tiles
cast for roofs
whatever comes down the sky
will do
microchips, grey gruel, Christ’s picketed sheepsgate
today we chose their road
puddled off to their red thumbs
sawing rock pages scribbled with ice
but just beside the road
green paradise
vines up cozy to its grey lip
Epistemes
1.
Learn every trick you can
you will always trip on
the bruied stone
of your father’s crimes
he leans into a far wind
smiling
rise up and follow me, he says
in spite of his punishment
you still want him
2.
Like a white flower
mudded
on peatbrine-black Celtic rock
all these pictures count
less than the first grain of my forgiveness
carried in the gannet’s beak
3.
Being less than it is
my request dossed down
my last chance to save our mutual life
should sluice like mercury
but spirals up instead
like a lesser messenger god
4.
With the care of someone
removing a needle-small bone
from a mouthful of boeuf forestiere
you declined our last time
even our touch glaciates
your last amen over a gold plate
strangers on a train
getting off at last
5.
Only when it’s official
will every animal
in mute disarray surrender
their heaven
hooves and feathers alike
thundering, beating
our breath short for our crimes
we invented forgiveness but
it is a crude invention, a flapwinged windmill
walking away is their only politics
but instead they come
6.
Birds eat from my feeder
dripping utopian rain
seed-fever
like commas in sentences by
H.G. Wells
Rebecca
West lying in the enseamed
bed rank sweat and dream jets
of perfect sarcasm in the Surrey air
--ZW
( Amazon.com link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books )