I picked up a book
off the shelf this morning
one hundred haiku
it was like sitting down
a word starved man, tired
of searching for an always
denied sustenance, and here
laid out before me, a repast
of the sweetest grapes,
bits of sugar caressing
a tongue grown used
to the often bitterness
of ill-considered prose.
As midday approached
I knew that this was a meal
to which I’d return.
Walking through a nature preserve
like Wakodahatchee Wetlands you
must always keep a sharp eye.
The birds are everywhere, they are
unavoidable and even the alligators,
imagining themselves coy are
soon enough easily recognized,
snouts appear just above the surface
wary eyes scanning the shore.
Here you are also surrounded
by poems, but they are far more
able to hide, among the eggs
the wood stork carefully tends,
in the purple iridescence
of the gallinule, trailing behind
the uplifting wings of the great
blue heron as she lifts skyward,
and in the spray of feathers
the snowy egrets dangle always
drawing our eyes like a bride’s
diaphanous veil, but we, at
a loss for words in the midst
of all of this, cannot see them
awaiting us to give them flight
One deep and abiding beauty of dreams
is that it is entirely logical for
Marina Tsvetaeva to be engaged
In an animated discussion with
Corso and Ginsberg where none will
acknowledge that the world they
wrote and imagined is a total mess.
Over in the corner, Mandelstam and
Reznikoff have agreed that for eternity
every game of chess they play will
result in a stalemate, if only
to drive Brodsky to distraction, that
and having Osip say he prefers
Reznikoff’s free verse translations
to Brodsky’s ponderous rhymes.
I am looking forward to a cup
of espresso with Sylvia Plath, but she
says here she only drinks single malt
Scotch until it’s at least 5 P.M.
Bob Dylan is, to the best of my knowledge,
the only songwriter to successfully rhyme
outrageous and contagious, which doesn’t
explain why I knew I could never be
a successful songwriter in this life.
The explanation is far simpler, it was when
Leonard Cohen served me tea and apricots,
said he hated the river even living in Montreal
and said I should pack off to Florida or
California if I wanted oranges, though he
said, if I ever visited China, if I’d see
where their oranges came from.
We’re all older now, Leonard is dead
and even Bob admits he’s not sure
he’s younger now, but he says, Bob that is,
that I need to get over keeping up
with the Joneses, because in the final
analysis, we are all Jones at the end.
I would love to know the precise moment
when the consensus of critics reached
the tipping point, that lettuce was
no longer a green, but some lesser vegetable.
That would be around the time that
Arugula and romaine declared themselves
something other than lettuce, leaving
iceberg and Bibb as produce outcasts
while spinach, kale and chard openly
declared their superiority over all
of the others, shunning mustard,
if only for its name and seediness.
It is surprisingly like that with poetry,
literary free verse a critical darling now
even if intelligible only to those skilled
at self-aggrandizing, easily sold delusion,
and more run of the mill poetry, that
whose meaning is clear without resort
to layered metaphors left to rot on the shelf.
One morning last week I decided
to plant myself at a busy intersection
and begin reading poetry, mostly
my own, I have to admit.
I was generally ignored, my usual
state, and that sadly of most poets,
when a scruffy, bearded young man
set up easel and paint next to me.
The morning seemed to relish
the stillness of this urban way station,
and we were easily ignored by the odd
pedestrian on her way to please not here.
As lunch hour approached, the streets
filled, and we were ready, this was
our moment, our world, until the
asylum escapee joined our duality
and preached loudly to those who
dared not avoid us, that the end
was nigh, and that we, artist and poet
were the living promise of heaven and hell.
It’s simple enough to write a song,
that’s what I heard him say,
and though I doubted that wholly
he say try, just give it a day.
I promised I would try to write
but I knew that I’d fail in time
for even Leonard Cohen now
and then used a subtle rhyme
and that is not something for which
I was ever cut out, I’m certain
and he laughed when I said I failed,
and retreating, pulled shut the blinds.
My friends have often wondered aloud
why I claim to be most creative when
I am stuck on an airplane for hours.
I have told them that the solitude,
the lack of It is an interesting quirk
of the internet, that birth
and death are disconnected.
Seeking out those born today
I found a long list, the dinosaur
among which is Judy Collins.
That I still remember seeing her
reminds me at once a sense of my youth
and my ever progressing age.
But seek out those who died
on this day, and you hear the strains
of the Slavonic Dance in E minor
or the Sabre Dance from Gayane
but Popes Pius V and Marcellus II
suggest neither of them matter,
Heathens both, they claim, which
brings a deep laugh from Cleaver
and Livingstone, both of who
deny the other, and each says
that only he truly found the black
panther, and I’m thankful to be alive.to distract me,
which includes any airline approved movie,
that allows my creative self to emerge, to
express itself fully without reservation,
a status that being earthbound denies.
Many laugh, uncertain of how creativity
expresses itself, but certain, they
assure me, that my efforts have not
gone unnoticed, that my time spent,
but most importantly my results so well
reflect the surroundings of their creation.
Today I again took up the brush,
carefully mixed the sumi-e ink
and with hand poised over a sheet
of anticipating rice paper waited,
knowing that the moment for a stroke
was imminent but not yet at hand,
and I dare not force it for brush
painting is a practice that cannot
be compelled, a gentle merger
of idea, brush, ink and paper,
and if any are missing, a sadness
that can only be irreversible.
Today the brush considered the ink
and decided it was not a good day
and so I cleaned it carefully, set it
aside with the block of ink,
and rolling the rice paper, promised
it, myself, that we would repeat
this exercise until the moment was
right and the image was ready to appear.
The one question that has never had
a proper answer still bothers me.
Actually it gives rise to multiple questions
which synergistically expand my displeasure.
I get she had a lamb, and I don’t question
why, nor why hers was little, full size lambs
are far more common, and seriously
what did she do, bleach it every few days?
But those are minor points, really, because
we all know Mary was truly nomadic
and a real urban girl, city to city with
as little time in the country as possible.
The real question is where she kept
whatever it was the lamb so badly wanted,
because lambs don’t willingly leave their
mothers and not for some female Svengali.
