Shift

Nesting in the wrong tree
a crow flies
as the crow flies
a cat on the grass shifts
adjusts
disappointed in the outcome


Standing at the kitchen window
she yells "eureka"!
sees him there on the grass
waiting patiently, kind
waiting 
for her to adjust eventually
like a cat on the grass

Late March

I will always remember this day
a late March sky never rains
yet tonight there is rain, 
lightning, thunder 


this is what I need
unpredictability
a change in weather
a thunderstorm
like today
in late March

Over and Out

A desert night sets cold

broken into tragic heart-scapes.

Fierce sun blinks a bloodshot eye-

closes over and is gone.

Never Give All The Heart - William Butler Yeats

NEVER give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy.  Kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

After Great Pain A Formal Feeling Comes

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?


The feet, mechanical, go round

A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

Emily Dickinson

The Theory Behind Silver Bullets

Blood in an old lady's lungs she can no longer wheeze out thoughts about life or death A doctor rises cool Dracula to night to float a grave of corridors bite her neck and leave Stretchers sigh towards a cape of red and white fleetingly passing rooms full of waiting Hands so small clocks tick recklessly on

Possibilities - Wislawa Szymborska

Possibilities

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.

By Wislawa Szymborska
From "Nothing Twice", 1997
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

Who Can I Turn To - Sammy Davis Jr

Who can I turn to when nobody needs me?
My heart wants to know and so I must go 
where destiny leads me 
With no star to guide me
and no one beside me 
I'll go on my way and, after the day, 
the darkness will hide me  
And maybe tomorrow 
I'll find what I'm after 
I'll throw off my sorrow, 
beg, steal, or borrow my share of laughter 
With you I could learn to, 
with you what a new day 
But who can I turn to if you turn away?  
With you I could learn to, 
with you what a new day 
But who can I turn to if you turn away?

'And the days are not full enough'

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
                Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

Mute

Begin simply -
place a plunger
on the end of a trumpet
to quell the sound.
One by one, the players 
forget the importance of big. 

Soon, all books are banned
bras reluctantly put back on.
Rosa goes to the back of the bus.
Little by little, everything turns
back in on itself until we are all
at the place we fought so hard
not to be.

We sit in the dark
left reading nothng -
and wonder who 
struck the first match.

Epoch

My hair is loose job jar empty. I can't stop Venus from rising the wax and wane of moon a wild sea from rolling against a stubborn shore. My knees ache from kneeling to what confession? I will not grow old in my sins.

Time Ticks the Light Longer

There was an odd quality
to the light that day
how it fell through the window
changing the blue of her cup. 

She sat, newspaper folded
wondered why people turned. 
That sweet little girl in Indiana
in her pink nightgown, dismembered 
left to forever, such a long time.

Or how she had found out
he had lied to her for years.

Odd, how the light changes 
something as simple as colour.
How we are all deemed to die
different deaths.

Carnival

Few can see to the end of the tunnel of love the entry beckons heart-shaped

framing an empty void had it been labeled “Haunted House” half the fair-goers would politely decline citing the sudden need for candy floss the brave

would clamber into the small cars expecting to emerge from the other side

half out of their minds

anticipating that somewhere along the line a man in a mask taunting

a chain saw would roar into the moment or that severed arms and heads

would drop lifeless from the sky fingerless toothless

There would be screaming -

and plenty of it

How then, did she coax you into the tunnel?

You - with the logical mind, practical life?

Did she look at you with her goal-post eyes?

Calculate possibilities into tiny fractions,

subtractions, additions?

Did the car rattle and shake as you clasped hands and entered as fearless

as the guests in the Haunted House? Did she kiss you with her mouth open

as the tunnel gaped, swallowing you quickly?

Cobweb hair, goose-bump flesh, a strange sensation filling your belly

your heart talking in beats assuring your mind

No sign of severed arms, heads, or men with chainsaws.

No indication that the ride was faulty.

No chance of a refund at the other end.

Just the creak and sway of the car,

teetering precariously on the edge

of something unseen.

The mind a blank a magic realism painting where the grass is too green

the sky too blue her red dress too perfectly creased see through in the sunlight

nobody mentioned the tunnel of love would be so narrow lonely dark the fifty

percent chance of emerging as two instead of one but you knew it would feel good

so good to get lost in there for even a little while.

When the ride finally came to a stop, you reeled out of the car as if emerging

from a fighter plane that turned upside-down with a G8 force the bile rising

in your throat but you swallow it back denying the need for help your legs

wobbly and unstable she was no longer holding your hand

The crowd stared as if you were a freak in the big tent and you tried to smile

put on your best front your mask dripping with the sweat of denial

She was no longer holding your hand

Bonaparte

A powerful star
not to be followed

too many places
his heart always broken

perpetually pumping
driven by need

it takes strength to say
no

go, I will not be conquered 
even if it would only take one word

Horizon

earth-home

sky-home

a sea too distant

to close

a circle that separates

noon from midnight

in the corner of my eye

the split face

of a magnified moon

an illusion of ships

you arriving

always

A love like that

A love like that

Hafiz

Even
After
All this time
The sun never
says to the earth,
"You owe Me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that.

It lights the
Whole
Sky.