Five Fabulous Poems by Rustin Larson

 

How It Is In The Hazel Moon

 

Kuan Yin. Oracle Woodberry.

Rays of morning sun

from The Hazel Moon Cafe,

a pool, dusky blue, on the sidewalk.

The light is a benediction.

Mocha Lavender.

London Fog.

 

I leave the Library of Congress, circle

the Catholic church, my eyes cooled

by the terracotta virgin in the rectory yard.

I run my hands over the painted iron fence,

Amaretto Magical Peach Cobbler,

window eye

clown character juggling.

 

Is each coffee I drink a cup of shining brown happiness?

The autumn sky liquefies clear of memory.

Do I always wish myself to be somewhere else,

to sit in a cafe, to pray I can touch the dead,

whole dollar experiences,

looking on, remembering Russian,

painting notable clouds as greater clouds?

 

Washington, D.C. cannot be any more complete

for the style of void in my head.

Instead of lunch, I walk to the National Gallery,

stare at Rembrandt's face, try to write,

the fakirs, the good affectionately timed

old days, The Beatles, the baritone guitar.

Hello, Hello,

on this day, Rembrandt wants no words from me.

His cold stare empties the world of poetry.

How do I know you?

C'est papa?

Brother Clown Bead Man?

 

And on this day, my unborn daughter finds my hand

and my wife's.

Big Chief Mudra is hungry

for bean sacks thrown by kids.

And life is life is life is life is life is life.

Beethoven says hello to the sea.

 

The Book Is A Door

 

the day she has sabotaged. It causes

great anxiety to buy milk, sulfuric acid,

memory’s tattoo. She will wear your wings.

 

Road ribbons

at a convenient time,

the sun, sweet grass, an ache flying in stone.

 

The cold cages, locks and bars. When she is,

stones pray marriage. Bake the sourness,

slap, burned for nothing. Wishing,

 

she can’t sleep; she reads. The book

is what her father’s eye wished. She

visits the granite

 

flying the earth, weight, words,

lonely leaves. Its window.

The woman steps into the small

 

black speck at the centre of Queen Anne’s lace.

Trembling, a moth, the lit screen,

a loose blue nightgown.

 

Red sky, the bay ripples. Red shudder on a horse’s flank

brightens, the light and the woman.

She will crunch the leaves,

 

snow that knights the shoulders of a hill. Smoke blown

from the mouth of a ghost.

She will wade its uncertain light, dreaming.

 

She will

glide into day. Like a book,

like a Venus fly trap she will open.

 

Alexander Graham Bell and His Wife

 

In the sheep meadow, clutching the skeleton

of a small pyramid, pregnant in the middle

of the framework.

 

Dripping in a bright field of humming flies,

long bloom of a dress tapering into the sun,

succumbed to the industrial revolution.

 

Hazy out of the sunlight, flames in polluted rivers,

cracked black planet into the maw of the pool table.

It would be great to live in a glass bullet, cut with dyes,

 

cigarette-wide vision, drinking salt water,

covered in your own blood, smiling as the river

churns grey. The rusted bridge sings with decay

 

and looks like peppermints. Nostradamus’ skull

discovered in a cave in New Mexico with the last

surviving members of the conspiracy,

 

blue flags sway and flutter. Gooseberry,

marijuana, wild mint. A long journey into space,

brain sizzling like a wad of dough. If you spend

 

first communion melting untended in the snow,

a can of condensed milk, a flower that smells like

nothing and bitterness. The river is having the day

 

of its life teaching Sunday School, detonator

of miracles with teeth, defender of the mysterious

flower, the immense unconsciousness of America,

 

reading the Braille of its banks, an

ambassador to the country of ash.

 

 

Wuthering Heights and Lost in Space

 

Laurence Olivier & Merle Oberon, Young Will

& Dr. Smith or the smart blonde who throws,

you know, I am grateful. The starlings. The sunlight

 

setting. A cool breeze. Rilke’s elegies.

The robot’s recharge switch, the ghost heather,

the heathen oath to be haunted forever. The bubble-

 

basic songs I can recall. And maybe sing if I want.

Little room, little room, always a little room,

Booby swings his pincer arms wildly

 

and chants like a deranged coffee maker.

Somewhere. I saw some kids today, sitting

in the window of the café, munching sandwiches.

 

Eyes shine, calm and sad. Snow

sweats on the face of Olivier. My parents contemplate

furtively like refugees. It made me feel uncomfortable,

 

but hey, don’t worry about me. Some kid zips

divorce and murder. A faded purple? A pure white?

I skulk about the house at night.

 

His car up the drive with the top down. How beautiful

is that? It’s spring and there’s a pretty girl afraid of his face,

the marble of obsession. Light switches half between off and on.

 

At the grocery

who likes poetry? Can you ask for anything more

fantastic? I’m going to recover all of my minds

 

soon, though they are strewn: the coat Jesus opens like a theater curtain,

the sparks cascading over the counter,

in the dust of seven

 

unknown planets. If any of them have sunsets half

as nice, wrap a sandwich in wax paper and walk

out there and sit on a log and let the day blizzard the walls, ultra high frequency,

 

the deluge of voltage spiders, the vital and invisible, and these

last few words.

 

Fairfield, Iowa

 

parables from the Blue Amethyst

School of Space:

scorching sun affords this old lesson

the taste of light in the mouth

head scarf with camel’s hair rope

westward, illegal entertainment

a long naked road of dust

I once walked out into a potato field

 

gaily caparisoned steed

past the high school locomotive

wearing clothes from a different

opinion on trade

but I didn’t know where the potatoes were

 

through the old neighbourhood

no longer July

the outdoor coffee house

punisher of evil and electricity

down into the nest

reading Kipling in shafts of sunlight

so I bought strawberries instead

 

the underground magical caged city

full of threads and rags

wild flute, the sound of vines

anticipating some future piece of sun

astigmatism of we

inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl

The dust was raised by old trucks

 

take notice, black and red checkers

songs of Bohemian teenagers

a chest of scarce wood gaily dyed

occupied by an illegitimate power

soothsayer’s globe of crystal and the blood

of a customer’s approval

loosened like a torpedo

and highways rerouted with memory

a flap of bread from a copper tray

who didn’t know where they were going?

 

reading books and newspapers, the train’s away

with this, catch the fires of thought,

a fire one keeps aglow

thought waves transmitted from anonymous suns

either to hell or Fairfield

chances are you’ll see

the chef roasting little squares of day

the sound of day rising, solemn day

Rustin Larson’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, and North American Review. He won 1st Editor’s Prize from Rhino and was a prize winner in The National Poet Hunt and The Chester H. Jones Foundation contests. Larson is a graduate of Vermont College MFA in Writing.