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.
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