DRY
BREAKING
Consider
this old shed door
Peeling,
splintering, rheumatic
It shows its age.
Nothing
can save it
It
needs pulling down
Unhinged,
hysterical, sad.
Weather
has not been kind
To
it. It is in the nature
Of
neglected things.
In
the dark it closes on
The
primal scuttle of a rat
The
gossip of rust.
Tins
of this and that,
A
mower unworkable, a frame
Without
a picture.
A
padlock without a key
Keeping
nothing secure, fused
In
its parts –
Consider
its grievous quiet
Its
mute accusation
Its
dry breaking; its grief.
HOW TO SAVE A LIFE
If you want to save a life, leave it alone
Have a jar where lives are kept like coins
Keep your own in there
Don’t let any curious fool take them out, fondle
them
And give advice about polishing them up
He’ll start with the others and come
to yours
He’ll wear it flat with his advising thumb
Featureless, he’ll say, it shines brighter
You know the type. Be miserly. Hide the
jar.
Be miserable about it if you must
There are people out there who thrive on
rust
You know who they are
They tell you to spend a little, then
spend a little more
Let the light in, let the air in, let the
rain in
Your life becomes one big suggestion
He won’t be happy until you’re base metal
-
Your jar, your coin; spend it or don’t
spend it
Be brutal. If you want to save a life,
leave it alone.
PATER NOSTER WITH THE ISLAND NEARING
Sick to the bowels in the heel-deep of the
boat
Negotiating, like rockfalls, the obese kit
luggage of three German tourists
This is my gift to you, waveslap and
keel’s kilter
Leaving the lee of the bay demands rough
courage
But through the blunder the island comes
in spite of us, low, black, remote.
Rinse our mouths in galling tapwater, in a
cracked mirror
Shape our faces from their gargoyle grin
of discomfort, regret, some fear
On the slopdeck roped and slithering as in
a herpetarium
Alien quiver near the heart, all things
that swim, our pater noster
Breathed on our hands to bring back blood,
shed our skin, recover.
THE
BIRD
‘ . . . . we headed to the park for safety.’
- Kumiko Arakawa
There’s
a raft of opening yellow-heads
Sending
up flares on the slope
There’s
a game going on, there’s no room to park
We’ve
spent all winter in the dark.
There’s
a sign ordering you to clean up
After
your dog. The sky is liquid blue
Even
the weather in your head improves.
All
deadlines pass, and no one moves.
I
think it was like this when someone
Looked
up and saw the silver thing
The
high sun making it a beautiful bright bird
The
poet’s closed mind opens to the falling word.
NEWS JUST IN
I’ve had enough of death by text and
Messenger
First thing in the morning, like old war
telegrams
And make no more reports of old friends
living by machine
The vigorous, vivacious ones especially
Who are not slipping at all peacefully
Away, who cannot speak or hear, drowned in
morphine.
There is no response – I have no response
To the flat hysteria coded in the bland
language
On the ‘phone, sentences that barely know
how to say
The obvious; that a world has fallen in
That God’s a joke, there’s only dark
within
The rooms once loved; all life turned
past-tense anyway.
Give me the wars on gigantic scale
I can take all that, buttering my
breakfast toast
Rendered down and carved into Mac-bites of
news
Digestible as weather, familiar as milk
In tea, death wrapped in silk
A marmalade of information, sporty
interviews.
But not these others whom I know and knew
The drain of the duty they unthinkingly
impose
Death is selfish, sickness narcissistic,
there should be
Some warning in advance of it all
Just time enough to let the right words
fall
On the readied tongue; or on the screen,
if necessary.
Excellence, of touch, of thought, of communication.
ReplyDelete