Going Back to Serpent Mound
Alone, my flow of thought is sometimes broken
by a sight recalled: serpent poised
to swallow an egg.
More than two thousand years since the mound was built,
so many since Father took me there.
We walk along a rocky path,
he holds my hand, I kick the rocks
unknowingly. Innocence of foot against stone.
Winding around peaches, roses, quaint towns,
my thought. Landing on whiskey, dark nights,
crashes, junkyards, Father. Unusual, this thinking?
No. Common as lies, disappointments.
A mound would build itself in my head
to bury things, which stay there coiled
for a lifetime. Wherever you kick them, rocks
remain rocks, unbroken.
Once I went back to the mound, driving for hours,
feeling pulled to that never-forgotten place––
No one is here on this weekday morning.
My pleasure is ripe, like berries crushed in the mouth.
So familiar, the rickety watchtower I climb again
to see the stretch of serpent, its curves.
Memories roll from wet leaves, dry stones, myself
as effigy grown over with grass.
This place is just the same
and the old sinuous agony of being
just at the edge spreads through me like steaming water.
I look at the serpent, egg poised at its mouth,
look at myself looking back.
On the Other Hand
Behaved and circumspect, one hand’s adept
at holding useful things: fork and phone
leash, purse, toothbrush, ice cream cone.
A master, deft, this hand is not inept;
it strokes, pets, waves, and catches lightning
bugs. A serious worker, also playful,
hand employs a steadfast underling
to pick, point, beckon, scratch. Full pay
is what each finger gets: polish, lotion.
A specialty of this hand is caressing,
and it can rub, soothe, massage––a blessing.
Then, kneading dough’s a common motion.
This hand’s a handful; on the other hand
it’s not as wacko as the other hand:
perverse! This one’s made of glitch and halftone
shoots a bird thumbs a nose blocking
virtues of the other hand a miscreant
that’s always waiting to dissent this hand
could slap punch sock but sidesteps [like a foot!]
any provocation (in the name
of peace) even as it prods and goads
its owner it renounces all the awful
things a hand could do undesirable
this hand is mine? Scalawag, deviant?
I’m ready to admit that my devotion
is to . . . Wait! I’m still assessing . . .
both hands are prima donnas––but the matriarch?
I Had to Do Something
. . . to the dust of the well . . .
And, most of all, to you. To us. To you.
––Edmond Jabès, “Dedication”
On a palanquin, in gemmy silks
I had to do it––suddenly, I had to sing!
I love subtle worlds,
deserted without houses for anyone,
silent. And I don’t expect to be amused.
I split my soul like wood; let today froth from my mouth
with its mutilated music.
The key to all secrets is in the grass
on the hill of raspberries.
Listen, my brothers: I take poetry from everything,
locking the hyena and the storm outside.
I know what I’m doing.
This I believe: to oppose
is the only fine thing in life.
I will become any object––
look, I am turning into a little gray mouse!
I eat from the lion’s mouth,
I can drink moonlight,
I have a conversation with a goat
and a butterfly flies from my heart,
goes to a street of silk umbrellas
just as the morning melts away.
The lead in my pencil I love most of all!
Cento—lines (occasional slight alterations), in order of appearance, from:
(Title) Nicanor Parra; Rubén Darío; Else Lasker-Schüler; Antonio Machado;
Dino Campana; Gottfried Benn; Boris Pasternak; Nelly Sachs; Edith Södergran,
Södergran; Jorge de Lima; Moushegh Ishkhan; Orhan Veli Kanik; Mitsuharu
Kaneko, Kaneko; Polina Barskova; Edvard Kocbek; Kanik; Miguel Hernández;
Umberto Saba; Odysseas Elytis; H. V. Artmann; Luis García Montero;
Günter Eich
Irregular Ode to Irregularity
O let me not conform to any scheme or form
I won’t belong to any school where dictates are
demanded norms––
won’t be Apollonian or Zeusian, must be free
And let me not comply
with room & rhyme or fit
my words in space & sound exacting
to bring to any reader’s mind a strict adherence
to yet another kind of poesy on love
or posies––No!
Won’t chart my wanderings
by hosts of flowers golden
or count the ways I love, so love a thee Not for me!
O not for me
affection for the regular
inasmuch as I’m so damned irregular, misshapen
I DO EMBRACE crooked twisted gnarled
herky-jerky ziggy-zaggy snaky craggy bits
of this & that & various,
the here & now of planet earth
a place so gloriously rife with beings
out of line off-centered
So let, o let me, WARP
the fitful flawed imperfect
strangely dented ragged pitted tattered holey misaligned
& loopy
since I FEEL A BOND WITH
muddle disarray & shambles here on earth askew, awry
I rest my case with this: my own ragout––
30 lines or so word-penned (not Horation, Pindaric or blend)
leaning now on this
one lean line to end a short odd ode
Ad Lib Your Alibi
Say that the summer snow interrupted your process
That a mute monster mobbed you
That the usual hyperbole assessment of tardiness
seemed inappropriate
That not a single Übermensch cooperated in time
You forgot what you wanted to remember
during the re-membering of lost limbs
The cobbling of stones would not create the road
to get you there
You were unable to conclude your diatribe
against swarms of miscreants
Say that an imperceptible illusion blocked you
That an emanation of Heraclitus appeared
and your responsibility was not permanent
That no matter how much you kept swinging
you could not knock down the hindering gargoyle
and furthermore, you hadn’t counted on eighteen
intricate tumults getting in the way
If you think none of the above will serve,
say you were sick, really sick
`1`11 `
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