Enjoy

I republished my old poetry for those voracious readers. My friends - bon appetite! Check footnotes. On the right fringe of the blog page there is a heading marked Essays and Quotes. Click it and scroll to the bottom for obscure references. The group of poems is called "The Ephemeral Bard"

NATURE SOUNDS


I
You can derive more from a walk in the mountain forest on a Spring day than any scrap of knowledge attained…
the way the fern bends, sweat breathing through your pores,
bloodless electricity radiating through your arms, explosive crackling of twigs –
it’s the sound of churning stream water plowing through boulder teeth raging underneath the great Coriolis Effect of the earth.
All nature is in shades punctuated by light – forlorn breakthroughs of hoar-sky in evening pasture –
an orange-winged blackbird stands out like a peculiar oriole in the Poconos ecosystem,
hypoglycemic severing with a sinking meal down the gullet, between-tree breezes describe the rustle trestles – cracked nubs with immortal bark disintegrated,
sawdust surrounding the exposed roots underneath the twisted green and swaying bamboo –
one sublime, harmonic sound, except the wind rustle comes in oceanic waves –
the briny splash happens in the imagination.
Splintered ladders hang on the weathered trunks.
As you approach the trees closer to the meadow and jump out of the mountain forest,
the trunks are lichen-stained, some with the bark of a rocky cliff face,
others with the complexity of an onion cell, the unwrapped bark package exposes the hardwood core of trunk furniture, unimaginable groundwater sinking through its veins.
Run down the hill decline into the grainy meadow with crickets, infinitesimal weeds, thorny brush,
poison ivy, milkweed, stale smell of rotting wood,
sweet smell of hemlock, honeyed goldenrod yellow dot the field, slumping ferns,
twinkling aspen changing scarlet pink and orange-tipped maple leaves against drooping cedar.
Projecting furthest from the mountain/meadow boundary, dogwood showcases its white billowy flowers,
catalpa with its blanketing skunk-cabbage sized leaves,
a red “T” in the middle of a white painted sign
hung on an unrecognizable needle stripped trunk.
O joyous variation and green goodness outside the realm of natural!
Pluck a branch from the wilderness and build an Edenic forest cover only Indians knew.
Some rhododendrons have stood for a century.
Find all the Utrecht diagonals in easeled spectrums of green light,
lopped off heads of trees and heads of State, buried tannin rubble,
acres of mildewed garbage foraged by forest carpets,
proscenium property lines sweeping out to a stream trail, clackity-clack branches
tossed from abyssian heights annihilated by hiking boots.
Dutch masters hide in the tree lofts, Gauguin and Van Gogh perfume of peaking Helios hitting the streambend
day lilies,Van Gogh’s willow-white spots overhanging the watering hole,
creekbend brilliant spouting carpet speckling the leaf wilted floor.
Can you see all this? Can you smell all this?
Not until drowning your aortic pulmonary in creek weed during evening light, dewy manna dripping from your soaked, moist skin.




II
Observe the earth drip catapulting branches, cataclysmic phantasmagoria –
orgulous Priam in the forest bulwarks,
blench and shadows, reins of branches. What bird? What sound?
An unidentified melody scaling the dense canopic clangor of tweets,
sweet chirps echoing from SoHo sunrise in dreary hungover morning,
bluebirds ringing out with their crow tones; they are part of the raven family,
accumulating orgones through the soles of my feet in walking meditation
hearing hollowed imploding stump sounds, affecting paranoiac,
stripped bark skin lean-toed, unveiling Caucasian, burnishing clusters of floret in the distance,
gentle swaying of chestnut caterpillar pods and munched protoplasm,
ATP, energy, protein, cytoplasm, endomorphic, transgenital, tran substantial,
penniless, immortal, iridescent, moon-tattooed eaten away tannish carbuncles manacled on the leaf surface,
unidentifiable wounded tree scar with huge wingspanned branches,
cathartic leaf hoppers in chameleon fuscia, bothersome black flies,
clay fragments about to be cleared, the newness of Spring
and oddly unfallen orange-brown wind chimes stolid on the sloping boughs,
buttercups, lazy-eyed Susans, crimson poison-perceptioned weeds,
rib-toothed with brute force thorn flowers interconnected as the mysterious poison nature,
imbedded tracks of fly fisherman, Virginian vine creeper.

Oops! I ducked into cover before I could disturb a real fly fisherman.
I am a beast now, a bear with boot claws, havoc-stomping flowers on Pohoquata trails.
I’d like to dazzle you with Latin roots, but I have none – only the enveloping dense air filling my porous skin,
the released C02 from my healthy lungs and the mountain scene.
I’m not scent deaf of sense deaf, swallowing cedar complexity,
air as sweet as crescent rise and trough squash of briny wave and
illimitable horn clasps.

I lost the trail suddenly because I was focusing on my pen and tablet –
back on the hunting trail again – nearly 20 years since its forged path,
lost fronds of evergreens, a maple drawbridge – off the beaten path a new path Way takes form –
the Tao in scintillating glory, life energy, mysticism, approaching cloud light and illumination,
enlightenment, jet stream heavenward, yellow, red, blues, primary colors harpooned out of the optic spectrum and placed on my lapstep,
Jacob’s branch ladder in Indigo nearness, sweet dill smell wafting form the forest floor magma.
From the earth’s crust finally stream sounds:
sprout drift, larvae drift, caddis fly drift, dragon fly drift, fish feed drift, sun reflect drift, pollen and lily pad drift,
damselflies congregating in packs of thousands in South American spawn swarms,
trickling drizzle of Amazon humidity, haze, fog, umbrella of orange and leopard skin magnetic porch light phosphorescence,
knivy pine and long grass arc skin rustle, magnetic rose twilight.
Go now on a vigorous constitutional, you come back smelling like honey.




III
Rhinestone renegades clasp the heroin button of my bone soul host –
the frightened pelican haggard hair disguises himself as a great blue heron,
splintered roughage, horse chalk, reeds, clavicles, eye-bone rings, subtle Jamaican yellows,
whittled, section birches, sierra in view, dashing whitetails,
emblemed fawns in kewpie doll outlines, likeness of seeming dead Juliet –
bold petal leopards scarred on deer fur, jagged punji boughs, twisted lamp tone of forest light,
mangy, munificent, tender Roman fly rod arches, wrenching trunk moss and tiny mothswarms,
moccasin, teal, Indian barque, barges, schooner moons, termite anvils,
splattered spotlights, hemlock ribcage, lichen flaps, witch locks dripping from scenic redwoods,
budding maple treelings, yearling brooks munching hatchery holocausts,
Poland, Germany, connected unconscious, collective rather,
patch of stream spider webs, debris, long grass – whole worlds!
cleaning ants, long drawn chestnut oak leaves, seeming dead.

Trying to find tortive uprooted and amber pinesap, beaver cuts, anchored moss – a prison of the mind –
Rimbaud shaken mnemonic repetition, Latin Horace, jagged ramparts,
foxholes, red firelight, escaping rabbit and turkey, peculiar neophyte,
thrombi, wrinkled brain tissue, crimson, juniper, daisy, languid velvet,
monarch, moose-racked buck, robin redbreast, phantom fishmonger Peter,
Gabriel, Sebastian, John, Kubla Kahn, nylon green sheen, jesting wood ducks against hyacinth,
violet serene forget-me-not garden lovelorn tree slime,
cosmococcic sunrise rainforest Gibraltar rose Rosettas,
gargantuan steam drills, sculptured branches amid air,
explosive dichotomy, freshwater seaweed, weedy fossil, ancient bicycle and icebox,
New Jerusalem, Vermeer reflections, Holland headlong glances and panorama,
stone rows, third degree scars, slate stumbling blocks, lily branches in ghoulish hover,
fritting old man Murphy on barberry and Diocletian majestic mushroom marshmallows.
Now the stream sounds like trickling rainwater, explosive bubbles, gorgeous gorges,
surrealistic setting, spicebush unction, grilled birch branch stew melting pots, section sign.
My imagination might surrender to the void in madness!
breast stroking wood turtle infant, horse galloping farm cat,
hoar frost, cirrus wings of cloud in the pale blue,
Denver cliff ebb-n-flow sea scrolls.
Want to sound intelligent? Insert the word hubris.










IV
All of nature can be read –
who knows, there may be undiscovered hieroglyphs –
golden thicket African guardsman –
tectonic Coleridgean underwater stream caves, seascapes, black velvet tenses, conifer dragons,
dragoons with spear points, pool sun rain eclipses,
budded Chinese star windpipes, tympanum suspended woodwind stagecoach funereal hearse,
smooth beech skin, corked mangy presses, maggot whites and bloated deer lung bursts,
rancid red eyes, chiseled bone, wrecked skull platoons, wharves,
sheepskin maiden ship front, divorced Mammon and mammo titular beauty,
sun glassed eyes, tree shade tree groan, beckoning evening libido,
lurch and gurgle, bubble trouble toil and witches canticle,
chant incantation, bawd, squirrel scare, tombstone crow peeled grater, sunken loaves,
bluebird yelps across eternities and vine boughed foot escapes.

The mind is one gigantic compound word stuck between synapses –
one adrenal endomorphic/de-stressor intersection –
animal abysses, shark trance leaps, bark slate roofs, salvation toils, the rock where I found my kief pipe,
Indian infinitudes, lazy grays, violent violet swamps, hoar-grass, queen Anne’s face,
plenitude, queendom, mamboed stem in ecstasy, hurtled waterfall abdomen,
extinguished energy, my lover’s eighth grade perfume, bleach, acrid to the nasal cavity,
Andes, Kilamanjaros, Hoods, Everests, Alpines, Camelbacks, gesticulate moon creek on mountaintop Minnesota lakefront,
deserted untouched Emerson transcendental virgin forests,
Thoreau boroughs, bards, fear, toad rings, sycamore-shaded rock,
lost tree antlers, twenty-four point buck,
Slatington rivers of Miller’s ore, granite, platinum, jammed pearls,
exploding fricassee of diamond sparkle in a moon-minute,
trembling toadstools, Valhalla, Vikings, spires, flesh of the gods, red mushrooms, yage, ayahuasca,
pterodactyls, serpents, woodpeckers in Napoleon cannon fire, Hugo’s Waterloo,
volcanic ferns, phytoplankton, eubacteria, Milky Way dust modules floating out of the sea,
fernograph, congealed stream waves, ocean blue, pollution green, great wolves,
horrendous grape vines, tea leaves, white lotus, white locust,
white budding chlorophyll tips, horse trails, broken paralysis of necks in capering wonder,
white overcast, white clover, white into pearl into ice, layers of chortled yeast,
murky pond excrement, watercress, pastel blue pelicans and ducks
in the midst of a stream garden overlooking the world’s stage…

RECALLING A HIGH RIDE WITH X

I can touch the red glare from the back car lights
barreling through ecstasies in desperation.
Xavier had the wheel,
and I sat in the back perpendicular we blew through mist
that paused in our aching hiccupped lungs,
and felt good despite our desperation,
his mistress in the passenger seat placated
by devotion – willing to go along.

I glimpsed forward into the void night
thinking of X's vagabond existence,
searching with an infant looking glass
at his grown up problems.
He had fathered a child in the Bronx.
His lover had sought him out in the Poconos –
she stole his cell phone and began answering,
"Did you know he had a baby in New York
and hasn't paid child support once."

The sighs of the past come back in bellows,
converted mist echoing high in pitch.
The stomach wanders and is satiated
on craggy pavement tuned into freeing
choruses blaring tender trumpet voices
on the radio.
A beat, but it fizzles out in the end –
one extended sine wave of woebegone
and night fixes.
We rode in the night and the air vacuumed
our hurricane truck.

Everything can be found in the night
when its simply a blank existence,
and I rage at the people not up at this hour,
then complacent myself with inexistency
tuned into sound fragments of some sublime music
which must sound like the voice of archangels
humming harps of Helios –
and God must be fine to look at.

Just one moment in time,
forever changing;
I pause at its glow, yet the car keeps moving –
it’s one great heady trip.
X is a dynamo,
I'm a dynamo –
the red beams of existence
are slung on a wire.
Is there ecstasy in desperation – you bet.

Strange scene inside an old mill

Inside the broken stone enscarpments
and crenelated battlements, the grinders
of rusted metal gears hung against
the broken back wall.
The main clockwork gear was rusted and shattered –
its iron poll twisted.
The turnwheel that ran the mill mechanism –
plopped in iron oxide wreckage
spilling out through a basement arch that water
once flowed through.
Mottled Busch bottles and Budweiser cans
are littered below a hill of slate
and limestone belts.
The rocky crag foundation has become
a watering hole.

WAR ABSORBS AMERICA

In Iraq I saw a paranoid country
in a bombardment of dynamite –
in America I saw worse…
rotten guts of idlers spooned out in the meadows,
blinding mechanized light streaming from rotten cottages,
primly laden straw,
mucked grass blades,
brown on the ground,
drooping ectoplasm from gutters,
white excrement pouring from springs and into the streams,
trespassers cackling at loose guinea birds and peacocks,
hideous night howl alarm clocks
pounding the brain temple,
nightmare sounds fixing the bike,
stripped trees in the dead of Spring,
black Spring in the dead of Summer,
in the capitol moss grows out of golden fronds
on the Washington Monument.

To the north Baltimore quakes and black bums
croak and bark in frigid markets.
Squeals reach the top of MBNA bank
and reflect jubilee emeralds.
The commuters swallow them like candy.
In Jacksonville cars whorl on rhombus highways
taking fragile souls and in a glance-instant
volcanoes spring from the bay, tidal pools dry,
dispersing millions of insects.
Still the traffic flows.
The residents wake up under buffet tables
wondering about their dead creaking soul juice
splattered on the sidewalks
recycled by the earth.

Giant Hemlock-Induced Irrational Hallucination Sonnet

I started hallucinating in the forest and realized my mission as a writer –
to see worlds in atoms,
to see toothpicks in broken boughs,
to hear electrons humming around the nucleus,
to grow into a giant and proclaim those below me – my writing subjects,
to see,
to rush for pen and paper only to realize my pen will never meet my mind’s expectations,
to narrow the gap between pen and mind lightning,
to view life as my art’s dictation,
to see boars lunging with its snaggle tusks ready to impale me, and at a moment’s notice transcribe my dictation,
Oh, and constitutionals, constitutionals, constitutionals!

DREAMS OF EPHEMERA

I woke today before the dawn after an erotica alpha-style dream of a lesbian duo.
I considered whether dreams are ephemeral
or whether they provide us with visions – true angelic visions of eternity.
Then I realized I held ephemera in my hand – that they emanated from my steaming bowl of coffee,
from the pores of the trees and grass and snow and dripped from the tree tops.
Truth is, the phrase dreams of ephemera came to me during the short period between sleep and wake,
from some outlying brain signal, seemingly out of thin air.
I wanted to incorporate it into my writing, whether through a title or a deduction of logic.
I wanted rather to avoid cryptic writing and be as honest as possible – utmost honesty.

My hands smell like stale cigars in the supra-alive morning.
The mildew dampness wafts from the forest floor,
overnight rain slowly gutters itself onto the ground,
peace of the drizzle is broken by the clangor of yelping birds,
one close to me falls silent, but those a few hundred yards away chirp themselves hoarse.
The sky is an immeasurable white wall of cloud.
because of the low hanging mist supersaturated
hanging, waiting to drop.
Mountain laurel ornamental plants sit on the deck to my left,
posies to my west, lily pad shaped heart blade plant and knivy exotic crimson dreadlocked plant to my northwest,
tomato plants in the developing stage silhouetted by trestles to my north,
behind the deck trestles a lilac bush,
to the northeast, Jake’s ashes are buried below a Norway maple tree at the very edge of the proscenium garden.
Protruding from the front gravelly brick walkway of the house façade,
gutters clean, holes patched in the driveway fabric, souls holy, termited woodpecked stump amidst oak giants,
aspens, maps approaching sunlight disband the mist,
Caribbean ocean clear water in perfect setting fashion
soothes Proust to sleep in the veritable goldmine of the Normandy coast at 10 in the morning –
it’s not 10 yet, but the great writer still has some malady.

We’re approaching daybreak, and the forest fills with background punctured light.
Now the fog is a dense forest of mist – an abyss of imagination,
gorgefuls of empty hollow extending horizontally in outmoded wonder –
the mist of Morocco, the fantasy London city, the bicycle tread in Amsterdam,
Louverousell, France lives an unutterable existence inside a turned boat with thoughts hidden in a veil of secrecy.
I’ll have to haul the cut branches away from the Chinese chestnut that I clipped yesterday.
The ice storm of 2005 split the trees in two, and the branches I trimmed have spontaneously grown back.
Karma has a way of biting you in the ass sometimes.

Snakes come out of wicker basket ribbons,
forest ephemera transform into rodent-sized beasts,
light streaks across the visual perception, all phantasmagoria –
all haunting momentary lapses of concentration drift.
O hallowed perception! Troika, ennui, clandestine moist beads bespeckling a spider web,
attached to the death gathering skylight blowing cloud smoke and showing sky-blue cream.
All time has ended! There’s only ephemera and the clock-tick of bird chirps,
birds sound in Doppler effect culmination and fly south
molten ash streams and evaporates in the high-sky.
Nuclear steam congeals then separates, all nature picks up on the stale smell of my spirit,
phantom pieces, Death, wandering gloom, hurting stomach drop and want of coffee grounds,
appetite suppress on the death bed canvas, starved and supple,
a morning flight airliner overhead, jets in one-minute intervals over the Hudson never gotten tired of,

Sunlight golden in the emblemed East, a white-gold tincture, gold-rimmed edible sunrise over the forest florets
faded a bit at intervals, blocked by catalpa leaves, but still filtering through skyscraper heights of vision,
chromosphere vision emanates from the atmosphere – explain all this outlying color?
Van Gogh pins oaks below the stark sky with a bruised dark-complexioned through-light of punctuated hoar-sky,
brooding dimension trees with smoky branches,
billows of smoke pouring from my hypothalamus, acres of forest in my hippocampus,
dense canopy in my sinuses cured only by fresh smell of lifting dew point forest detritus.
Handy with the pen today trying to come up with words, words with iron ore in them
fissured out of the San Andreas fault lines running in between Oakland and the hallway of a dormitory,

The Richter storms of earthquake weather, magma fronts and dynamos of iceberg floes,
diamond platforms, crystal debris, augmented waves, tsunamis, frigid –
Norman Mailer and Orwell admonish the climate crisis.
From my vantage point, the forest smells sweeter than ever – no acid rain where I sit
despite Great Wolf grease pollution, Aventis-Pasteur cover up, sulfur and biological wastes
trickling into the Tobyhanna river, oil spills on the Nova Scotia coastline,
exploding furnaces in Australia, natural gas infused torches on the thicket mountains,
plateaus hiked, Ozarks, dust bowls, prairie, plains regions, rhombus contours,
Chilean hills, throbbing calves, bejeweled rainwater, surrealistic impressions, the moon-brain, star frenzy,
Corso on a Minnesota lakefront, mottled yarn blanket, screened breeze flowing in from the Great Lakes,
sympathetic, ethereal, healing, Taoist life energy embalming the declining spirit.

Hidden in the corridor – magnetic pressure in synapsed pleasure,
cartwheels of lightning from attracted rods, glaciers dripping from poles,
drift scrape, footprint lakes, Amsterdam canals, plump ankle-siphoned bays,
perforated ground water, veined Death Valley, heated clays in the artistic oven,
Promethean casks, wandering laurels, empiric dawns, blaring symphonies, discord, appearing sun,
wall light and tire quick, miracle food of nature, ambrosial dawn!
Greek, feta, beta, Xanadu sunrise, fantastic, florid, Florida orange peeled dawn light,
exploding retina, wrinkled abyss reflects shadows in yellow from the corona flashbulb gone as phantoms in minutes,
Wall play on wood, impressed, tungsten, burning glow, piled lawns, sphere of grandeur and illusion,
8 minutes time, electromagnetic force field.
The sunlight is finally here to illuminate our shadows,
dry our paranoia, evaporate our monsters, renew our sanity and heartbreak,
lovelorn lacklove loinpain libido, nocturnal sunrise of the world’s page,
sublime sounds of wing-ed insects frittering across the field of vision awakened by the dry sun, stinging my forehead.

Short Poetry

I jump from one ecstasy to another

Already considered the way toward enlightenment,
the first obstacle, searching endlessly for a definition of life.
Already achieved enlightenment sitting under seventh grade schoolroom lights,
one leg propped upon the chair,
imagining the self out of my natural body,
allowing teachers voices to ground and resurface.

Already shed my bodhi tree realizing, in a world of unfeeling,
we awaken, stay up for a while, and fall asleep;
only in heaven do we fight epic battles with demons.
Already passions envelope - lust and gluttony -
going empty-stomached and realizing satisfaction.
Already expelled from Eden, moved and mowed cosmic radio messages, star-dizzy,
began a McMannis fire speckling the firmament, tromping over Delaware Indian
spirits possessing stream graves and raceway trails.

Already mesmerized by power lines, began a Fort Sumpter historical fiction novel;
an American Revolution reincarnation, befriending General Sherman and giving him invisible dialogue.
Already it bleeds, the powerful connection and divine light all have, foreknowledge appertaining.
Already escaped cerebral prolapse from adrenaline energy out of the body,
weeping for the world, with remainder attached.

Already distracted by soccer, baseball, basketball, and girls, well-read until age 10,
spit on the field, propelling my body to multi-dimensional limits.
Already creeled fish in Pohoquata, stream between mountains, whirlwinded aquatic sunsets and used rod and reel in a fly fishing stream against club rules, catching prize brook trout in the presence of pastors.
Already circumvented the soul with a depressed chest weak heart bad migraine, inhaled through the stomach only to lose the navel and find the gateway a fixed point in the sternum.
Already high, discovered euphorian sickness, the golden city in Florida, and washed out of the hurricane with bleached soul powdered on the beach.

Healing wounds with Tao kung-fu

I let the earth feel my bioelectric energy today,
circulating downward to the soles,
and she provided me with hers –
frogs peeping in a thicket marsh, sweet smell of hemlock mist and wet pine,
Nineteen-twenties forty ounce bottles now on the wooded floor, now hers,
pulled blanket from a backpack, laid onto the damp ground –
What a scene to make love in!
I walked up the mountain forest past ancient white pine,
heard ravens cackling – chasing the owl from its hollowed out mansion.
Practiced deep breatching,
pulled up my perenium, engaging air up my back line,
then down my front line,
released and felt an aortic prolapse,
repeated exercise 20 times,
sipped water and sat up,
the sun peaked its head,
God is telling me something!
Began descent,
spit out fluid – releasing my sexual energy.

II

Swung around the mountain forest –
what Indian cover McMannis would provide.
Passed a hole dug with a dirt pile beside,
Heard same owl hooting,
Wondered who triumphed – man or nature?
moved swiftly through wooded area, over rock rows
indicating property lines.
Heard brother’s Jeep engine wind down and pull into the driveway.
Conversation with a plant

“You know how many times you got me high?” Plant asked.
The plant emitted CO2, hung warm air rising,
“Do you foresee a waterworld in earth’s future?” Smoker asked.
“I have foreknowledge, I envision high coastal waters and high temperatures,” Plant said.
“Our pollution and debauchery hurts you right?” Smoker asked.
“We absorb all your poison and filter it through our veins,” Plant said.
“And the effect produced?” Smoker asked.
“Try to imagine adderol, crystal methamphetamine, DXM, and a cornucopia of washed out pills into waterways.” Plant said.
“Weed clings to onto our leaves, leaving us hungry for water, earth filters equilibrium amounts of dew. Imagine satisfaction, and you can imagine our lives.” Plant added.
“Will the return be even greater in the future?” Smoker asked.
“Upon my word, yes.” Plant said.
“Man will control all wildlife stocking, completely obseletizing nature. Earth will be abundant, men will study Tao, extending their lives to biblical lengths from the Old Testament. Dandelions will grow into tree-size ornamentals.” Plant said.
“But will murder exist in the future?” Smoker asked.
“Under a dandelion cloud. In fact, there will be no need for the sun due to dandelion brightness and seed hurricane storms. The earth will immortalize.” Plant said.
“What have we been filtering through you, anyway?” Smoker asked.
“You may disbelieve the future, go ahead Smoker.”

Smoker reads the newspaper headline, “Earthday Battlecry: Discontinue Global Warming.”
Hmmm…Why continue human cloning when you can control plant reproduction, the smoker wonders…
Will it rain black tomorrow.

Beneath chair’s shadow from the porchlight

Moonlight – cloud penetrate,
low hanging mist – illuminate.
surround thy self – ringed,
by Orion’s orb – cling,
by Sun’s chromosphere – compare.
Through reflection’s glare,
shining down onto earth’s marker,sink paper towel shadows darker.
Breed Harassment

Titmice harass the Great-horned owl,
beside his lover in a winter hollow,
Ooh – O - Oooh
They squeeze inside the tree-center core,
talons unfurl and scrape the scar.
The woodpecker created this ecstasy mansion.
Ooh- - O – Oooh
In hindsight lies the downcast rhododendron,
a chandelier at pinnacle’s edge,
hung low, lower than the perched hemlock.
Check for the owls at dusk, they will be mating,
Ooh – O – Oooh.

One minute please, one page

Give me one minute, one page,
and I’ll reminisce with you,
for ten minutes time,
until the start of Duke and North Carolina.
You pulled out the album of writing samples
to give me confidence –
“I am the only child of a harp seal”
“I sit here on an iceberg,
waiting for something to happen…”

I was in fourth grade and wrote,
“I am a great writer and when I grow up,
I’m going to be a famous writer.”
Wrote my first poem about Hobbes my cat
that describes him perfectly,

But the monsters still came,
we threw 1,600,4999 grenades at them,
but the monsters still came.
They came, came in the night giving paranoid nightmares
of parent death guilt-loss,
“I love you mom and dad,”
“I hope we stay together forever.”

Iraq in a bombardment of dynamite

I left my life somewhere down the line,
I gave my love – it wasn’t returned in kind,
like brethren did I regard my peers,
the visions, bards, unbridled stories, and seers,
a match for them in soul-commerce, in words lacking,
filler material in round table discussions – care acting,
they left me in Samara, my buddies died-in-arms,
shivering in the chill desert night.

Linus

Man creeped from white walls in shadow,
Linus, silence blended poetry,
killed by Apollo and forced into illusion,
he appears, emerging triumphant,
reason for my pen ink and elements,
molecules touched downcast,
looking downward, even his apple Adams
tunic dark but painted white underneath,
What are you showing me?
Is writer doomed to appear and inspire?No, you are immortally bare and wasted.


I deal in absolutes,
great alchemical experiments,
nothing is achieved without reverence,
Thrust your chest outward, feel euphoria, speak,
filled with abundance, filled with multitudes.
So detach the poet from the person, include both.
I’ll be wearing warm soccer socks year-round, with headphones under winter hat, smoking marijuana.

Elegy for Ira Abraham Hartzler

Elegy for Ira Abraham Hartzler

I

The way Proust’s bread stood atop gothic church steeples,
the old man knelt, his brow to his palm, and broke the loaf
of black bread,
the painting that complimented it, imaginary, hidden away
in an Amish household,
showing the red wine, Christ’s blood, the elixir of life,
symbol of your lifeblood – wife you missed miserably.
Saw you dead in my imagination at New Wilmington Hospital,
cringed at your emaciated silk body, pale brow, open-mouth.

Saw you alive on a green velvet sofa chair.
Never ran a mile in your life,
but you walked a million miles in one step,
your heels drained of fluid – strong.
Clung to your house, surviving centuries of
glacial scraping – the ice thawed and left
rhododendron outside your Mennonite temple.
Thought of the mitral valve prolapse you inherited
generations before, leaving you craving sweet air,
the afflictions birthed in your grandson’s heart,
faulty valve death-pang chest pain appearing once in a while.

Thought of your quiet mind that could tune out all the noise –
you heard well.
Thought of the teal doors on Amish farms indicating the presence of a virgin –
could find that color on your favorite flannel shirt
in iridescent waves.
Determined that we were meant to stay on ground-level,
not heights of Samson pillars – they rose in fainting awe
to heaven’s cusp,
where insulin shots eased your bride’s Scotch-Irish pain.

You cried at the noise banquet, they threw roses,
and crowned you with “World’s Greatest Poppa” t-shirt and cap.
Remembered your delirium – you talked with phantoms,
fearing what we all fear, the world fading away, the air dropping
from your back-brain, eyes rolling skyward –
an ecstatic mortification of the senses.
Wrote your elegy upon the birthday of William F. Buckley.
I would ask “Where were you when the Titanic sank?”,
when you sat, plush verdant youth, in green vegetables and oatmeal, hanging gardens in Volant shade.


II

Come back to Route 794 and bury my body
below a riffle of water from McMichael’s Creek,
where souls hover as rising oxygen, and sinking hydrogen,
on stream froths – I smell brine from washed out ocean sand collecting low-flow in the mid-Spring night.

Received a report that you were in terminal restlessness.
Received a report about your talent reciting poetry –
do not worry, I’ll return your Henry Wadsworth Longfellow collection, and your American poetry anthology,
I stole them from your house in Volant when I visited last.

Received a report on the process of dying –
I had my own version of death –
each day you lose more control over your body.
Listen to your body, you can hear it speaking to you –
don’t given in to its absurd demands sometimes.

Come back to Route 794, the highway that looks like Pocono
Raceway – it has claimed so many souls and car parts,
enough to reconstruct an entire vehicle –
they litter the roadside like parts of the human anatomy.

Your practicing nurse, your granddaughter, your daughter
(who sat closest), sat nearby, the distracting breath
of the oxygen machine reverberated through Shenango Home,
and through Poppa’s lungs, and passing through his spirit,
its natural emollient – you exhaled lavender’s sweet breath,
floated on the pool’s surface, everything submerged but eyes,
ears, nose, mouth, and were in tranquility awed by
the blue-blankness and peace in the sky.

This void, eerie, aching your heart, wonderful.
In ecstacy, you waited for the right moment to rise
in jeweled water, lit up in isolation,
gentle cotton brushing your cheek
on a rainforest canopy in paradise.