Madmen

They say you can jinx a poem if you talk about it before it is done. If you let it out too early, they warn, your poem will fly away, and this time they are absolutely right. Take the night I mentioned to you I wanted to write about the madmen, as the newspapers so blithely call them, who attack art, not in reviews,

The Far Field

I I dream of journeys repeatedly: Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula, The road lined with snow-laden second growth, A fine dry snow ticking the windshield, Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic, And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror, The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,

Sadness

1 Dear ghosts, dear presences, O my dear parents, Why were you so sad on porches, whispering? What great melancholies were loosed among our swings! As before a storm one hears the leaves whispering And marks each small change in the atmosphere, So was it then to overhear and to fear. 2 But all things then were oracle and secret.

Small Frogs Killed On The Highway

Still, I would leap too Into the light, If I had the chance. It is everything, the wet green stalk of the field On the other side of the road. They crouch there, too, faltering in terror And take strange wing. Many Of the dead never moved, but many Of the dead are alive forever in the split second

In The Naked Bed, In Plato's Cave

In the naked bed, in Plato's cave, Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall, Carpenters hammered under the shaded window, Wind troubled the window curtains all night long, A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding, Their freights covered, as usual. The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram Slid slowly forth. Hearing the milkman's clop, his striving up the stair, the bottle's chink,

Creatures Of The Night

Creatures of the Night . iron grates over the street drains roofs for the poor refuge for the creatures of the night darting across intersections shying from the hungry grinning grills of the eighteen wheelers hungry for something besides butterflies and the splatter of bugs dark shadows flickering and glimmering through the glare of headlights and the red glow of tailights

Just A Little Dry Run

. Did a dry run to see if I could drive at night. Joe didn't think it was such a good idea since I kept covering up my eyes to shield them from the infernal glare of those oncoming halogen headlights. He must be getting old- he wasn't having any fun at all! But since I'm looking for adventure

American Sketches

CROSSING KANSAS BY TRAIN The telephone poles Have been holding their Arms out A long time now To birds That will not Settle there But pass with

Jasmine

I sit beside two women, kitty-corner to the stage, as Elvin's sticks blur the club into a blue fantasia. I thought my body had forgotten the Deep South, how I'd cross the street if a woman like these two walked towards me, as if a cat traversed my path beneath the evening star. Which one is wearing jasmine? If my grandmothers saw me now

In Hospital

They stood, almost blocking the pavement, As though at a window display; The stretcher was pushed in position, The ambulance started away. Past porches and pavements and people It plunged with its powerful light Through streets in nocturnal confusion Deep into the blackness of night.

Homecoming

I am no longer myself as I watch the evening blur the traffic to a pair of obese headlights. I return home, tried, my face pressed against the window of expectation . I climb the steps to my f lat, only to trip over the mat Outside the door. The key

Tamar

I A night the half-moon was like a dancing-girl, No, like a drunkard's last half-dollar Shoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill-range, Young Cauldwell rode his pony along the sea-cliff; When she stopped, spurred; when she trembled, drove The teeth of the little jagged wheels so deep They tasted blood; the mare with four slim hooves On a foot of ground pivoted like a top, Jumped from the crumble of sod, went down, caught, slipped;

Dark Poetic Mind

This poem bleeds dysfunctional desire, Blood stains through the dirty streets Mark the paths we trod, Urban avenues of despair, But I was still romantic for you, Your thin unattractive body And unwashed stringy blond hair, Your ghost stare in the headlights’ glare, Your wish to blend into streetlamps Of non-existence,

Pumberly Pott's Unpredictable Niece

Pumberly Pott's unpredictable niece declared with her usual zeal that she would devour, by piece after piece, her uncle's new automobile. She set to her task very early one morn by consuming the whole carburetor; then she swallowed the windshield, the headlights and horn, and the steering wheel just a bit later.

April Showers

It is the season of new beginnings... Spring removes her winter robe And fades into rainbows of hope; The sun shines its headlights into April- And in the garden the effluent scent Of multiple blooms delights the nose; The naked trees are no longer bare Clothed in egg shell, pink and green. Now entertaining the sometime visit Of the butterfly and bee;

**everything Is Broken*

Making lies Breaking society, Straining strings Lost sobriety; Everything’s broken oh no, oh yes everything is broken Ain’t no use lying ain’t no use in living But being outspoken with lyrical oral flex Will leave you living

Shooting Rats At The Bibb County Dump

Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride to the dump in carloads to turn our headlights across the wasted field, freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish. Shot in the head, they jump only once, lie still like dead beer cans. Shot in the gut or rump, they writhe and try to burrow into garbage, hide in old truck tires, rusty oil drums, cardboard boxes scattered across the mounds,

Affair With Various Endings

I. Kempton, Pennsylvania Perhaps the last of the light lifting this evening from the field of wheat means something. Perhaps the view includes us, and we are not errors in the landscape

Let's Not...

Let’s not... Everything’s ghostly- the blank windows watching, the snow reddening behind the stoplights of the cars. Let’s not... Everything’s ghostly, lost in mist, like a garden in March emptied of men and women, paraded by shadows. Let’s not... I stand by a tree,

Crossing Geneva Marsh

Mist lingers on the surface of stagnant tea-brown water. The flat bridge spans a mile, a sea of spatterdocks. Tangled stalks of cattails and swamp grass reach up towards the underside of the deck, the chalcedony of cloud.