Ernest Hilbert Poems

I listened to Bach for eight hours
After she left into the snow,

Disappointed with my library
...

On a step behind the Holiday Inn,
Two Russians roamed up, bummed a cigarette,
While a third snuck up, struck me from behind.
I sprawled to asphalt. Then the boot came in.
...

I’m battered all to hell. You should see me.
I’m in the corner of a bright diner,
The very one from Suzanne Vega’s song.
Every time I limp to the john to pee
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An aristocratic Dane, draped in tweed, blonde hair whisked to side, clunked a bottle of whiskey down on the desk, waved his hand easily into the smoky air as if shooing a desert fly: “This is so vulgar. It really is, ” meaning the Brahms Festival Overture, and the light for one small moment over the library glinted into the window.

“The ocean will never cease to give us pleasure, Doctor.” She posed on wet rocks against a distant storm; he stood beside a yawl overturned beneath the seawall and complained: “My friends, they either disappoint me or compel me to jealousy.”
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Shrine of lunar hulls
Swayed to mist in river’s hold
Or solar reservoir dried
To yolk and pollen,
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All that was shaped will be sunk clear of chance,
And all printed given out to be sung.

Felon, old friend, death will not travel long.
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Fuzz-head & coconut-gun stumbled on the hard wet sand
Humid boardwalk haze and grey choke-mist reruns in Little Odessa

Brighton Beach
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He arrived in the city and before long it began to snow.
The smell of spices and meats fried in oils
Filled the cold. Tire-grey drifts glutted the streets.
Snow flurried like thick wet motes of ash.
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Smiling sadly with beer beneath canopy
Of canaried gold and song, so much cold wind
Gone out into dark cove of oar and sail,
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It is September, and I lunch in rain.
I do not like your city. I do not

Welcome the filling sky as I once could.
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