Ernest Hilbert Poems

St. Peter's Churchyard, Philadelphia

My parched heart slithers in its soaked bone chest,
Gorges on embers and crackles to ash.
...

For Winn Coslick

It's boiling up: my tin-ceilinged cavern
Downtown. I'm struggling to play a record,
...

For BK

Keys splash in the toilet bowl and clank
Dully on the brown-smudged porcelain throat,
...

All my friends had gone from downtown.
The trash workers union at last had struck,
And August reeked in the streets and alleys.
Too poor for Fire Island or the Sound,
...

The white will yield its flaws in ruthless time—
Banks of snow will bead red with bright berries,
Burgundy of buck's blood dragged by hunters.
Memory bends violet to smoky wine,
...

For Ray Harryhausen

"Huge Octopus Topples the Golden Gate! "
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms skulks
...

They come to view the creature in its cage.
It clutches its bale, stalks its small square,
Licks its sides beneath rust-blot clouds.
It tamps down a long dwindled pang of rage
...

For Lynn

You are alone, flown from a ruined city,
And angered, moons and leopards in your hair,
...

I stayed up two days straight with some old friends
In New York, and was charred, gut sick, still wired,
Stuck on the Northeast Corridor Express,
Suffering quietly as night descended.
...

For Matthew Zapruder

You watch the cold bristles and scrawled ghost sheen
Of a full moon on a black bay beside
...