24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
His darkness I must bear and Take.
His broken promise consecrated by This:
All it took was just his Kiss.
My heart and soul, he cast his spell Upon
A prisoner of manipulation and deceit; The
Only love breathes with that deadly kiss on my Brow
A Dream Within a Dream, EA Poe
I worry that I’m not better til
something reminds me that I am human:
fragmented clips of barking dog voices.
On the couch I wake.
Afternoon has come to us,
thoroughly bright and
warm with sun. Together we
are strange and in breezes drown.
Harvard undergrads
used to read books
on the Red Line train.
How many eyes nowadays
scan print and paper?
Virtually none.
*
Luddite,
I’ll still carry
three or four paperbacks
in my tote bag,
the poor man’s Kindle.
*
When I was sixteen,
I hid a copy
of The Colossus
in my jacket pocket
at Steve & Cory’s wedding.
Thirty years have passed
since I bought my first volumes of verse:
Eliot’s Four Quartets,
Rimbaud’s Illuminations,
Heaney’s Field Work.
Eliot because it was cheap,
Rimbaud because it was French,
Heaney because Mr Waldron
said he was good.
The printed page
is bread to me,
life and light,
shelter and sustenance.
*
Sure, I’m as guilty
as the next guy
of checking the iPhone
during a dull commute.
But there are times
at home alone
I’ll pick up a book,
an old favorite,
weathered, seasoned,
and pace from room to room
reading aloud
to the four walls,
to any muse or angel
that might be haunting me.
*
Wystan, Estlin, Theodore, Marianne,
you wouldn’t be the same
as lucent type on a small screen.
You’re most at home
in dead-tree editions!
I lift your pages
and kiss the verses
as the priest
kisses the Gospel.
I remember this song
And I know which song will come next
I remember the summer that this album was always on repeat
In the book shop
I would sit long enough to hear it twice
While reading about a house that devours the inhabitants
It was a beautiful thing
It fit the mood of everyone that summer
No matter how many times you heard it
No one ever seemed bored
People would sing along
We would breathe it in
Sink down
And come to that point of zen
That was the theme of that summer
When it was too hot to think
And too humid to survive
And we swam through the air
Like gasping fish on the shore
Here there was oxygen
Here was an oasis
It was a faint hallucination of you and a shattered dream self of I
Who destiny fellowed
While our guardian angels closed their eyes to sleep
And woke too late to ask who
Has your soul now kissed?
Mine feared you had tricked me
Yours feared you had tripped too far in
Hauled overboard by the
Lusty siren-song of the brain.
Credit: Dylan Thomas – I Fellowed Sleep
she tires of being settled into
settled for
like the banks on which they’ve settled in for fishing expeditions
from which she returns sodden and, the others,
sated
feeling nothing but numbness
even filled to the brim with the catch
for which each cast,
or sometimes dragged, their respective nets
Seven long hours ago, I saw the sun
sprawling on my lawn, with no real need
to notice it beyond that night was done.
I watched it creeping up with no real speed.
I hadn’t dreamed. No work today. No cause
to roll out of my bed. I’m staying home.
Yet still it crept, according to its laws,
and still I lie here, all ‘not brushed’, uncombed.
Should I go out and see where morning’s gone?
Do I care if all the world is cooler
than I am, in my blankets? Is a yawn
all I need today? Or’s sleep the answer?
Seven hours from now the moon will creep.
But I won’t know it, being fast asleep.
I call upon all of us, the people, WE
to take to heart our shared need to seek
for ourselves, each and every one – not
point to ‘others’ or ‘them’ or ‘the rest’ –
but
take upon ourselves a goal of transformation.
This can only happen if we
are willing to be accountable, honest; are
able to listen deeply and stop dancing
around the elephant in the room through
blame, hyperbole, making of each
the ‘other’
as if that could possibly solve anything, as
if there weren’t already between us enough closed doorways.
We seek not rest but transformation./We are dancing through each other as doorways.from ‘Circling’ by Marge Piercy
A black crow sits outside my window
The sky is dark and it smells of rain
My black cat brushes against me in the hall
I rub my eyes with my dry hands
And pick up my black socks off the floor
I walk to work with my red umbrella
A man on the street sells red apples, I pay
As a red fire truck zooms down the street
I trip over the curb and fall
Red blood drips from my lip where I bit
Feeling blue I reach my office
The receptionist in a blue dress smiles sweetly
My desk greets me with blueberries gone bad
Frustration sighs at a miserable day
My blue eyes close for a breath
At play rehearsal beginning to take myself to another level of time and space requires leather not lace. Reaching within for a higher shelf to become your character, extends myself. Worrying about the whispering crowd not anymore, being me, creating your story, setting me free