Poems

Bob, , 20 Comments

That trace the lung swelling light of summer stars,
That heave with the magnificence, even the banality, of a cosmic florist.
I lunge through the streetlights
Sleeves rolled up like capsized moons,
My faded tattoos say it all, a greasy tee shirt straddled to a solitary
Poetic enthusiasm,

The fevers and quests, the lost diagnosis, the tall grass, the goldenrod, the slumped impartial hot summer night, the horizon on the tip of the tongue, speaking for all that is lost and is to come,

The dusk spilled up and into the storm clouds rolling out, and now a clever part in the trees where the moon sorts its steps, and grumbles like a too-neat handwriting.

A swirling poem, up on one leg, each wing
Dipping into the dark, each swirl widening
Into the light.

Notes #1

Bob, , 20 Comments

Finally, the moon had to hear it. All this about metaphysical
Cereal bowls, and how the morning arrives on invisible wings.

The afternoon
Encourages intimation, like the rain after a dry month. And of
The stars, is how we got here. To have a go at it ourselves.

Neither the moon nor the sea deliberates, though both know
More than they are willing to say. Galaxies capped by super
Massive black holes. Spiderwebs in the corners of the front
Porch. The sound of wind chimes and the life span of the sun
Are on the same page.

Sitting on my porch. The traces of stars almost pretend to appear.
Tired legs, unsweetened tea, closed book, worn out chair, still cat.

The sky, a shell above the dark leaves and shingled rooftops, left there by a child.
Our cosmos forked, espoused of branch and bloom, bite and wing. Penniless as an imaginary metropolis.

Stroll

Bob, , , 15 Comments

The silence, the cracks in the wall, airborne spring pollen,
The thoughts of black holes, the rugged joy of life that contagiously spins one’s head and heart,
The astronomical number of beetles on the earth, the fray on this shirt,
And collar windswept by early morning walks,
The sudden threat of solar flares, the beauty of fire escapes against red brick,
Blacktop, several pots of flowers,

And though the stars aren’t broken bottles, the graffiti beneath the fire escape
Is the Last Supper, but with UFOs and aliens,

A stitch of green stem and red flower climbing in and out of the chain link fence,
The turning earth, the creased corners of a used book,

And though the stars aren’t in any way lost, I wander aimlessly.

Mixed Up and Half Erased Yet

Bob, , , 22 Comments

The tremors of silence like fingerprints

Drawn down the spine in goosebump riddles

Allocating leaves and stars and abstract poetry

Rattling the afternoons and calling out the night

Dusk is the space between my two front teeth

Death is a shadow of a shadow that has a life of its own

Molecular patterns, genomes, fractals, gravity

Tee shirts, concrete poetry, coffee stain, good shoes for walking

The tremors of silence like fingerprints

Drawing up the spine into an arabesque boom

Like fairy tales burnished with thorny truths

Unsquared by nebulous pivoting and terrifying beauty

Overwhelmed and brilliant in brevity

Yet on and on and on to visit the vast swelling of sensations

The dwindling down to the fine points of light and dark

Mixed up and half erased yet beaming with more awe

And guts and ambulatory genius and wrought

Along the rivers, through the alleys

Across the fields, let these strides wreath

The lonely, the lost, the joyful, the realized, the naïve

The untucked dusk

After a day of rain

Small Rhapsody

Bob, , , 20 Comments

The weathered moon, the shoeless dream walks,
The cold damp of subway stations, the expanding universe,
A cat sleeps, a dog barks, the anxieties, the morning coffee,
The dull etcetera of a boring job, a walk in the morning rain,

What I thought was real, it all stirs and fathoms and flashes,
What is not beautiful and untrue, how to (cosmically)

Sleep by an open window, strained, uncertain, folly,
Joy, to walk alongside a passing train, eat an apple,
By chance fall home
Along the tabby road, up and over the feral pickets.

Amateurs of the World Unite and Take Over

Bob, , 16 Comments

Briefly, and loosely, the butterfly mirrors the night. Like an angry river,

If patterns are a process, this visits language.

With painstaking naiveté, under a rotary dial dusk, this existential cowlick
Never burdens folly with precision.

I only write poems to defy paragraphs. Torn shorts and short poems,
An hour of television. In this cosmos inconsistencies are stars.

 

 

*From the archives

Short Poems

Bob, , , 12 Comments

“Nothing is more glorious than the full moon to those who ride or walk under its beams. But whoso goes out of doors expressly to see it returns disappointed.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Journals 1820-1842

~

Uncertainty –

As a way of generating income for poets.

Daydream-

A species of butterfly which are also suitcases for angels.

Greetings-

We wave, like photons,
Particularly, an imaginary tree in a picture book.

A Metaphysics-

Without corners
Without terms
A harrowing rescue of afternoon sky
For ideology

Listen-

An elbow at dawn.

Half the pages missing.

The immediate
Vicinity.

The Bicycle of a Poet-

The moon of empty miles, parched as the street painted lines.
All they will find is dusk amongst the thickets and x-ray trees.

Spring Tramping

Bob, , , 24 Comments

The cosmic roughhouse
Of yellow flowers

Purple fingerprints
On UFOs

Verse barreled
Over Niagara Falls

I don’t want anything
Just unkempt astonishment

~

The mote in the sunbeam is sovereign of the unknowable

Like probability
The number of insects in the field

A point has no circumference

A slim chance of dusk on the city roofs
The electrical towers sing your name

~

Afterward, it’s a bath then a long walk, I think of joints
Smoked in the parking lots of abandoned retail giants,
At dusk. The abstract laundry to hang,

Or how flowers touch the imperceptive steadiness of being
When the spring moon is null.

~

He knew the dead ends, where the chain link is pulled from its post,
How the moon transforms into feral words, across fields, a moon chased down
By sidewalk chalk verses. The ambler on the first day of spring
Must always in a few uncertain words puzzle us all.

everything.

Bob, , 19 Comments

puddles, bicycles, the cosmic microwave background, the holidays of stolen shoes barefoot in the spring, summer halos on poet vandals, of black marker epigrams on railroad trestles, of barbwire thistled with dandelions, the biceps of imaginary trees, the forehead of chicory dusk, the trance of knuckled stars, and sidewalks rapt with chalk operas,

the unavoidable cosmic, here in chance and outward in venture, the notes wrung of cascading rivers, the numbers in the pockets of ghosts, the turmoil of stars blistering with joy, the epiphanies that know the difference between one and one,

the waist of the moon summed in countless seconds standing with distant crows, to struggle these steps bright towards the arriving moments, the versified shoulders turning home at last, departing through stellar doors, and on these paths string the words for what the spring wind is good for,