Time is a red scarf picked up by darkness.
Light is the celebration of that vision.
poetry
Dynamic Simplicity
I carry a paper bag of flowers, the petals are blue, yellow, and orange,
Early flowers, the bag is a sandwich bag, it’s dawn,
I put the flowers in a basket and bike home, the sky is blue, orange, and yellow,
My wild face, in momentum, how is the dawn somehow starry after all the stars are put away?
How is it, just for a second, this wild face among the stars, on a bike, with flowers
For the dining room table, to be with books, and pencils, and to have breakfast with,
Encourage me to open the windows, they are the better part of me, for a few days,
In which time, I’ll write what seems to be stream of consciousness poems, better yet,
I’ll put on my canvas shoes and walk till my stomach growls
For the fire and fever of tasteless stars.
The City Limits, by A. R. Ammons
The City Limits
A. R. Ammons – 1926-2001
When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider
that birds’ bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest
swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue
bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider
that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the
leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.
The Poem Is
Like a broken guitar,
A mini golf course for
A syllogism.
Why are beginnings so important?
Why is a broken guitar a disaster?
Is the grave coming up short.
And though I think all of this is folly
I am glad of its sometimes kindness.
A poem
Is a belly flop
In handwriting
By an angel doing a handstand
While going backward in time
The Ambition of Dusk
In a simple sweater, a jawline like a lyric, is the ambition of dusk.
Against the aquarium of stars.
A simple ghost, like a pair of bashful feet in the corner.
The high wires of power lines, the moon like a spool with no thread.
Words in a notebook, coil bound, from the drugstore, do angels tattoo humans on their arms?
A jawline like a stampede, an aquarium of ghosts.
The Geometry of Calling Off from Work
The geometry
Of calling off
From work:
Proletarian pillowcases,
The waistline of angels,
The two unequal sides
Of the human heart.
The geometry
Of staying home
From home:
The summer night is bigger than you
If done properly,
Eyes dream in graffiti moons,
Heart breathes griffin stars.
The Flowers on Mars
The flowers
On Mars
Are heart shaped applause, wolves of
Silence, bankrupt fractals
On their last poems,
Asteroid belts, summer nights, lava, rocks, stones, leaves, solitary. They ask,
What are the numbers in the fourth dimension? What are the quadrants of solitary meanderings?
This dawn of the stones.
I walk alone.
Some Kind of Employment
The job of a fool
Is to ride the bus
Till the heart becomes a circumference
Suffices the world
The job of the poet
Is to put earnings
In burning buildings
Look look a macho moon in reverse
Parks in the eyes of city gulls
Go ahead and honk for doomsday
I’ve the summer grass
Tattooed on the shoe strings of my brain
Between the toes of my heart
Several Last Thoughts
The world is a shell. But now what?
The sun is a quintet. But the drummer was robbed.
You are invisible and move like the moon. On three legs of falling leaves.
This is the way to lose.
By the seams of our nativities.
Seagulls
I walked to the city limit
And played volleyball
With some seagulls.
It was a no nonsense game
With plenty of intermissions.
I headed west
Up to the river.
In my coat
I stood at the water.
The posture of dusk
Ransacked of belongings
Looking over its shoulder. What if it could
Be squared?
And though the stars
Come looking for alms I have only the cents
Of infinity.
If I knew how to spell lasso
Or pumpernickel. But I don’t.
It is a reluctant light
The hardware of the self.
naïve haircuts 