I use this page to post a variety of pieces, both those just out of the sluice, and older pieces that feel fresh to me at the moment. I generally keep them up for a month, or a few at the most.
Look for new poems (and more) at the start of each month.
Samara Samsara (from Mammal, new in February)
Mammalian Dilemma (from Mammal, new in February)
Sun Sonnet (from Mammal, new in February)
Poem for Andy Clausen on His 80th Birthday (new in January)
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Though posting this as new in May, it’s actually a poem written sometime in the 1980’s that I recently stumbled across in an old folder and printed in dot-matrix. No kidding. It was one of my faves at one time and might be again; how well it fits this age. Interesting detail (to some): this poem can be printed as five lines of tetrameter OR as four lines of pentameter, and it rhymes in each. What what? So for kibbles and giggles, and because I can, I’ve included both versions here. Which one do you prefer?
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TETRAPENT
I must admit, I cannot spit
without some jerk exploiting it
into a bout of dogma-fu.
Eventually it’s it or you.
And why live life ignoring shit?
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TETRAPENT
I must admit, I cannot spit without
some jerk exploiting it into a bout
of dogma-fu. Eventually it’s it
or you. And why live life ignoring shit?
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Ain’t writin too many poemas lately, but here’s a new one that’s kinda pretty or ponderous or somethin. And yes, I use “ravine” here as a verb. So sue me.
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LOCUS
O locus, are you lepidoptera or crone,
how does your beauty carve
a glyph in stone as rain and streams,
ravining through ancient strata,
wreak the arteries of earth?
Are you canyon or meat, irideal
bulbs about to burst? Rhizomes
creep and twine, relaying labyrinths and
orchestrating melodies to bare bone
as a great storm rises, rips and churns,
slurring its way across the scape
as an entity unbound. Some say that storm
is sound, some say it’s fire, some say
a manic dew. I say that storm is you.
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This fine February of 2024, I’m featuring a few teaser poems from my recent collection Mammal, which was published by Roof Books in October. Like ’em? Click on Mammal for more info, including who to purchase a copy of your very own. You’ll find three mammalian pieces below. Here’s the first.
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SAMARA SAMSARA
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leaves the tit for oblivion, off into
whatever it is, don’t fuck with me
I know your words are fatuous,
how free she feels, unbound
and flowing like life—is it a moment,
is it eternity—breathes all the air
as it breathes her, nothingness mama,
forever ash and seed, winged womb,
matriarch—you sing a well-wrung tithe
that rings us as the elm rings itself,
staying a moment, then leaving, staying, then
we all ask at once: how can we live with vicissitude,
how can we plunge into dark, how can we be
while sliding away, how can we be at all?
Don’t tell me what I am. You’re wrong.
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Here’s Teaser Poem #2 from Mammal.
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MAMMALIAN DILEMMA
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A wondrous bungle reaps the royal rump:
a beaming lump of ectoplasm sings
the praises of a newborn ring of gunk
that spawns a new regime, a culture e’en.
O give us spleen enough to hump the Dog
of Night that holds us down in Lizard Town,
mewling and praying in our goat-hair suits to take
another gobble of the randy cake.
Sweet rake, you know not whence your genes protrude
into the arching day, nor how to ride
the psi-ing wave, nor which bright spark to rude
in perfect rhythm on the blooming world—
and yet I love you more than worms aspire,
just as my love makes our disease more dire.
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And a third a final piece from Mammal, right here for you on the Fresh Words page.
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SUN SONNET
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A naked tree can tell us everything:
chained to the earth, grappling with sky,
we flaunt our imperfections in the rain
as budding eyes. Craven and verklempt,
it’s all we can to writhe, stolidly, fatefully
arching vesicles toward luscious liquid,
saturated air, toward instant light.
And in the wind, twisting, clattering arms,
we find the flexibility of heart
to wind us for the true imbroglio,
the quickening. Oh yes, you know you know:
what roots you have, not disparate, reclaim
the mortal trunk we have and have again,
pulled upward, out, beyond our living ken.
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I must be getting up there. Evidence: I found myself writing poems for two different old friends on the occasion of their 80th birthdays. Or maybe I just know old people. Anyway, here’s one for Andy Clausen.
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POEM FOR ANDY CLAUSEN ON HIS 80TH BIRTHDAY
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O you lion, you crash a sprung gate
with kairotic eye, glimmer monger,
mongrel cloud, you trip a raucous roar
that parses monks. Lift, inchoate lake,
and kindly shatter us again amidst
the foundscape of your senses so we may
build our cells from magma in the dawn.
We’ll never know what fire burns your short hairs,
alley cat, muse shredder, but we can hope
that you will singe us with your unrepentant shine
and sing the world over the next horizon
to a whorled expanse of murmurating wings.
Make us dance, shimi shimi, make us fling.
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