Brian Salchert's Verses

March: Year-day 77

2009-08-15T16:49:00.002-05:00

               
                                                                
                                         
[ Treat the following as a period piece and
  focus on the intellectual distance I gave it. ]

March: Year-day 77


Crisp and clear, with just a stroke of haze here
today, the two red-snowsuited kids bright
against the blue / the trees' wounds, harsh and sheer,
I think of my cross-legged nakedness--light
upon the bed--and of how Oshkosh was
three years ago, St. Patty's Day, the last
in Streak Week, during which I, just because,
joined some guys led by a gal, and moved fast.

It's amazing how what one feels he feels
he seldom has that urgency to show
which shows his difference from rocks and eels
or the blear encasements of ice and snow
even if shucked of his clothing he reels,
pretending he'd share who exists below.

-

March: Year-day 76

2009-08-15T15:13:00.002-05:00

  
                                          
                                          
March: Year-day 76

Knowledge is the hemlock of innocence,
and that is why old Socrates was killed.
Innocents of Athens who heard his sense
ought not--thought those in power--be so filled.

"Keep innocence alive" they whispered round,
"else knowledge will destroy what we have won.
We mustn't let a man whose thinking's sound
ask questions that will leave our frauds undone."

Through the alleys moves a shadow of peace,
nodding to the winds and wandering cats,
adding to the enchantment that is Greece,
ducking/ a wife's flexed yells/ as if they're bats,
teaching as if teaching could never cease
nor human learning/ move slower than rats.

-

March: Year-day 75

2009-08-15T15:06:00.001-05:00

 
                                        
                                           
March: Year-day 75

Now the storm is over, the linemen gone,
and poems I meant to write still somewhere hid
beneath my consciousness, I now go on,
determined to fill the blanks, seal the lid,
even if it does take till fall, or next
year.  When faith weakens, hang to hope:  The trees--
though so many by the vile ice were hexed--
did, frozen to earth, spent, trunks split to knees.

And so, when what is sought is found, and shown,
budding all over with flowers and leaves
despite their wounds, which cannot/ be removed,
I and you will be happy we had known
the man who struggles rules the man who grieves,
raising in sunlight what persistence proved.

-

March: Year-day 74

2009-08-15T15:01:00.001-05:00

           
                                              
                                        
March: Year-day 74

Starships to Andromeda.  Warps of time.
Wherever there is emptiness, we fill
and fill.  Even black holes will learn the chill
of our intrusions.  Creatures/ so sublime,
we suck a planet dead with such deft tongues,
swarming through its airs, it's hardly awake
by the hour we've swallowed enough to slake
the top of our thirst, collapsing its lungs.

"Bless us" we ask an eternalized God
to bolster our mad insecurity,
the fuel of our power, the reason no
sensible reason is needed to prod
our devastations of this deep orbed sea,
this Eden of the fish of fiery snow.

-

March: Year-day 73

2009-08-15T12:58:00.001-05:00

         
                                               
                                           
March: Year-day 73

Today the power men woke up to leave
and, sister, brother, the old airs relaxed
in this hard-pressed inn; for few of us grieve
when warm lights rescind what has overtaxed
as the ice of double-shifting had done;
so we and the linemen, not being sure
we'd last another day--despite the fun
easing it, though forced to--welcomed the cure.

Enough is enough, as you sometimes hear,
and we all concurred; and so the men went
rolling home from their interrupted year,
the long hours gone; and the rest of us bent
toward cleaning up.  The torn trees wept.  While near,
sad, not two weeks lived, one flagellant Lent.

-

March: Year-day 72

2009-08-15T12:53:00.001-05:00

  
                                    
                                           
March: Year-day 72

Still, sister and brother, each in your frames,
I here, alone, sadly meandering,
depart from glory a while, dreaming names,
stories, for my condition, reduced thing
I have / by my desires & dares become,
feeling the need to cover what thechild
in me would leave exposed because I've some /
inhibitions against the pure, the wild.

To walk where I walk I decline to ask
anyone to do, though I'd like each to follow
now and then, while Istep from/ change to change;
just as for a lineman, each given task
left by a storm or accident in hollow,
on height, deepens me as/ I rearrange.

-

March: Year-day 71

2009-08-15T12:48:00.001-05:00

  
                                       
                                          
March: Year-day 71

Happy birthday, sister and brother.  I'm
sorry you cannot watch my scribblings here
but--with intelligence men about--time
is of the essence, as they say; a fear-
toned man, anti-abortion, anti-Ford,
must be quietly careful these nights, these
days: especially me: poet ignored,
shadow in waiting, sun in a wombed breeze.

Yet, the gates of time will part for me, hie
me a mountain throne--thirty-five now, I
mind much less being a rejected thing
by those of current importance--the sky
I grow toward will not pass, and I will sing,
influences and all, and be a king.

-

March: Year-day 70

2009-08-15T12:44:00.001-05:00

        
                                          
                                       
March: Year-day 70

Hi, Thatcher Lane Gearhart, born yesterday!
Welcome aboard!  I can't say you'll like this
decidedly stuffed with injustices
domain floating along the Milky Way
Galaxy's edge, spun in a universe
we may never know the ends of; but be
strong and healthy in the heat of the curse,
the blessing; and become, through land, air, sea

more than you or anyone might expect,
however situations, heritage,
and nurtured abilities to make new
limit you who (from a had-to-be checked
civilization) will learn to please, nudge,
help see another: through more sacred hues.

-

March: Year-day 69

2009-08-12T20:59:00.001-05:00

 
                                              
                                               
March: Year-day 69

I have never had his experience,
nor am likely to, this lineman who dares
to bring us power, chancing his; who stares
the shocks of death heart to heart for the sense
of comfort we have come to demand, dense
though most of us are to the hard repairs
he must make after a storm, and the cares
that move him both to drink and maintenance.

Oh, each of us lives his own kind of life
somewhere between circumstance and desire
more or less dangerously, pain and joy
as in the pregnant womb of a good wife
or the eyes of a birthday gal his fire
or his climbing of poles/ to keep the boy.

-

March: Year-day 68

2009-08-12T20:54:00.001-05:00

   
                                          
                                          
March: Year-day 68

Coming as rain, the beasts, layer on layer
clung to what they could, e.g., grasses, trees,
telephone poles and wires until each mayor
in his little town cried in his head, "Please,
your heavy, brilliant bodies have destroyed
already too much, branchesof trees popped--
I hear them yet, poles splintered, unemployed;
flames arcing from bare lines; work patterns stopped."

This morning, in the fair and cold, the sun
(glinting what it kisses onswallowed fields
and bushes and trees--trunks, limbs, branches, twigs
too often spiking their pale insides up
through the careless winds where the hard beasts' needs
have bit them off with themselves) cringes, licks.

-

March: Year-day 67

2009-08-12T20:51:00.002-05:00

    
                                           
                                              

March: Year-day 67

So, now, electricians/ swarm through the house,
their antennae, live wires; their wings, hard wood;
their nerve centers, transformers; and I, mouse,
my gestures soft static, guess where I should
escape to, but don't, knowing I must run
the columns of figures as rapidly
as circumstance allows as one and one
and another employee assists me.

Audit.  Audit.  No time to fret about
small out-of-balances.  No time to finish
each day's report, imagine each day's sonnet,
the early-morning / late-night crush of stout
linemen more than enough to quite diminish
my energy for the torn land's . . . beyond it.

-

March: Year-day 66

2009-08-12T20:47:00.001-05:00


                                       
                                           
March: Year-day 66

Determination wins the day for sure
but, more importantly, enchants the night.
That's why we favor our invented light;
that's why tomorrow it will be more pure.

So, whenever you think it's too obscure,
just wait, it soon enough may be too bright,
may even for a moment blind your sight,
this shielded fire that can rupture and cure.

A seed that germinates under a rock
may, in its struggles, split that rock to three.

We, at a door, continuing to knock,
may at last be greeted, by someone dead.

So the splitting greetings of land by sea,
the human waters of romance and dread.

-

March: Year-day 65

2009-08-12T20:44:00.001-05:00

      
                                             
                                       
March: Year-day 65

Can't think, my lights going brown and brown, black,
the toll of the ice storms mounting past thought
while hands reach anxiously for candles brought
from a storeroom somewhere, a dead bee's sac,
fires for each hall providing us a track
of vision, a sanctuary charm, caught
as we are without electric, distraught
yet giggly, so suddenly peeled years back.

First I, then Mark, turned the register's crank:
room charge, tax--the x read of zeeing out,
then the z read, and the x read again,
zero after zero, proving the bank,
the mechanical day, was full about,
balanced to nothings by the hands of men.

-

March: Year-day 64

2009-08-12T20:38:00.001-05:00

        
                                           
                                           
March: Year-day 64

Little White Lady, the Alloy's cat, found
this morning beneath their bed with three kittens,
so carried Cindy to her happy wits' ends
she phoned the inn to tell me that, and drown
in details my tiredness before the rains
and the sorrowing ice return, our hearts
withering as power lines snap, writhe, spark,
basements fill, graces crack, death comes again.

Crouched here in a county of isolation;
saved from cold by the nature of my work,
linemen in transparent desolation
leave barely a word to this poet clerk
waiting days for a day's inspiration
to mix meows with a wet weather's quirk.

-

March: Year-day 63

2009-08-12T20:02:00.001-05:00

        
                                       
                                        
March: Year-day 63

West Bend, the prison arrived at through years
of foolishness.  Like most, I too have bumbled
seriously, bent, broken off, split under
the freezing rains of desire/ as the trees,
so many of the trees, here have/ this Ash
Wednesday.  Had I not sought what I have I
would not have had to suffer as I right
now do, though my suffering invites laughs.

West Bend, insipid necessary prison,
gained through my constant buying of new cars,
my failure to use enough healthy reasons
for doing whatever sharpens my hours.
Denial by denial heals now this run
impresario's too familiar powers.
                                    
-

March: Year-day 62

2009-08-12T19:55:00.001-05:00

    
                                        
                                                
March: Year-day 62

Say the worlds we face are as black and hard
as anthracite, as promotive of fear
and chaos as a soon-to-explode star,
that nature and artifact and those weird
transcendors, spirit and mind, cannot be made
to fully demystify themselves, we,
as minute as we are, ought we not weigh
our actions still, determine what is meed?

Brontosauruses trapped in tar: dead ends,
of whatever kind--even if, we, too,
should fail to be diverse enough to hold
our own, or being diverse, still lose friends,
enemies, selves/ let us more than chop through
the laminations of wind, wet, and cold.

-

March: Year-day 61

2009-08-12T19:49:00.001-05:00

        
                                       
                                           
March: Year-day 61

Lionizing the lamb, making a lamb
of the lion, stuffing the groundhog back
into his hole, March can spring an attack
of apoplexy on who I am, was, wish
I were, with the way it dumps the full dish
of yesterday or fills the empty one
of, say, today, greeting me with grayed sun,
then blistering with sharp snow I damn, dam.

However, I have decided to stay
inside, not because I'm afraid, but rather
because I've no need to face such a spate
of meanness to feel it, and disarray,
to deal with it.  I know its guises gather
praise, and where; I will not capitulate.

-

February: Year-day 60

2009-08-11T21:25:00.001-05:00


                                        
                                          
February: Year-day 60

So this is Sadie Hawkins Day.  What fun!
Yet, what disturbance!  How shall--?  We call this
leap year: the year, one would suppose, we'd miss--
by leaping, I mean--a day, not put one
in.  On the other hand, the ladies leap
on gentlemen this day--are allowed to,
that is--though I doubt there are many who
now, if ever, such a tradition, keep.

At any rate, we go about enjoying
it, as we can, making a feast of little,
or so its seems, although we're not quite able
to much explain--perhaps we are employing
a mystery, a special kind of riddle,
or symbol of--our clasped hands/ on a table.
                                                
-

February: Year-day 59

2009-08-11T21:21:00.001-05:00


                                           
                                       
February: Year-day 59

After all is said, nothing's left to say,
and saying that takes all the words there are.
And if to answer means to throw away,
then throw away we must,just as a star.

If I, or you, or you, incant a dream
where every line's a masterpiece of breath
and every shade shakes passion out of seem,
the emptiness so filled will bury death.

And creatures of intelligence will grow
and (through their need to love) communicate.

And rightly felt, those triumphs garnered so
will join with all their elders who create.

And each of these bright wonder forms of know
will spin deep worlds of being/ beyond date.

-

February: Year-day 58

2009-08-11T21:17:00.001-05:00

        
                                            
                                         
February: Year-day 58

War?  I have spoken on it, but once more.
The only revolution worth Earth's while
is one the Proletariat are for;
the only revolution worth their while
is one of refusal, refusal to,
for any reason, bash a skull in, knife
a heart, blast to coral or burn to goo
another human, castrate someone's life.

The pleasure of the rich, the pleasure of
the politician be cursed.  In the wood
a thrush in song, a trillium for love;
in the air, terns, spearing the wriggling foam.
Jonathan Kozol writes; his words are good:
The Night Is Dark and I Am Far from Home.

-

February: Year-day 57

2009-08-11T20:25:00.001-05:00


                                        
                                        
February: Year-day 57

Those who die in battle I long will honour.
Under the cedars, I will honour them.
Under the palm trees, I will honour them.
Those who die in battle I long will honour.

Those impaired by battle I long will honour.
Upon the sidewalks, I will honour them.
Upon the highways, I will honour them.
Those impaired by battle I long will honour.

It matters not/ that I label them fools,
that war to me means someone lost his heart,
that pools of blood are never more than pools
when hearts could have ensured they did not start;
they too required courage who honored rules
made from the first to tear people apart.

-

February: Year-day 56

2009-08-11T20:20:00.001-05:00


                                       
                                          
February: Year-day 56

No idea today; so here's a line
and here's another, closing up, preparing
for a third one running now as far and fine--.
Line four already, when three was just airing?
Why, we'll be out of the fifth before we've
had time to taste it!  And as for six, it's
gone!  What!  What shakes here?  What's up this guy's sleeve,
anyway?  Seven?  He's giving me fits!

Eight?  Sorry, too late, I'm number nine.  Oh,
heavens to lime'n'rum!  I suppose ten
is eleven, and the twelfth rat will show
somewhere inside the thirteenth ship again--
that bad luck phantom--so we barely know
where fourteen floats, or how, or why, or when!

-

February: Year-day 55

2009-08-11T20:16:00.001-05:00


                                     
                                       
February: Year-day 55

Walking with Janice to our car, Powers
of Mind by Adam Smith in my right hand
with Jeane Dixon's Yesterday, Today, and
Forever to titillate a few hours
my future-tending, in-and-outing mind;
talking about the balmy air, and how
it moves the snow better than the truck's plow,
we crook to geese intruding/ from behind.

Two hundred about, I guess: as I'm asked
why they make so much noise--but then am told
questioningly, "Are they communicating?"--
and why their V formation: as they basked
in sight in the minus Celsius cold,
thrilling us with their ancient ways of dating.

-

February: Year-day 54

2009-08-11T20:12:00.001-05:00


                                        
                                             
February: Year-day 54

We die a lot before we have to die,
trying to choose the sunlight or the shade
or that nuance of these which suits our eyes
as we play the games from "real" to "charades";
trying to stay alive while our hopes dry
and the directions of our movements jade
and questions and answers tumble and rise,
changing faces until our shocked flesh fades.

We die a lot before we somewhat live,
meaning to take less than we have to give,
thinking our thinking right/ when it is wrong/
as aftersight proves foresight did not see
we could not become what we ought to be
without hurt, once tricked by a sucker song.

-

February: Year-day 53

2009-08-11T20:07:00.001-05:00


                                  
                                     
February: Year-day 53

[ George Washington is the central figure in this
    sonnet, but the story related is not true. ]


And then there was this fellow named George.  Oh,
he was a general sort, though his tough mind--
well I remember it.  Valley Forge.  Snow
and starvation.  We slept together.  Kind
of him to have me.  Didn't at all care
he scratched and bit.  That winter wasn't pleasant
to any there: least, him, facing the air,
the dead, and each one's desert of the present.

No, I'm not saying he's better than most,
though it's certainly not rum to accept
defeats such as those.  I wouldn't want to.
Couldn't.  George didn't give a holy host
either many times, spitting his gall-kept
words at us: flapping/ like a rotten boot.

-

February: Year-day 52

2009-08-11T19:59:00.001-05:00


                                           
                                     
February: Year-day 52

How many images have been lost, friend,
like the carrot of existentialism,
the cauliflower of discontent?  Send
those to me you remember.  There's a chasm
here worth exploring, I'm sure.  Let us make
our ways into it, stubbing our soft toes
on wild roses of granite, thoughts to shake
our dreamings, dreamings of heavy snows

to bury our thoughts, to insulate them/
so they can germinate at/ the far end
of winter, wending up a leaf, a stem,
a flower for us somehow to befriend,
to inspect for a thorn, a bee, a small hem
of difference, to walk new from, to lend.

-

February: Year-day 51

2009-08-11T19:54:00.001-05:00

 
                                             
                                          
February: Year-day 51

Numbers all night, words all day, my brains work
harder than most people would care to have
theirs work, and auditing isn't a salve
or vitamin for any decent quirk
I have, not near the ways poetry is.
I make a living from it for my wife
and myself; and signed-for future goods knife
gently enough from it; but I won't fizz
in my three brains, or my spirit, or heart,
nor bubble, nor least of all suddenly
gusher--as I do when words form the base
I apply or swallow; from which I start:
to heal what sores and cuts appear on me,
to strengthen from within/ my persons' face.

-

February: Year-day 50

2009-08-11T19:49:00.001-05:00

 
                                        
                                        
February: Year-day 50

D. H. Lawrence knew it: (there is no "I");
and Buddha.  Yet jailed Christianity
has led me otherwise; now Robert Bly
corrects that through his Leaping Poetry.

So the "I" then is physically three:
the reptile brain, which fear of death turns high;
the mammal brain, which foetal sittings free
then pass; and the new brain, which lights the sky.

Out of black comes white; out of white comes black;
out of both, or neither, the bows of dew.

As we find ourselves going back and back
let us also grow delightfullly new.

Cold, warmth, light: to survive; to make love, whack;
to spirit.  Learn each.  Let the last imbue.

-

February: Year-day 49

2009-08-11T09:15:00.001-05:00


                                        
                                     
February: Year-day 49

Question:  Will I actually make it through
this year, writing a poem a day?  And if
I do, will I end up old, bored, and stiff,
and have more deadened than enlivened you?
I hope not.  Oh, I won't be going boo
around every corner, or paddling a skiff
through every marsh/ you walk near; but don't whiff
by unnoticing; I am somewhere, new.

You'll sense, just as you have before, the warts
on the great umber squash, the hummingbird
coptering near moss phlox, the crazy bat
yipping out of the mouth of night, the courts
of hard decisions.  Everyone knows, word,
image, play; everyone's a poet, a cat.

-

February: Year-day 48

2009-08-11T09:08:00.001-05:00

        
                                        
                                             
February: Year-day 48

Back to the usual, then.  Not because
it's easier but because it is calm,
and calm is what I need now.  Not a bomb.
There is no future in chewing what was,
or at least so I sometimes must believe.
Oh well, there are Green Stamps of the emotions
to save too.  I can't always live in oceans,
skipping ropes, cheering, crying on my sleeve.

That is the matter, isn't it?  Too much
unsanity tends to disintegrate
the experiencer of it, abort
in sections his protected growth, steal crutch
and sling and medicine from him, deflate
his sense of being, force him/ to cavort.

-

February: Year-day 47

2009-08-11T09:07:00.001-05:00

       
                                         
                                        
February: Year-day 47

Whippets.  Dogs of war.  Flashes of delight.
Tricks of the mind.  Deceptions of the heart.
The charged astrophysicist's starry art.
The quickness of the swimmer, lean and bright.

Arrows of exertion.  Missiles.  A night
for the making of deserts.  The wrong part.
Bean soup floating a world of termites.  Start
today tomorrow.  Be kind to your sight.

If apple blossoms give peach blossoms fits,
perhaps the cherries will tear out their pits
and the oranges burst into umbrellas
and somewhere in a pineapple preserve
a banana with a kingdom of nerve
will detonate, you lucky gals and fellas.

-

[ Since today is 2006's Thanksgiving Day,
  this prayer interlude:
  Lord Jesus,
  through each this moment along the way,
  thank You for Your gifts today. ]

-

February: Year-day 46

2009-08-10T23:18:00.001-05:00

          
                                         
                                          
February: Year-day 46

Across Wayne Road, steel wheels: kids on their skates.
On this side, for most of the afternoon,
four girls play, bug, before they pull up stakes
and I'm under cover, too late, too soon.

Some want to fly kites!  How 'bout a balloon?
A daydream or a nightdream is all it takes.
Have you ever heard the cry of a loon?
If these verses aren't mine, let them be Kate's.

Or yours, perhaps.  This language isn't mine
alone.  So the words appearing here, line
by line, are born from my gray.  When God cleans
His gray-on-gray carpet tomorrow, Joe,
we'll all be treated to the dustball snow
and the thunderstorm.  Come.  Enjoy our scenes.
                                                   
-

February: Year-day 45

2009-08-10T23:14:00.001-05:00

     
                                          
                                              
February: Year-day 45

Happy Valentine's, if you wish.  The sky
is: fair and breezy.  The graying snow changes
and disappears, unable to/ feel why.
Near Eden, a sharp-shinned hawk rearranges
oursoft perceptions as we travel home
in our Big Sky Blue Volare: to visit
our parents and bus bumMark,who would roam
the world.  Isn't this Valentine exquisite?

Why, even the dove that--on our way back
to West Bend--was really a sparrow hawk/
puts diamond light here.  I, too, would attack
and be brilliant, an "evil" cupid, stalk
the hearts of strangers to assuage my lack
of/ contentment, killing with: more than talk.

-

February: Year-day 44

2009-08-10T23:10:00.001-05:00


                                           
                                         
February: Year-day 44

A time for quiet and simplicity.
You and I on a long summer's walk.  You,
and I, passing under a maple tree,
kissing, breezes bandying in the blue;
sparrows, grackles, robins, swallows, and doves,
like visitors from foreign nations, come
to a sort of resort to know their loves;
you, and I, opening, more than the sum.

In the stream, a flower, living, dead, sails
through our memories, here, there, catching fire,
breaking old incidents out of their jails,
renewing each, like a phoenix from its pyre
of unrecognition, show us what fails
fails not with the right touch of fate, desire.

-

February: Year-day 43

2009-08-10T23:07:00.001-05:00


                                        
                                           
February: Year-day 43

Tall and ascetic, with a screechy voice,
striding out of Illinois--who'd hate, spare:
he chose his wife as if he had no choice;
he chooses words with empathetic flair.

Once by a soldier with a fatal wound
he sat, and wrote to his mother for him,
and talked, and listened, and, gently attuned,
stayed for his comfort at his young life's brim.

So, now, in that house back in Illinois,
he remains for our comfort to the brims
of our lives, knowing pain and knowing joy,
and our Bicentennial moans and hymns;
now, through those words/ he/ was blessed to deploy
to bless our troubled zeitgeist/ oddly swims.

-

February: Year-day 42

2009-08-10T23:02:00.001-05:00

    
                                     
                                           
February: Year-day 42

Flick.  Today is the day we celebrate
the birth of the man whose thirst witnessed light
electrified in a glass bulb, whose great
intrepid perseverance lit the night
for good, more perfectly than candles, whose
relentless genius heard a sound machine
lift voices from spinning, needled discs, whose
insight flashed to images/ on a screen.

That such amazing beauties should have grown
where we must recognize them as our own
are blessings to hold even as they run,
even as they fly past where they have flown,
even as they enter the charged unknown
to use so as to bless/ Tom/ Edison.

-

February: Year-day 41

2009-08-10T22:58:00.001-05:00

  
                                       
                                       
February: Year-day 41

Save the universe.  Replace Man.  The things
of this world!  How they move us! make us them!
my vanto be wagon, my pendants, rings!
And who knows who or how or what could stem
this power; who knows how or what or who
Man should be replaced by.  Things of this Earth!
"Dilemma": our real name for sure, to do
with as we wish, hope, must/ from before birth.

Do I talk too sadly?  Give me your hand.
It only takes one to destroy us, and,
one only to keep us alive.  For all
our insignificance, through air and land
and sea, we are significant who stand/
who've not forgotten/ we once had to crawl.

-

February: Year-day 40

2009-08-10T22:53:00.001-05:00

     
                                       
                                        
February: Year-day 40

Whim is the master of youth; order, age.
Both of which are present in works of art.
One, of the intuitions of the sage;
the other, of the leapings of the heart.

The coroner's report let no one doubt
the creature we had captured truly died,
but as we smile it streaks again about,
mystifying the kettled countryside.

So, yes, my camera catches charmed views
of mermaid wheat swimming golden, of guards
changing at Arlington beneath the dome
of South Bend's Notre Dame, of the white hues
of Niagara through Schroeder Hall; of yards,
especially the one/ surrounding home.

-

February: Year-day 39

2009-08-10T22:49:00.001-05:00

           
                                        
                                         
February: Year-day 39

Listening to Ron's invisible guitar
and Mark's laughter as he bruises the wind,
no wonder I wonder whose dreams we are
where the crowds have thickened, the crowds have thinned.
No wonder kings in their perma-press suits
have nothing to do with people in rags
as the poets playing their lyres and lutes
look absently at the costs of their tags.

No wonder we wonder wonder through tears
while winds roll & whisp and whistle their songs
and the various guitars talk and chime
to the voids in our stomachs brought by years
too easily stuffed with "impossible" wrongs
that have slashed, jumbled, and corroded time.

-

February: Year-day 38

2009-08-10T21:40:00.000-05:00


                                 
                                         
February: Year-day 38    
                                
A fair sky, and whistlings out of the south.
Tomorrow, Milwaukee perhaps, and Rick
and Laurel: music: his organ, her mouth:
throaty, electric: rock with rainbow quick.

And the bastards, and the bitches, the ladies,
the gentlemen/ will listen and enjoy
as their ears are turned in the Leaded Shade ease
that evening that duo work for, employ.

And the computer-controlled universe
we may quite soon see sloshing in the banks
will leave small room for compelled excuses.

All we imagine/ we'd better rehearse
if we're ever to hear the proper thanks
for the worlds we make and their varied uses.
                                                 
-

February: Year-day 37

2009-08-10T21:34:00.001-05:00

    
                                                
                                               
February: Year-day 37

Melancholy, what a black horse you are,
carrying me now to lands without light
where I'm more like shadows caught in a jar
than a being who bleeds, whose dreams are bright,
who for all his sadnesses learned to fly!
Stallion, don't so lead me to more regrets.
I'm in rags already from more than I
could rein through/ when we crossed/ your briared lets.

If my flesh and bones were to disappear
entire, and I truly became that dark
I feel I am, how could I take it, horse,
black, black horse; how could I handle the fear
when you, the world, I/ are but shades apart,
substanceless, in the curled void of remorse.

-

February: Year-day 36

2009-08-10T21:30:00.001-05:00

        
                                          
                                              
February: Year-day 36

Honesty in the sequin snow, the cold,
brings corn on a snowmobile to feed deer,
and trails the deer walk on, and care, to hold
what in season he'll kill.  Somewhere, in fear
andtrembling, sometime, I also may, bugged
too long by images out of my past--
we all have been--to avoid being hugged
by the one with whom love will deepest last.

What love I give and am givenis good,
but not enough.  If there really is one
I can happily love, I'd like to know,
but--I perceive I am a complex wood,
needing to share with several kinds of sun.
Am I sad?  Am I a fool?  Maybe so.

-

February: Year-day 35

2009-08-10T21:26:00.001-05:00

    
                                        
                                           
February: Year-day 35

"Nobody's gonna save us from us but us."
Not even an angel or a sauceroid.
So there's no sense in our stringing a fuss
because we're ridiculed and unemployed
or conning our way to the tippy-top
of a "good life" dream.  Spirits that are blacker
than any soot or any skin, that stop
love, won't rescue us no matter the lacquer.

Unless there is a shining from within,
we may as well shift our Cad's into passes
and stuff our green in our ears.  Unless
there's a warmth/ that's death to what's/ well called sin,
perhaps we'd best/ drown in/ pools of molasses,
whose wants just as surely are a sweet mess.

-

February: Year-day 34

2009-08-10T21:20:00.001-05:00

        
                                        
                                         
February: Year-day 34

I love the sonnet, so blustery free,
laughing in its chains, strong in its voice full
of icicles, steam, crocodile eggs, me,
voluptuous, concerned, impregnable,
expecting visits from monsters, roots, gods,
terrible in their urgencies, cold tides
harrowing boats, docks, doctrinal frail clods,
enterers of exits: we: race of prides.

Such contrivances we envision, putting
one over on ourselves every time, yet
nimbly enough for our limited view,
not needing true perfection, faultless footing,
even if we don't let rats/insects get
tomorrow.  I hate the sonnet.  Don't you?

-

February: Year-day 33

2009-08-10T21:14:00.002-05:00


                                       
                                       
February: Year-day 33
                   
Heroes and lollipops.  How we want them/
pure/ in our moments of false nostalgia!
No teeth-cracking boots to the groin, blood, phlegm;
no bluffings beat when a wizard calls ya.
Masters of our fates.  Gods.  Cold, human gods.
To admire but not to imitate, placed
so brightly above us even the odds
blind our weak-eyed hopes of being so chaste.

If Washington did lie, with women played;
and, though love's thistles did prick Doris Day,
Olympus is not by an earthquake shook.

Sure, lollipops may be better than dope,
and smoking despair won't help us taste hope;
it's the human in heroes/ lets us look.
                                               
-

February: Year-day 32

2009-08-10T20:56:00.002-05:00

         
                                              
                                       
February: Year-day 32

When a soft rain in a rolling wind's whim
stops my eyes, I picture grassy hills, dew
shivering the pores of my washed-out skin,
the peace a slightly curved thing holds, & you:
woman who is to keep my compass true;
& you: man of my fantasies, kind, thin:
& me: tilted, torn, sniveling a blue
fit, choosing neither you, nor me, nor him.

A heliotrope's effects on the sun
couldn't be more devastating, its stare
peaking that fire's curiosity till
at midday fear takes over, makes it run
from that eye as rapidly as it dared
to toward/ and return tomorrow/ until.

-

January: Year-day 31

2009-08-09T19:18:00.002-05:00

         
                                          
                                          
January: Year-day 31

The year of the dragon supplants the hare's,
or forty-six seventy-four by 'five.
The one by its wits avoided Time's snares;
the other by meanness will live and thrive.

So I, friendly Westerner, lightly see
what brings those of Chinese culture long joy;
yet honor, knowing a loved mystery,
secular, sacred, gives weight to its voice.

For I in my culture, too, celebrate
one year's dying with another year's birth
in ways happy meetings gently accrued,
unwilling, unable, to explicate
how customs so formed are of special worth
to me and mine who are through them renewed.
-

January: Year-day 30

2009-08-09T19:13:00.003-05:00

         
                                        
                                         
January: Year-day 30

Spirit is a music no one can hear
but can often see the results of: hands
mending a gown, dervishes of dust, lands
in the shapes of knolls tranquilizing fear,
strawberries dyeing fingers.  If a man
wails at The Wall, or a woman; or looks
an arabesque through; somehow out of books
changes; more easily charms his life's span,

nothing in the spheres is heard, in the heart
seen; only elsewhere.  Castles: reachings for
the ultimate.  Malachi Martin's art
ofinsight.  Yours.  Mine.  Worlds from which we start;
stretch toward.  Peering in/ or out of/ a door.
Still/ on a mountain.  Waiting/ on a shore.

-

January: Year-day 29

2009-08-09T19:09:00.002-05:00

          
                                       
                                  
January: Year-day 29

If you still think you can flippantly spawn
a fishhole of arguments, you had better
close your mind.  It's too late, friend.  The light's gone
that would praise your opinions.  In the fetter
of darknesses formed by tyrannies, one
of which has chased the good from your once needed
union, carpenter, those warm days won
freeze, and threaten those/ differently seeded.

A free man's only free when he can move
with comfort in his necessary jails
while letting others likewise move in theirs.

Sure, moguls kill; sure, governments lose love;
but aren't there times when other spirits fail?
We pass each other dimly/ on the stairs.

-

January: Year-day 28

2009-08-09T19:04:00.002-05:00

         
                                         
                                        
January: Year-day 28

Don't question the insanities of writers
thoughtlessly.  You may plummet, clutching spaces;
from the claws of words you may dangle.  These lighters
of the caves of our ignorance turn faces--
in their inkings that ooze and build--to charm/
worlds/ in the air.  Let them also charm yours.
Then castigate these shamans courting harm.
Without them you could never win your wars.

Poor self-poisoned Chatterton, genius thief,
and Mayakovsky, slit by politics,
and haunting, humorous Poe, worn and guttered,
and Plath, who ovened/ her head out of grief,
and Hemingway, letting a bullet fix:
these--muft, & all--through truths/ beautifully uttered.

-

January: Year-day 27

2009-08-09T19:00:00.002-05:00

       
                                          
                                         
January: Year-day 27

Too much to think on, and with Shelley dead,
Percy, stormed under in the gulf, the strength,
madness, genius we need seems somehow fled;
and with Paine and others gone, lost at length.

And with our technic capabilities
postindustrializing us at rates
that presage clarity but form clouds, these
moments passing, passed, strange, feel ancient dates.

Composing here a linear thing when life
about is circular, I would conclude
the answer's there I darken as I do
with a lashed world, a gulf in storm to ride,
were I not of those adventurers whose
flattest confrontations/ breed fending styles.

-

January: Year-day 26

2009-08-09T18:55:00.002-05:00

           
                                           
                                         
January: Year-day 26

Yesterday, heavy snow, to bring us wonder,
seeds that will blossom into water, and--
words you may think ought to tear me asunder
who lives not by logic but sleights of hand.

Yet, though I'm no Whitman, seeing the best,
nor a Jeffers from his Tor, seeing the worst,
but an Englanded Salchert, of cooled zest,
for both fine reason and magic I thirst.

If apples fatten against me, and birds
tremble my confidence, the game of math
at its rough frontiers makes my nerve-ends dance;
and the game of myth unbuttons me.  Path,
trail, highway, street, certainty, and chance:
synthesis,the direction of/ my words.

-

January: Year-day 25

2009-08-09T18:50:00.002-05:00

        
                                       
                                        
January: Year-day 25

Before, the past was presented as myth;
now, it is presented as human.  Feel.
Before, the past was for the few, the "pith";
now, it is explored for the many; real.
Being so, it's no longer kept alive
but deftly uprooted, denied/ at last/
until what was once extolled jungle jive
becomes, as it's Plumbed, The Death of the Past.
Hooray in the streets!  Hoorah in the halls!
Now the past is dead, history can live,
and there be no ending to what we give
to each and each as each fabricant falls
that will be in our lives gifts well worth giving
and gratefully plied by the future living.

-

January: Year-day 24

2009-08-09T17:12:00.004-05:00


                                           
                                                   
January: Year-day 24

And the delicate powdered-sugar snow,
sifted by the winds, floats like memories,
full of haze and distance; pulses like trees
on a hot afternoon; forms what I know:

In a three o'clock music, soft and slow,
I am a long-wintering hive of bees;
and the gossamer swallows at their ease
sparkle in the waves on my radio.

If I were to tell you again today
that tomorrow I would be leaving here,
what light would it gift you, though miles apart.
I had left you in a similar way
before, and later come back: pleased, tired, queer,
as curiously as: I do in my art.

-

January: Year-day 23

2009-08-09T17:08:00.002-05:00


                                     
                                    
January: Year-day 23

There should be no end to the thanks I show
for being born and allowed to remain
long enough in my ragged flesh/ to glow
in this world/ and beyond, a sunshine rain.

Flowers climbing, rising/ from a mountainside;
waters slowly entering Earth's thick sieve;
rhythms of wind carrying melodies pied.
There should be no end to the thanks I live.

Could there seem no beginning, middle, end
to my gratitude, my freedom to be,
you would note a kind of balance in me
you would smile toward/ as a friend to a friend
who is glad the other is near to spend
a spectral moment with, or two, or three.

-

January: Year-day 22

2009-08-09T17:03:00.002-05:00


                                         
                                              
January: Year-day 22

   (The next sonnet is another in this sequence
    that is politically charged.  I make no apology
    for it, but it does remind me of a position I
    have long held:  The separation of church and
    state/ is a fantasy.  Still, I am simply presenting
    what I believe, and I am not attempting to test
    my right to speak freely.  Besides, I could easily
    write more harshly/ about myself, and have.)

This is a banner for the Red Rose Sect,
for this is their day, the day the White House
will be blessed with red roses that reject
our allowing unborn humans to blouse
in the air: bloody, mutilated ghosts
damning us, that reject our stark presumption
which treats these as/ mereparasitic hosts
to kill as we please in our gross consumption.

This is a banner.  Wave it, wave it high,
that it may crack the coldness in your eye
which preserves your right as woman to choose
when your body may abruptly deny
lives as sacred as yours, pushing them by
as if they are trash you can't wait to lose.

-

January: Year-day 21

2009-08-09T16:59:00.003-05:00


                                     
                                          
January: Year-day 21

It can take so long to create a poem
as this one, so image-connecting long,
the maker's nearly wizened by the song/
he finally sings, he gives a small home.

One watching him might think he'd rather roam
through cities and countrysides, beat a gong,
or jingle a tambourine for a throng
of dopes than wrestle words that slip & foam.

How odd a decent place of residence
for words/ must come through a kind of defeat
of them, that only as the user pins/
each/ for those moments when it most makes sense,
when its powers and his/ properly meet,
does he quicken a lodging/ where spirit wins.

-

January: Year-day 20

2009-08-09T16:55:00.002-05:00


                                         
                                         
January: Year-day 20

Sometimes living is spiny hard, all hooks
and concrete, no empathy, no June grass,
and with nothing that I do does time pass
equitably.  Act at act (that is/ the crux
of it) like beasts clawing each other's throats,
or circumstance at act: so that I die
a little but don't grow--what, where, how, why,
and all else jammed together, damned & choked.

Scraping snow from my van's windows, I found
a "Hi!" in some, & softly chuckled.  Still,
I'd wanted to cruise Milwaukee/ the night
before; but the drifting winds kept me bound,
furious, and out of care, trying to fill
a dead time--writing, reading--in a poor light.

-

January: Year-day 19

2009-08-09T16:51:00.002-05:00


                                        
                                               
January: Year-day 19

Out of "the mouths of babes" come--tinker toys?
Yah!  Pieces themselves they have tried to swallow
or, other, to the wonder of our poise
we thought so solid turned suddenly hollow
by wisdoms beyond what we'd realize
in a thousand trips, of whatever kind,
tangled as we are in winning the prize,
each of us nastily out of his mind.

Thus those born before us, chidren with time,
being younger than time and we are now
(though still quite young as a planet's age goes),
destroy and delight us with their sublime
imaginings, words which/ venerate how
only he who's humble/ transumes and grows.

-

January: Year-day 18

2009-08-09T16:47:00.002-05:00

   
                                       
                                                
January: Year-day 18

Veils.  Veils.  What we see, we see but in part.
From the beginnings of vision/ this truth
has stood before us.  Each thing has its heart,
even the airs, in their moods, mean and couth.

As closely as we inspect a brown leaf,
as perfect as our eyes and other senses
may be, we'll never end that humbling grief
imposed by our natures' walls and fences.

Walk with me to the back of the house, sit.
The apple trees will moon with apples soon.
If rightly we can't know the half of it,
come row with me through the padded lagoon.
So what if neither of us sings in tune:
our creations will, if we have the wit.

-

January: Year-day 17

2009-08-09T16:42:00.002-05:00

 
                                     
                                         
January: Year-day 17

Ev'rybody likes me.  Haa.  Sure seems strange!
I'm no one special.  Just try to be fair.
Still, much of my person is out of range
for most.  Something's hot in the West Bend air?!

"Can you call the fire department?"  "What's wrong?"
"Gail's car is on fire!"  "Where is it?"  "Out front!"
"Okay."  Was only warming up.  Too long?
Red-hot manifold.  Shouldn't.  Civic punt.

Ev'rybody likes me.  I have/ a way
with words.  Sometimes words/ have a way with me.
Sometimes my image-maker gets the runs.

I'm no one special.  Follow me a day.
I'm a lot of specials.  I told you.  See.
You didn't ring?  Didn't pay a cent?  Sons!

-

January: Year-day 16

2009-08-09T16:34:00.003-05:00

         
                                          
                                               
January: Year-day 16

Today I begin my thirty-sixth year,
expecting I'd know how I want to say
I am looking forward, happy I'm here,
and can think and write for another day,
hoping with the pull of the weird full moon
our creativities will rise and clean
our soiled small emotions and reasons soon
so we won't be burnt or blown from the scene.

Humans we've been; humans we shall remain,
if we finally see/ these are the times
of "Mankind at the Turning Point", of breath,
or corpses, or the wise machine, the sane
among us/ knowing that/ of all our crimes/
greed--compassionless--best promotes/ our death.

-

January: Year-day 15

2009-08-09T16:30:00.002-05:00

              
                                                
                                               
January: Year-day 15

 remembering Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Somewhere I heard the voice of a man charge
the world; somewhere I heard a voice of might.
Somewhere I heard the voice of a man large
and deep; somewhere I heard a voice of light.

Somewhere I heard the voice of a man word
on word well up in me; somewhere I learned
how the right words can turn the one who's heard
inside out.  Somewhere I heard; somewhere yearned.

Somewhere, too, a Robert Lee Perry, black
and big, companioned me; chided my moods
of self-disgust.  Somewhere, a Brother Grant
counseled me, listened; and, somewhere, Sam.  Back
at Oshkosh I somewhere, helped Blacks love, bruise,
through words.  Yet yours, Reverend . . . so meek my stance.

-

January: Year-day 14

2009-08-09T11:08:00.002-05:00

          
                                               
                                          
January: Year-day 14
                                                       
Happiness?  Sort of an Eden within,
you could say.  A place without clothes or tools
or shelters or weapons or "dis-ease".  Myth in
its glory, like a country of wise fools.
Hmmm!  Almost makes me feel I'm there!  Perhaps
I am!  The monarchs hid in Mexico
are; not the coral, though, reefing whitecaps,
the starfish on them.  Happiness?  Blue snow.
                                                     
Remember--remember only good times,
exploring their crevices, their soft heights;
and dream those dreams that make you smile inside
as a poet does when he tees his rhymes
to zero them for vicarious sights
he rarely governs, hoping/ they abide.
                                                       
-

January: Year-day 13

2009-08-09T10:59:00.002-05:00

          
                                     
                                               
January: Year-day 13
                                                 
No, I never have quite/ learned how to swim,
although I have learned again how to float,
to stroke the length of the pool at the inn
and better than halfway back.  Would a coat
of oil improve that?  What a thing to think!
I'm not going to swim a channel.  God!
Just to get fifty yards before I sink
would be accomplishment enough.  I'll plod.
                                                  
What else can I do, if I do at all:
I definitely am no natural.
Oh well, I may not get the chance to drown
anyway.  If I don't try, I won't fall
through water; need to gasp a saving call;
but--make of my ashes a laurel crown.
                                                   
-

January: Year-day 12

2009-08-09T10:54:00.002-05:00


                                         
                                          
January: Year-day 12
                                                      
"Most men lead lives of quiet desparation",
dictating to their secretaries, bending
over their unborn children, skipping stations
on an evening express, earning, spending,
male, female--I and you pitched among them
as if we were horseshoes still in the air,
the changing air, arcing toward a steel stem,
hoping our pitchers' powers more than fair.
                                                       
For days moaned whistles have rushed from the spaces
between the windows in our livingroom's
west wall.  For years we/ have lived with each other,
thinly/ hiding faces/ behind our faces,
unable to halt the gathering tombs
that barely let us be sisters, brothers.
                                                       
-

January: Year-day 11

2009-08-09T10:50:00.001-05:00

             
                                           
                                                 
January: Year-day 11
                                                 
So here I am: in prison, on an isle,
or a satellite circling a dead moon;
and I'm likely not to leave, late or soon,
likely to only seldom enjoy a smile.
                                                      
It's not because of lives lost in the trial
of a wrong war/ or being out of tune
with nature, man and/ that Person, my Rune,
by most called "God", a name I'd hedge/ awhile.
                                                 
What touches others touches me of course,
but circumstance and beings close at heart
and my own wants/ have more imprisoned me,
drawn me back upon myself, made remorse
I don't know how to stave/ the somber barque
I drift in; made my cowardice/ the sea.
                                                     
-

January: Year-day 10

2009-08-09T10:44:00.003-05:00

           
                                             
                                             
January: Year-day 10
                                                        
They don't like me out there.  I don't know why.
Oh, they'll be sure to use me though.  They'll make
their errors and--tough, if I hit the sky--
I'll just have to somehow fix them, and take
it all as I can, though I'd like to cry,
like to grab the winds & the clouds/ and quake
them, terrorize with my bloody right eye
those pasty faces that made my skull ache.
                                                       
Am I America?  Certainly.  No.
A little of this; a little of that:
bone of dinosaur, wing feather of crow,
corona of daffodil, tooth of rat.
If you want me, I'll be raking the leaves:
a man with nothing but arms up his/ sleeves.
                                                      
-

January: Year-day 9

2009-08-09T10:38:00.001-05:00

        
                                         
                                                     
January: Year-day 9
                                                       
All the sad remembrances, yours/ and mine.
"The past is past", they say.  Why then can't we--?
Or if you think you can, why then can't I--?
They never pass, though hidden by the screen
of their occurrences; they just become
harder to see: all those sad remembrances,
the further time takes one, the further some
new passion elevates one from where one was.
                                                        
And yet if they were not, and did not . . . times
stab us, the possibilities of growth
would be more sorrowfully the less, would
maybe never be.  Swallows ring the chimes
at Capistrano.  Memories bring both
highs and lows.  How we'd change some, if we could!
                                                        
-

January: Year-day 8

2009-08-09T10:32:00.002-05:00

             
                                          
                                          
January: Year-day 8
                                                        
We are slipping into summer.  I may never
finish this poem.  The eyes of dogs inhabit
the leaves.  Nowhere is the sky so clever
as on clear cold days in winter.  The rabbits
shake in their holes.  A scoop of darkness rounds
the crescent bowl of the moon.  Clutch yr nerves.
We're sliding into the rain.  The guard rail bounds
from the woods.  Open, close.  My vision swerves.
                                                        
If peonies of ice bloom before us,
it is only because the ants of fiction
crawl.  Nothing usual has a place to go.
                                                      
The consternation of fetuses thrust
to unjust deaths.  The isobars of diction.
And the wind chill's more// than fifty below.
                                                 
-

January: Year-day 7

2009-08-08T20:30:00.002-05:00

                 
                                           
                                            
January: Year-day 7
                                                       
Wake.  The neon night flicks rainbows.  Wake.  Wake.
If your constitution's slight, weak, your rights
crippled, stretch, exercise, or the false lights
will more and more distract you into lakes
of/ slick illusions/ where your spirits break,
frantic, and your drugged, favored flesh, those nights,
drowns.  Wake, for there are mysteries, ah, sights
of nature which alone can thwart mistakes.
                                                          
However, no.  So neon isn't true,
and does give an improper shade to you;
is a captured element, twisted by craft
for purposes often easy to view
with jaundiced minds.  That's really nothing new.
By men or not, all, seen and unseen, can.
                                                    
-

January: Year-day 6

2009-08-08T20:20:00.001-05:00

         
                                         
                                       
January: Year-day 6
                                             
Sleep (before continuance, before speech):
the planting, protecting and harvesting
of energy, as, when pulled from a beach,
powerful waters rest before they spring
their boiling looks again from the royal beds
of their conceptions, bursting from their hair
amazing diamonds, because their primed heads
know/ just exactly/ how to/ crack despair.
                                                 
Sleep.  And I will teach you in your dreams.
For there is much to learn, and there is much
I can give.  Sleep.  There is far more than seems.
Sleep.  And, when you waken, you will touch
the air with strength and light.  I am your Ra,
I, The United States of America.
                                                          
-

January: Year-day 5

2009-08-08T20:13:00.002-05:00

          
                                    
                                     
January: Year-day 5
                                              
Views of America: to be a guide
for us.  Views of America: for thought.
Views of America: for joy, for pride,
humility, sorrows: to test what's taught,
to see if what then was/ and now is/ sought
agree; and how to live with what we hide,
once found; and whether what we can we ought
or not/ for our tomorrows, deep, and wide.
                                             
Of the first steps was one upon a rock,
a step which left no mark but in the minds
of those who saw it and of those since told.
                                                
Of the latest, a bolder mythic shock,
is one which shows its passing, and defines,
perhaps forever on Earth's moon, our soul.
                                             
-

January: Year-day 4

2009-08-08T20:07:00.001-05:00

        
                                             
                                         
January: Year-day 4
                                               
You who are bloated with comforts, are held
creatures, whose habits so inflame your sense
you cannot cure yourselves; who have dwelled
and shall continue to dwell in the dense
enclosures you have fashioned, overgrown
and sickly; who, convinced it is all right
to trample other beings just to own,
have made the sun a darkness bringing night:
                                                          
listen, understand: There've been times, are times,
and will be times, and there've been hearts, are hearts,
and will be hearts within those times your hate
not only will not overcome, your crimes
not only not destroy, but which will chart
acts in those times/ your greed perceives too late.
                                                       
-

January: Year-day 3

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January: Year-day 3
                                           
Having started stiffly, loosened, then flown,
I am anxious to work deeply, to last/
in whatever liquid, solid, or gas
my imaging powers assign to a poem
                                           
created to praise in this house, this home,
of this special year of days as they pass--
my United States two-hundredth blast--
for the starved, the ill, the rich, the alone.
                                             
That my Jeffersonian duties lie
too often slumbering, I--I know why;
that a tough keen Shelleyan madness stays
lost in the clouds, in the wind, in a lark
while I continue my flickery ways--
Thoreau, Emerson, Melville: Make me arc.
                                              
-

January: Year-day 2

2009-08-08T11:16:00.003-05:00

          
                                             
                                        
January: Year-day 2
                                                    
I am a roamin' Cath'lic.  Nowhere calls
me.  Barnes & Noble does not call.  I cry
in corners, stutter, fall.  So what.  Your shawl's
askew.  Try to forget who I am.  I
am not your friend.  My love for you exceeds
all knowing.  Feathers tango/ in the gale
I/ wander through.  Gather now your needs.
Together/ maybe we . . . a place to sail.
                                                    
And a great white bird eases through the wind,
wingtip to wingtip the size of a man,
so sleek, so limned, against the sun-filled grey
I jump from our couch as if I had sinned,
entreating my loves with my voice and hand
until that gaunt mer rogue/ ghosts into day.
                                                    
(octet: 12-24-06; sestet: 1976, & 2007)
                                                    
-

January: Year-day 1

2009-08-07T01:33:00.003-05:00

                
 [ last modified: 2009-03-29 ]

 1976 Today is this opus's permanent name
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (1-15)

-

1976: in 2006 was the current version of my opus 
of 366 sonnets and 12 reflections: 1976, which was
first published in the cassette medium in 1980 under
my Thinking Lizard imprint and the Alden St. Cloud
pen name I was using at that time.  It was a set of
six cassettes/ for which there are ISBNs as well as
Library of Congress registrations.  
-
-
January: Year-day 1
                                         
With eyes for the shining wind to begin,
I measure this language challenging me:
earth, heaven, purgatory, hell; love, sin:
for we who deepen into mystery
                                              
up boulevards, by hairline meadow trails;
from mountaintops, on journeys to the stars;
through humid summer heats, rancid in jails;
near razor fires & ice, past blue that scars:
                                              
art first, craft second: vision, resonance:
images of the heart, games of the mind:
enchantments ordered to chase time & power
growing dark gusty in my trenchant dance,
in this hard snow, in my doctrinal spine:
grief: joy: where I learn to mend, to scrub, scour.
                                                     
-

1976 Today

2009-08-04T09:51:00.004-05:00

        
                                             
                                         
 1976 Today - 353 bicentennial year sonnets
 contents                       [last modified: 2008-09-21 ]        

 notes about current 1976 version plus links 
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


 In this presentation I have entitled each sonnet
 by month and year-day.  I have done so because
 year-day has become more important to me than
 the commonly used month and date format.  Over
 the years I have changed how I entitle the sonnets
 composing 1976 (the original title for the 366
 sonnets in the original work) several times.
 -
 I have not attempted to group these sonnets by 
 topic, but each one/ is a piece in the puzzle
 of who I am.  Most of them were written in
 1976, and because I wanted my work to be
 a celebration of the bicentennial of my USA,
 many of the sonnets are history-centered. 
 Nonetheless, many others are confessional.
 Some of those are comically so.  While there 
 are situational, athletic, religious, political,
 philosophical, environmental, biographical,
 poetry-related, science-oriented, as well as
 sonnets on yet other topics or mixes of topics,
 the core topic is the human condition.  If you
 would like to read my leap year sonnet, see
 February: Year-day 60 (February 29th).
 -
 When you happen into one you do not feel 
 comfortable with, exit from it.
 -
 [ 2007-03-20:
   -
   The first of the 15 sonnets I removed,
   Year-day 2, is back in as a revised sonnet.
   Whenever a year-day without a sonnet 
   gets a new/revised sonnet, I will note it 
   on this page.         B A J S   ]
 -
[ 2008-08-02:
 -
 Year-day 348 (December 13) is back in. ]
-

 The following is an elsewhere publication list
 for individual sonnets from 1976 Today:

 February: Year-day 34 (February 3rd)
     If it's still there, it is at
     www.sonnets.org
 -
 March: Year-day 82 (March 22nd) 
     (for Sandy Troedel)
     Spice of Life series article
     in West Bend News 1977
 -
 March: Year-day 61 (March 1st)
 March: Year-day 69 (March 9th)
 May: Year-day 137 (May 16th)
     in River Bottom
     Vol. IV No. 2 Summer 1977
 -
 April: Year-day 105 (April 14th)
 April: Year-day 106 (April 15th)
 April: Year-day 110 (April 19th)
 April: Year-day112 (April 21st)
     in Song 2 1977
 -
 September: Year-day 248 (September 4th)
     in Ramada Regular
     Volume 6, Number 7
     November 1980, p. 15
 -
 November: Year-day 307 (November 2nd)
     in Poetry Out of Wisconsin V 1980
 -
 December: Year-day 361 (December 26th)
     in The Sun
     a magazine of ideas
     issue 124  March 1986
 -

Introduction

2009-08-03T21:04:00.001-05:00


                                     
                                       
This blog will be presenting my poems and related in book-by-book format  
one work at a time, which in this case means one verse at a time or page  
at a time when length makes it inconvenient to show an entire work in one 
post.  Example: 1976 Today will be shown here one sonnet per post, not
as two posts for a month of sonnets.  Also, I expect to be adding notes.