poems for keeps
Monday, January 29, 2024
First Two Lines From a Dream, Followed by Lines Written Immediately Upon Waking
Sweet leaf Keats drew my whole life over
It gave flesh to me
Tumbling over mountains over
rivers, through valleys
like a borg in heat
SHE stoned me
and cried for me
I let down my dress
and went to
heaven
Absolved of nothing
yet resolved to everything
I entreated the sun
Infrared rays reveal
astrological scars
amidst the ruins,
like a farmer's car
amidst faint
festoons of
pansies.
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
New song, with lyrics by Darin Stevenson and myself
Too best to love
Anahid you were standing there, next to the desk, trying to say what Eternity was all about. I couldn't hear you, your voice was so low, like a whisper, but I could feel your breath. It was slowly arriving from the right, while in the left Paganini played through time and space into a Smartboard speaker. I was caught between the two. I asked you the author was and you didn't know. It didn't matter. But I wanted you to know. You said the poem was about "being abroad". You said you didn't really know how to put it. You whispered it, "it's about not putting all of your joys in one basket." The moment was eternal. I knew it couldn't last, even in the moment of feeling it, grafted it onto myself as something eternal, went into it completely, lingered, maybe you could say, wallowed in it.
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
paging Dr. Williams
Portal of skin allow the wind in
caress flesh across face
Dr. Williams' face
in the ever present
imagination. Turtle snaps
in my right hand
as I type
Spring and All
leads me to the richest well
where on the lip
a bird of paradise sips
The imagination is the doorway
to actual present reality you say
it took the whole book to show me
what is and what isn't is interlaced
You and I interfaced
the flesh blowing across each
peach bristling the fuzz
caressing the deep recesses
of sunwarmed juice
Friday, May 29, 2020
I'm in some kind of military camp, running around on an uneven rock-strewn field with my platoon/team, doing maneuvers, playing some sort of frisbee game, like a big game of monkey in the middle played by teams. We're having fun, keeping fit, making some great throws and catches, leaping off a rock to grab the frisbee and then rolling landing. Rob Wilson, the head of the St. Francis Prep English dept. is our laid-back sergeant. He's that type in real life too, the guy who's cool as long as you're cool. He motions us off the field where we go to a long "mess" table. There are other platoons sitting at other tables, a loud raucous lunch scene. At each place setting there is nice linen, silver-wear, filled water glasses, a wine glass, and I'm delighted to see that, at every setting, there are identical glass-pipes with the bowl filled. I can't believe it and think, well, I guess this is the future. It's legal, so it's just like having an afternoon drink. But I note that I'll have to be careful and keep my composure. (This likely came up because I watched the season finale of High maintenance last night, which was, in part, about being judged by family for being "a stoner", so I think my dream self was normalizing this. Reader, I cried when the guy's name was casually revealed by his niece at the end of the episode.). We eat and move into the next room where a rock band is setting up to play, 6 guys or so, ridiculously good, nice harmonies, a unique sound I can still hear, but hard to describe. Maybe the band Spoon would be a close fit. Something interrupts them, but I'm not sure what, a disturbance, like a small earthquake. The band stops. I start talking to a kid and we are talking about dreams, about what happens after we die, about the end of the world. We get interrupted again, like you do at parties, and then I'm talking with someone else in deep conversation. Things are getting messy, like a food fight, or something. Everything keeps jostling around, a drunken party feeling. There is an egg dripping down the front of the guy I'm talking to. The first kid comes back because he wants to continue our conversation and asks me if I would be able to "control myself" in an apocalypse. I think about it and say, "control myself, that's a good way to put it. Yes, I think I could control myself. I would be in frantic action, trying to keep my head and protect and serve as best I could. I would I would be freaked out, and it would be intense, but I've done enough meditation practice that I THINK I would be able to control myself, and be present to appreciate the intensity of it, even if I am screaming."