Friday 21 December 2007

Forms of Joy

Transporting snails from the agate walk
one at a time to flowerbeds along the brick wall covered with leghorn ferns—
that was my last great love—
twisting my ear if I didn't listen,
and if I looked at another, holding me in a headlock:
a dream come true!
To see a sweet love fall:
wrong crowd: losing all lovely
to go into the storm again…
I miss the one others called crazy,
taking to drink, no home, no place to feel at home.
Suffering another taking you so young
and reliving it, beautifying the smoke of fireman rescue,
enshrining the diminutive vessel, offering
to be abandoned, taken.
No wonder we no longer long for anyone,
all the trials and conditional claims
cumulate in no one in particular—
but I'm still here! and enough of them now
to turn to now without calling
they bump into one another
in advertised illusions of remembering each other
—if not longing exactly—
magnifying possibilities
suspending the new ones and the latest movies
and criteria of shopping, dining, and more
so that the photos that really matter
seem from an earlier life
with the hairstyles and colognes all wrong.

Monday 17 December 2007

My Station in Life

I haven't hammered out all the glitches,
the pity quotient ranks rather high.
More colloquialisms creeping in's no help—
all 'n' all we hold out well
against the latest tides of upgrades
to tidy all aggressions into new nowheres to ignore
so bulldozers in Gaza can make themselves at home
and the heart can yearn for a better world, even skip a beat for it
yet let the body listen in quiet.
No one wants to hear about it, pay for the ads—
only snow broadcast and settled on boughs of Douglas fir
kneeled to the ground in forced obeisance
and crackling only as walls during earthquakes
or more common grindings of jaws, lost sleep.
When I was Bond I switched on my inventions
to ward off poison lips
and tried to talk the Little Mermaid out of coming
to kiss her prince each day
or be sent again into the Sea,
how she traded her voice to be with him
and how we all bought tickets, keeping it up, careless,
waiting for others to get around to it.