Category: Writings: Poetry

[We started a writing group, Rumana and I and a couple of friends… modeled on Terry Wolverton's approach in the late 80s and early 90s. Two meetings so far; and we're all writing. This poem, blunt though it is, came to me clearly – that sense of making something:…]   Nowhere to move, so work…

I open my eyes in the nightSee a great dark shape in the skyI think: that is the shape of my death.Watching – and it vanishes: it was sky behind the clouds.

(fragments from an ancient manuscript) [This was, strangely enough, my first published poem, back in 1990; at the time it was an obvious response to the disintegration of arts funding under the Reagan and Bush administrations, and the trials of artists who were regarded as inappropriately shocking to be funded by the National Endowment for…

[Fragments of an unfinished poem, including two false starts – or perhaps middles] Lost is lost, no griefs could bring it back. Blood, blood, those faces, broken walls and burning towers, Jewels scattered in the alley, a wailing mother, the bearded merchant skewered, … Jeweled women flee down alleys, A bearded shopkeeper skewered, his shouting…

Shiki soku ze ku, Ku soku ze shiki Hurry up it’s time clock nails closing door Drooling cries moaning flabby hands sweat Drab knife-edge headlamp glare shades to black and white Drive in distorted circles wait get out parking Unseeing eyes flat twisting numb hands pulling too far Head thrown back pale lights clutch fingers…

This poisoned morning: dark gray shades that shift one to the other, and the doorway’s flesh begins to soften with the acid wash of sunlights our unfocused eyes can’t bear; we run down blackened streets, we try to flee serrated knives of light, the glaring dawn, turn sharpened corners, freeze to watch the change in…

Chic beauties, men in tuxesrun across the wet plazato the hospital entrance. I twist sprung cords to turn the blinds, trying to see. Perfect curves on rainswept autos. Big smiles, fine suits, fabrics night-blue, glassy. My vision’s left is carved inward by my arm, skin dim with shadows. Laughing, waving to friends who lean out…

This is actually my own favorite of all my poems, though it has not fared well in workshops. Perhaps I like it because the language and images are both exactly what I meant, and yet startling, even to me. And perhaps others dislike it because it is merely peculiar for them when I express an…