Category: Writings: Poetry

Dead men were Flung spreadeagled from the barricade. The fight drained from our angled wounds. We fled the bunnies And their flashing hatchets, Limped across the reddened curb Into the alley, Its end blocked by a spaceship Guarded by ducklings with long black knives. You said: Let’s fight, we’ll grab the ship and fly, Set…

Drained neatly, each hour, stapled to a network of steel, wet plastic, web of blood and urine. Before the final bell of this fluorescent night: an orange. Oils burst, wild, juices glow, virginal, cold – alive! – a caravan, the blue-white sky, red haze of cinnamon, and bitter aloes, desert wind. In any trap, escape…

The classroom reeks of undergraduates. The walls lethargic beige, the chattering, resentful, handsome faces, golden thighs. A grimy fog of answers, questions lost, and every year they miss the point again. The concrete park outside is filled with bursts of advertising, merchandise that blares with stenciled letters, mascots, girls’ glazed smiles. The struggle ended years…

(Rilke’s Last Flight) We walk inside huge jewels, ropes of white tourmalines, square-faceted; we straggle, silent, lonely, lost – The varied forms of faces thaw from fears or sudden loves, melt with unwelcome passions, freeze again; Then, waiting in black fields of chairs, we dream of those we nearly knew: we breathe the sun, we…

Flying, flying, endless air. Half asleep, we watch clouds For evidence of a plan, For our real destination. ••• My arms sleep in white sand. Palm trees relax, stretch, flow easily. I’m sitting by the ocean for days. I don’t know where I am.  Find me. ••• The wind explodes, Fires lake-ice into my eyes.…

(a folk song translated from an unknown language) He came out of the dry east with a leather bag He stood in the square, and I know he smiled at me Stroked his mustache, boasted to the village men No one knows who told his secret The leather bag was left empty against the wall…