Poems

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

The Charge of the Light Brigade

I.

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

The New Experience

I was ready for a new experience.

All the old ones had burned out.

They lay in little ashy heaps along the roadside

Francesca Woodman

i

At the heart there is a hollow sun

by  which  we  are constructed  and undone

To Helen

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

Exculpatory Lilies

Good Friday, the day they delivered

that sad bouquet, was the day our cat

ran out on the road and failed to look

both ways. I’d stashed the candy eggs

under the sink, in their pink raffia nests,

Should Lanterns Shine

Should lanterns shine, the holy face,

Caught in an octagon of unaccustomed light,

Would wither up, an any boy of love

Embarrassed

i thought it was ok - i could understand the reasons

they said there might be young children or a nervous man seeing

this small piece of flesh that they weren’t quite expecting

Insomnia

If I were to sleep, it would be on an iron bed,

bolted to the floor in a bomb-proof concrete room

with twelve locks on the door.

The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Could scarcely cry “‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!”

Not the Music

Not the music.

It is this other thing

I keep from all of them

that matters, inviolable.

I scratch in my journals,

a mouse rummaging through cupboards,

Icicle Glasses

Day thirty-nine

The thing that death gave you —

your face leaks

your face overflows

Your face is the grave of your nose

your face is the grave of your ears

The Song of the Smoke

I am the Smoke King 

I am black!

I am swinging in the sky, 

I am wringing worlds awry; 

I am the thought of the throbbing mills, 

I am the soul of the soul-toil kills, 

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Autobiography of My Hungers

     His beard: an avalanche of honey

              an avalanche
 

of  thorns. In a bar too close to the Pacific,
 

A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,

A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,

Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,

Through Time and Bitter Distance

Unknown to you, I walk the cheerless shore.

The cutting blast, the hurl of biting brine

May freeze, and still, and bind the waves at war,

Ere you will ever know, O! Heart of mine,

Prose Poem (“The morning coffee.”)

The morning coffee. I’m not sure why I drink it. Maybe it’s the ritual

of the cup, the spoon, the hot water, the milk, and the little heap of

brown grit, the way they come together to form a nail I can hang the

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

Sonnet XXIX: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

in this house

in this house

the body of a poem, still warm,

hangs on the nail of the mundane

touched to its core

like a reproach, like proof,

that i was here

and you were here

My Papa’s Waltz

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Re: Happiness, in pursuit thereof

            It is 2005, just before landfall.

Here I am, a labyrinth, and I am a mess.

Sorting through Documents at Dawn

three crosses appear

on the tv screen

following a

sweep of my hair

that felt like your hand

maybe i dreamt it

but i so badly

All About My Grandmother

Wheat daughter, prisoner of sneaky pigweed, mother

to the five corners of the world and your three hectares,

beak-nosed carpenter’s wife and the potter’s lover,

The Plot

Won’t let your bad self.

Let go of your old debt.

Tiring of your old self.

Won’t let your made bed.

Let your bad blood let.

Your grown debt get.

Wow! You’ve Changed

You’ve changed.

You used to be so

and now you’re all

like, you’ve transformed

I don’t know how to describe

it’s like

you don’t like canasta anymore

you text IN ALL CAPS

A Psalm of Life

What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

Great Intimacy

It is like an exquisite spider web, this world, but I

don't get trapped.

I have ceased to tie the strings of one shoe to

another in the morning,

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,

Though thou be black as night

And she made all of light,

Death of a Young Son by Drowning

He, who navigated with success

the dangerous river of his own birth

once more set forth

Fast Commute

The meteorologists are pleading with us

to keep checking back through the storm,

ice pellets making a carpet two, three inches thick,

this pale beach we walk on, this wind that passed

The First Day

When I was five I was put on a bus

and sent to Catholic school

not unlike my mother who was five

when she was put on a train

and sent to residential school,

both feeling that gut feeling

Poem of Failed Amends (Amor fati)

I’ve put the oats in a jar,

with yogourt and seeds,

left it in the fridge

overnight. The fruit on top

will thaw, dripping

sweetness

into the rest.

I want to remember

I’ve done this

after a one-night stand with Myself i ask Myself to stay the night

i know she wants me

by her side in sleep. i do not really          ask          her to stay,

only imply she is invited. i speak

Hall of Mirrors

To Kristin Lems

We miss something now

as we think about it

How Not to Spill

Dad has creases on his hands so thick they could split with a

poke. He gestures for me to try so I do. His skin bends on a

hinge and out spills every good and bad thing: cattails from our

They are hostile nations

1

In view of the fading animals

the proliferation of sewers and fears   

A Newly Discovered Species of Lizard with Distinctive Triangular Scales

I am Charles Darwin. I eat owlflesh at Cambridge University.

I have discovered something, an entirely new species

with tropical fever in its reptile fingers. I am busy

with taxonomying its most peculiar and three-sided

TREATY 8

queen of great britain and ireland, by her commissioners the

honourable david laird, of winnipeg, manitoba, indian com