Poems

When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,

Dog Boy

ONE

Late at night in Oklahoma, a very small, an extremely small man ran across the road in front of my friend’s car. He does not doubt this is real, though the rest of us do, and it doesn’…

Moon in Khmer

You are light

when the sun is punched out

and darkness reigns.

You are the antidote

to what came before:

black blood, black heart,

hands tied, kneeling before

a ditch of human bones.

Sonnet LV: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Not marble nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Mean Drunk Poem

Backward & down into inbetween as Vicki says. Or as Robin teaches

the gap, from which all things emerge. A left

handed compliment. Bats…

Praying Herd: For Safe Journey

Draw a line through our scattered bodies. The pattern of fallen calves in this meadow will mirror

the constellation above. Look up. We whip our tails to a silent song:

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,

An Innocent Little Girl

The little girl is innocent

they’ve put henna on her hands

they’ve plaited her hair beautifully

they’ve put kohl round her eyes

they’ve dyed her eyebrows

Not Horses

What I adore is not horses, with their modern

domestic life span of 25 years. What I adore

is a bug that lives only one day, especially if

it’s a terrible day, a day of train derailment or

Inner Life

Those tweets I sent about Duke Ellington

While my mom was being evicted again

According to what ethics under the sun

Can I possibly have been speaking? A

Kind of private feeling I can’t even place here

Blank Sonnet

      The air smells of rhubarb, occasional

Roses, or first birth of blossoms, a fresh,

Undulant hurt, so body snaps and curls

fluorine

arsenic in calculators, mercury in felt

hats, mad as a poisoned hatter

pyrophoric undercurrent in mundane

Sun Bear

yesterday at the Oakland zoo

I was walking alone for a moment

past the enclosure holding the sun bear

Smooth Horizon of the Verb Love

1

an urban image from the eighties

when we hung out at Chez Madame Arthur

I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries

I have not lingered in European monasteries

and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights

who fell as beautifully as their ballads…

Language

Do you speak your language? 

I stare — I just said: how are you? 

I thought English was my language

apparently it isn’t

I thought Halkomelem was gibberish

the devil’s language

that’s what the nuns said

Lagoons, Hanlan’s Point

Mornings

before the sun’s liquid

spilled gradually, flooding

Other

1

Men prefer an island

With its beginning ended:

Undertones of waves

Trees overbended.

Men prefer a road

Circling, shell-like

Convex and fossiled

A History of Houses Built Out of Spite

Before the Birth of One of Her Children

All things within this fading world hath end,

Adversity doth still our joyes attend;

No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-

dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling…

Thoughtless Cruelty

There, Robert, you have kill’d that fly — ,

And should you thousand ages try

The life you’ve taken to supply,

They are hostile nations

1

In view of the fading animals

the proliferation of sewers and fears   

Wishing Well

My fist holds as many coins

as I can carry. All are stamped with the Queen's effigy;

Elizabeth, D.G. Regina, the resident of pockets,

a woman I've never met though I always know

Come Up From the Fields Father

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,

And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, ’tis autumn

confirmation bias

at least in our waking life

most commemoration

doubles as force

since even

the most benign

zodiacal conceptions

are tinged eurocentric

when brown women die

Planet Earth

It has to be loved the way a laundress loves her linens,

the way she moves her hands caressing the fine muslins

knowing their warp and woof,

like a lover coaxing, or a mother praising.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—

“Hope” is the thing with feathers — 

That perches in the soul — 

And sings the tune without the words — 

Two Words: A Wedding

There are things you have words for, things you do not

have words for. There are words that encompass all your

feelings & words that…

January 1, Dawn

After the celebrations,

people, TV channels, telephones,

the year’s recently-corrected digit

finally falls asleep.

Between the final night and the first dawn

a jagged piece of sky

Ode on Solitude

Happy the man, whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air,

Invitation to Love

Come when the nights are bright with stars

Or when the moon is mellow;

Come when the sun his golden bars

Drops on the hay-field yellow.

Come in the twilight soft and gray,

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things —

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim…

world shapers

creation stories are lullabies for grown-ups

they remind us of all the possible ways & means

that worlds…

A Hymn to God the Father

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,

The Wound

I.

Leaves, asleep under wind:

a ship for the wound.

The wound

glories in these ruinous times.

Trees growing in our own eyelashes

a lake for the wound.

The wound shows up in bridges

The Ayes Have It

When I think of Trayvon Martin, I think of Emmett Till,

             when I think of Emmett Till, I think of young, black men in the South,

then I think of young, white men in the South.

On Monsieur’s Departure

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

Good Day Villanelle

You ran naked out the door.
The neighbours laughed; I chased you down. 
I hardly see you anymore.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide