Poems

If —

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, 

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 

Paying Attention

He is not doing well. She is not

Sometimes I Find Myself Weeping at the Oddest Moment

sometimes I find myself

weeping

at the oddest moment

Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong

Ocean, don’t be afraid.

The end of the road is so far ahead

it is already behind us.

Don’t worry. Your father is only your father

until one of you forgets. Like how the spine

won’t remember its wings

Two Hours on the Train

During two hours on the train

I rerun the film of my life

Two minutes per year on average

Half an hour for childhood

Another half-hour for prison

Love, books, wandering

take up the rest

anyone lived in a pretty how town

anyone lived in a pretty how town

(with up so floating many bells down)

spring summer autumn winter

Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence

Riprap

Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

             placed solid…

Fire in the Reeds

One night, fire fell into a reed bed

It burned like love falling onto a soul

As fire’s head warmed to its work

every reed turned into a candle at its own grave

Underworld Lit

XIV

Please print clearly and remember your name.

1) The river of fire, in ancient Greek thanatopography, feeds into the river of _____________.

The Dictator’s Message

The Dictator’s Message

O poets

return,

we have swept

your homeland clean

of thorns and splinters

O writers

return,

to make a record of your works

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…

Northern Light

Stepping off the plane in Whitehorse

the last thing I expect to feel

is home

not quite alone

but close enough

here in this great black north.

As we drive away from the airport

Hindsight

Hindsight- never existed until August

3, 2015.     Someone had painted

over hindsight. But if you paint over

How Prayer Works

Tucked away in our tiny bedroom so near each other

the edge of my prayer rug covered the edge of his, my

brother and I prayed. We were 18 and 11 maybe, or 19

and 12. He was back from college where he built his own

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs 

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; 

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice, 

Mrs. Kessler

Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,

And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,

And stood on the corner talking politics,

Interesting People of Newfoundland

Newfoundland is, or was, full of interesting people.

Like Larry, who would make a fool of himself on street corners

for a nickel. There…

It was in a boardroom

It was in a boardroom

that I witnessed the latest killing

A room filled with knowledgeable

white people

trying to understand

what we offer

shaking their heads

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

epistrophe and epistrophy

some ekphrastic evening, this'll be both criticism and poetry and 

failing that fall somewhere that seems like in between. this both/

and and/or neither/nor machine comes in having been touched

Imaginary Dad

                                  Was so imaginary   he ceased to exist

Insomnia

Thin are the night-skirts left behind

By daybreak hours that onward creep,

And thin, alas! the shred of sleep

The Swimmer’s Moment

For everyone

The swimmer's moment at the whirlpool comes,

But many at that moment will not say

Enigma

Who I am

depends on which side of my skin

you stand on.

In here

it’s all neurons firing

synapses telling stories

blood tracing ancestral histories

races blending in veins

These Poems, She Said

These poems, these poems,

these poems, she said, are poems

with no love in them. These are the poems of a man 

Livejournal.com/lonelyradio

We could read your words from anywhere

but you felt like the only soul sitting

in your swivel chair listening to your parents

dream-breathing down the hall while you typed

Break of Day

’Tis true, ’tis day, what though it be?

O wilt thou therefore rise from me?

Why should we rise because ’tis light?

Catastrophe That Nearly Brought Down a Plane

After late-night Li Bo,

on a plane to Houston, out of sheer intumescence

I begin unravelling a sickness bag—

starting with the wired throat,

then the pleated sides, then bottom.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

Holy Ghost

We had no paper

then, or we had

no pen, or no words. How

to say it. We had

no voice. No listeners.

Just deaf night

Packing for the Future: Instructions

Take the thickest socks.

Wherever you're going

you'll have to walk.

There may be water.

There may be stones.

There may be high places

you cannot go without

God the Tea Master

All the weapons we marshal to confront the day

You ask to be left by the door before entering.

The sword in its sheath must lie on the grass,

the quiver and bow hung off a branch.

January, 1795

Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing,

Lords in ermine, beggars freezing;

Titled gluttons dainties carving,

The New School

Do you remember, Nancy,

when we sat in the Creole restaurant

and glanced up at the television to see students running

with their hands in the air and photographs

of two young men?

Spring

When daisies pied and violets blue

And lady-smocks all silver-white

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

The Cold Green Element

At the end of the garden walk

the wind and its satellite wait for me;

their meaning I will not know

For You Shall Be Called to Account

The ancestors of everyone I’ve let into my body

are gathered in a small room with one window,

no lights. Yes, the room is crowded. Yes, there

are no chairs. Yes, they are talking. Why are we

My Last Duchess

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now; Frà Pandolf’s hands

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.