Charon 2004

Related poetry:

1. Rainbow (II) You made us hopeful, LORD; where is your Hope When every lovely Rainbow bright and chill Reflects your Will? You made us artful, LORD; where is your Art, As we connive our way to easeful death: Sad waste of Breath! You made us needful, LORD; what is your Need, When all desire lies in imperfection? […]...
2. She Gathered Lilacs, for Beth She gathered lilacs And arrayed them in her hair; Tonight, she taught the wind to be free. She kept her secrets In a silver locket; Her companions were starlight and mystery. She danced all night To the beat of her heart; With her tears she imbued the sea. She hid her despair In a crystal […]...
3. Auschwitz Rose There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar, A rose like Sharon’s, lovely as her name. The world forgot her, and is not the same. I love her and would not forget desire, But keep her memory exalted flame To justify the thistles and the nettles. On Auschwitz now the reddening sunset settles; They […]...
4. She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful She was very strange, and beautiful, as the violet mist upon the hills before night falls when the hoot owl calls and the cricket trills And the envapored moon hangs low and full. She was very strange, in a pleasant way, as the hummingbird flies madly still… so I drank my fill of her every […]...
5. The Locker All the dull hollow clamor has died And what was contained, Removed, Reproved Adulation or sentiment, Left with the pungent darkness As remembered as the sudden light. Originally published by The Raintown Review...
6. To Flower When Pentheus [“grief’] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar […]...
7. Because Her Heart Is Tender, for Beth She scrawled soft words in soap: “Never Forget,” Dove-white on her car’s window, and the wren, Because her heart is tender, might regret It called the sun to wake her. As I slept, She heard lost names recounted, one by one. She wrote in sidewalk chalk: “Never Forget,” And kept her heart’s own counsel. No […]...
8. Cleansings Walk here among the walking scepters. Learn Inhuman patience. Flesh can only cleave To bone this tightly if their hearts believe That G-d is good, and never mind the Urn. A lentil and a bean might plump their skin With mothers’ bounteous, soft-dimpled fat (and call it “health”), might quickly build again The muscles of […]...
9. Fahr an' Ice, Apologies to Robert Frost From what I know of death, I’ll side with those Who’d like to have a say in how it goes: Just make mine cool, cool rocks (twice drowned in likker), And real fahr off, instead of quicker. Originally published by Light Quarterly...
10. Tremble Her predatory eye, The single feral iris, Scans. Her raptor beak, All jagged sharp-edged thrust, Juts. Her hard talon, Clenched in pinched expectation, Waits. Her clipped wings, Preened against reality, Tremble. Originally published by The Lyric...
11. Water and Gold You came to me as rain breaks on the desert When every flower springs to life at once, But joy is an illusion to the expert: The Bedouin has learned how not to want. You came to me as riches to a miser When all is gold, or so his heart believes, Until he dies […]...
12. At Wilfred Owen's Grave A week before the Armistice, you died. They did not keep your heart like Livingstone’s, Then plant your bones near Shakespeare’s. So you lie Between two privates, sacrificed like Christ To politics, your poetry unknown Except for that brief flurry’s: thirteen months With Gaukroger beside you in the trench, Dismembered, as you babbled, as the […]...
13. The Folly of Wisdom She is wise in the way that children are wise, Looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes I must bend down to her to understand. But she only smiles, and takes my hand. We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go, So I smile, and I follow… And the years are dark […]...
14. The Desk, for Jeremy There is a child I used to know Who sat, perhaps, at this same desk Where you sit now, and made a mess Of things sometimes. I wonder how He learned at all… He saw T-Rexes down the hall And dreamed of trains and cars and wrecks. He dribbled phantom basketballs, Shot spitwads at his […]...
15. The Watch Moonlight spills down vacant sills, Illuminates an empty bed. Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates Wan silver circles, left unread By its companion unmoved now By anything that lies ahead. I watch the minutes test the limits Of ornamental movement here, Where once another hand would hover. Each circuit incomplete. So dear, So precious, […]...
16. The City Is A Garment A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,- The city is a garment stretched so thin Her festive colors bleed into the night, And everywhere bright seams, unraveling, Now spill their brilliant contents out like coins On motorways and esplanades; bead cars Come tumbling down long highways; at her groin A railtrack like a zipper […]...
17. A True Story, for Jeremy Jeremy hit the ball today, Over the fence and far away. So very, very far away A neighbor had to toss it back. (She thought it was an air attack!) Jeremy hit the ball so hard It flew across his neighbor’s yard. So very hard across her yard The bat that boomed a mighty “THWACK!” […]...
18. Mother’s Smile For my wife, Elizabeth Harris Burch, and my mother, Christine Ena Burch There never was a fonder smile Than mother’s smile, no softer touch Than mother’s touch. So sleep awhile And know she loves you more than “much. ” So more than “much, ” much more than “all. ” Though tender words, these do not […]...
19. Memory A black ringlet Curls to lie At the nape of her neck, Glistening with sweat In the evaporate moonlight… This is what I remember Now that I cannot forget. And tonight, If I have forgotten her name, I remember: Rigid wire and white lace Half-impressed in her flesh… Our soft cries, like regret, … the […]...
20. In Flight Convergence Serene, almost angelic, The lights of the city attend Upon lumbering behemoths Shrilly screeching displeasure; they say That nothing is certain, That nothing man dreams or ordains Long endures his command. Here the streetlights that flicker And those burning steady Seem one, From a distance. Descend, They abruptly part ways, So that nothing is one […]...
21. Redolence Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills; Cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway; And night bends near, a deepening shade of gray; The bass concerto of a bullfrog fills What silence there once was; globed searchlights play. Green hanging ferns adorn dark window sills, All drooping fronds, awaiting morning’s flares; Mosquitoes whine; the lissome […]...
22. Fountainhead I did not delight in love so much As in a kiss like linnets’ wings, The flutterings of a pulse so soft The heart remembers, as it sings: To bathe there was its transport, brushed By marble lips, or porcelain,– One liquid kiss, one cool outburst From pale rosettes. What did it mean… To float […]...
23. Pan … Among the shadows of the groaning elms, Amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves… … Once there were paths that led to coracles That clung to piers like loosening barnacles… … where we cannot return, because we lost The pebbles and the playthings, and the moss… … hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair Who […]...
24. The Octopi Jars Long-vacant eyes Now lodged in clear glass, A-swim with pale arms As delicate as angels’ … You are beyond all hope Of salvage now… And yet I would pause, No fear!, To once touch Your arcane beaks… I, more alien than you To this imprismed world, Notice, most of all, The scratches on the inside […]...
25. See See how her hair has thinned: it does not seem / Like hair at all, but like the airy moult / Of emus who outraced the wind and left / Soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes / Are gentler now; see how each wrinkle laughs, / And deepens on itself, as though […]...
26. The Forge To at last be indestructible, a poem Must first glow, almost flammable, upon A thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone, Then bend this way and that, and slowly cool At arms-length, something irreducible Drawn out with caution, toughened in a pool Of water so contrary just a hiss Escapes it-water instantly a mist. […]...
27. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
28. The Peripheries of Love Through waning afternoons we glide The watery peripheries of love. A silence, a quietude falls. Above us–the sagging pavilions of clouds. Below us–rough pebbles slowly worn smooth Grate in the gentle turbulence Of yesterday’s forgotten rains. Later, the moon like a virgin Lifts her stricken white face And the waters rise Toward some unfathomable shore. […]...
29. Flight 93 I held the switch in trembling fingers, asked Why existence felt so small, so purposeless, Like a minnow wriggling feebly in my grasp… Vibrations of huge engines thrummed my arms As, glistening with sweat, I nudged the switch To OFF… I heard the klaxon-shrill alarms Like vultures’ shriekings… earthward, in a stall… We floated… earthward… […]...
30. In Praise of Meter The earth is full of rhythms so precise The octave of the crystal can produce A trillion oscillations, yet not lose A second’s beat. The ear needs no device To hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch Drown out the mouth’s; the lips can be debauched By kisses, should the heart put back its watch […]...
31. Discrimination The meter I had sought to find, perplexed, Was ripped from books of “verse” that read like prose. I found it in sheet music, in long rows Of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks Of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed Half-centuries by archivists, unscanned. I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed- Why should their tattered artistry be banned? […]...
32. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
33. Farewell To Verse In youth when oft my muse was dumb, My fancy nighly dead, To make my inspiration come I stood upon my head; And thus I let the blood down flow Into my cerebellum, And published every Spring or so Slim tomes in vellum. Alas! I am rheumatic now, Grey is my crown; I can no […]...
34. While History's Muse While History’s Muse the memorial was keeping Of all that the dark hand of Destiny weaves, Beside her the Genius of Erin stood weeping, For hers was the story that blotted the leaves. But oh! how the tear in her eyelids grew bright, When, after whole pages of sorrow and shame, She saw History write, […]...
35. Excerpts from "Poetry&quot Poetry, I found you Where at last they chained and bound you; With devices all around you To torture and confound you, I found you-shivering, bare. They had shorn your raven hair And taken both your eyes Which, once cerulean as the skies, Had leapt at dawn to wild surmise Of what was waiting there. […]...
36. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
37. Rosemary Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary – Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly – Born of the sea supposedly, At Christmas each, in company, Braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary – Since the flight to Egypt, blooming indifferently. With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath, Its flowers – white originally – […]...
38. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
39. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
40. Take Back the Virgin Page Written on Returning a Blank Book Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Some hand, more calm and sage, The leaf must fill. Thoughts come, as pure as light Pure as even you require; But, oh! each word I write Love turns to fire. Yet let me keep the book: Oft shall my […]...