Pageviews past week

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

TRYING TO KEEP THIS ON TRACK- a new poem



Bill Roberts at Bottle of Smoke Press in Deleware is going to do a chapbook at some point of my work. It will be called private archeology. BOS does excellent work and I am honored.

PAIN IN ITS OWN CITY


They have left us alone.

The ice itself is quiet,

No shrieking or whooping moves

Through it. Even the wind has left

It alone like the end of a story.


The skin begins to seem less

Of a barrier and more like chordal

Movements in an adagio for strings.

Suddenly there is plenty of room left to just

Sit with the others by the sides

Of the road and listen to the questions

Posed to us by the travelers.


We do not wonder any longer.

This place was once a city.

When we look now it still seems so.

We can see the ghost buildings through

The rubble, think the dark crows, swans,

The crying of the children, the kind of dreaming

Worth remembering. We have come too far

To leave this place now. Some still

Fight with each other for a place

To sleep or possession of a blanket.


We look toward the palace, wondering

What it will be like there. No one

Remembers being unhappy. Every room

Seems full and bound to memory

As waves to the flat sea surrounding

Us. Superstitions abound, collecting

souls to form desires one can still

See as they take on faces, erase others

Or are erased themselves. They mingle

With their pain to give it form

To fill the places where the soul suddenly


Becomes empty and obvious, left

On a corner or in a doorway without

Any of its moments intact. They disrobe

And claim to be princes and high ranking

Women who came here long ago and now

Possess all the things they see around them.


We see sand and those things that cause

Unhappiness. We wish them possibilities.

They truly think we are only songs.