Rattlesnake Press in Pollack Pines announced yesterday that they will be publishing a new book of poetry by me this April. The title is A LIMITED MEANS OF EXPRESSION. I think i've used that phrase in a couple of poems. The book will be in two sections on one Angels and one on a lot of other things. i'm hoping we can bind it like I'd like to see it bound and i've asked someone to do a cover. I hope they can.
SLPY HLLW
I have caught and captured
Van Winkle just as he awoke,
Before he realized where he was
Or what had made his body
Remind him of the way it had worked.
I have shown him filmic images;
The Viet Nam war,
Automobiles of the 1939 World’s
Fairs, the moon landing,
Apartied and the meting ice
Caps. The miracle of television.
Go back to sleep Van Winkle.
This is not you waking at all.
It is a lullaby, a small voice
Singing a song to a French Canadian
Child just as the Winter days
Become coldest. A dream as bears
Have dreams, twitching in the limbs,
Devices that will never be believed,
Bowlers on the lawns in high places
Of the moraines of the Laurentians,
Sleep’s room made for birthing legends.
SONG IN THE AIR
Nobody’s riding and it looks like
This. We saw there was a road
But it was totally unforgiving.
It turned over and around like
The night as a snake and the day
As a landscape of bones and tired
eyes staring down to make one
Think that life had a compromise
Hidden somewhere in its freakish
Towers. But there is no one standing.
There is a song. Oh be sure there is a
Song and we sing it like blind men
Not understanding what the sweetness
Of words could be when smoothed
Into a bed. The voice of a lover
Or an owl or a deep pool. It
Becomes hard to recognize
Any of the friends, any of the lovers.
I am showing you my sleeve.
See this heart? It truly is mine.
