NIGHTINGALES

Josefa de Obido-O Cordeiro Pascal 

Joseph Noel Paton 1821-1901

NIGHTINGALES

Summer breaks its face on my arm.

I can’t remember how your mouth

Felt on mine.  How your hand was

When I put my lips on your fingertips.

My heart dances on my spine, fooling

Me into believing that love has a name

That sounds like yours but ends before

I can reach out and touch your hips,

Your lips, it, as they said, trips me

Past the dream house built of pale

Moonlight and forever and a day.

Up among the concordance of moon,

sun and our loving, bop style in mouth

Jazz explaining to each other from song

To song  how wild this thing is, wind,

The keys ripping past; candles made of

Fireflies and mission bells, tearing 

Sheets of song into tiny pieces.  Oh yes how

And howl, spurl myself digningly, plutridly

Fornicoulted, intensely exploding in charcoal

Mouth bar-b-que laughing.  There is

No further town we can be found in.

Every stop on your skin unveils the

Brisk night, irresponsible, tales told

By the blind about how the hands

Know the name, the name of all the rains,

Their particular voice, their night thoughts,

On sidewalks, opened at last, no streetlights,

No mouth of song following.  I touch

Your crazy traffic and burn acetylene yellow,

Pure green.  Aircraft land in the middle of summer.

My skin stretches, explodes and contains all

The mysterious rainbows from which we reconstruct

The language of all the endless nights of our youth.

THE BOOK OF SHIT

Frank Brangwyn

This was the first poem in my book CRUISIN' AT THE LIMIT: Selected Poems 1968-1978 published by Duck down Press, Fallon NV. 1982

THE BOOK OF SHIT

(invocation to the muse)

What fire then?

To give myself to children?

Oh woman run free before me

and let your hair come down, a winding sheet

for the fairest of the fair, the daughters

of the wind, your hair.

To be left alone somewhere in 1959

listening to fur piece bands play over

and over again, Night Train, memories

of bottles and stale smoke visions of black

haired girls dancing, legs spread, everybody’s 

hustlin’ brother, get your ass out there

and get it on.  And my guitar kept playing

thru Bill Doggett, spending a portion of your life

looking out the window of a smelly mens room

looking at the traffic going down Niagara Falls

Blvd., taillights like sores across the parking

lot.  And the band played on.

Sometimes I drank.

My first wife, dream bitch, falling

asleep on the couch and letting me rape her

in quiet of sunday afternoon after weeks of

not coming near my body, my brain warping

out on its own jetstream of her working and

not coming  home till two or three in the morning.

She didn’t wake up the whole goddamn time.

Just laid there and I stuck it in and worked.

My heart, coming so close to the dream

and she laid there, later to say, “Don’t

try to fuck me when I’m asleep” and I had

no more words, walked out on the porch

and watched the street lights

and cars.  All the music little purple fires

in the ends of my fingers.  she said

listening to me read something to my best

friend, “Why not call your first book:

THE BOOK OF SHIT.’

It was a joke, we all laughed.

She could not understand

what I was doing and I wrote harder to keep

her away from what was my self, the damage was

already done.  I wanted to keep a small part

for myself, some place where i could be pure.

Finally, waking up to orange juice and glucose

after 21 days of shock treatments for an anxiety

reaction, which means I wound up huddled behind

a door afraid to open it to anyone.  Anyway it worked.

I didn’t care about a thing.

Thorazine and hands moving in my dreams.

All that was left were the words.

All that was left was the part I had kept

for myself, the poems: THE BOOK OF SHIT.

Class of ’61.

A LATE JOURNEY

A LATE JOURNEY

We passed the house of the avenging angel

With its parapets and ribboned trumpeters,

Purple and red-violet the color

Of their eyes.  It was the hour

When dreams are captured, sorted

And released to the children born

To the damned and to those who

Wander.  They are unable to speak,

Dress in cassocks and flowing

Gowns.   They do not take bodies

Often as it is this dreaming

That gives voices to the winds.

We can see this in the eyes

Wild animals turn to us

When we encounter them in the forest,

Unexpected and interrupting their precision

We like to call behavior.

The stars wound round him, this lurid angel

As the singing rose around us.  Lights began

To go out as stars became the evening.

FEBRUARY, UNAWARES

A Buddha made from bugs

A piece by Jan Fabre

This poem was published in my book WHERE THE STARS ARE KEPT, published by Rattlesnake Press, Pollack Pines, Ca in 2007.  The book is out of print.

FEBRUARY, UNAWARES

There seem to be small lights

In the water, just at the edge of the dock.

I've been watching them for hours.

They flick on and off, changing colors,

Making random patterns just

Below the surface.  They do

Not appear to be attached to anything.

Rather, signals from below the water,

Defragmenting,  some larger

Information, condensing space,

Too small to be seen otherwise.

A word appears.

It is displayed briefly but

Clearly. 
Again, it reads.

Then Look, quickly followed by

Time, This, Here, Changing.

Moment, Practice, Stillness.

Then Nothing.

The patterns do not return.

A number of fish gather where

These lights have been; breaking

The surface, falling back, flashing

Silver sides as they do.

I don't expect anyone to believe

This.  I was alone.  The place

Was remote.  The evening was a quiet one.  

These things happen occasionally.

We consider them wonders.

Talking lightening, a display of bio-

Luminescence, a new way to

Communicate, a privilege to observe,

To see and hear things all around us.

Knowing the night and the day.

Hurling through space on

A beautiful blue planet,

Counting all the stars as we do so.