There Is, Finally

Let’s discuss the art of poetry.

Every sharp-fingered, discursive hero,

Shakespeare’s fears of chaos, 

Dover Beach and Daytona

Washed away by song, 

By the lyrics of Mumford & Sons.

The fragile alternatives I give myself,

I who would offer darkness and this

Progressive unexpected conclusion—

This known weakness and known song.

Oh, to be born without falls

Come tumbling.  No wind and slip-

Shod clouds, no whispered breath and thin-

Lipped voice comes down high walls.

Rock, 

Oh, rock me, Sadie, like a wagon wheel!

Hey, Sadie, rock me any way you feel.

He-e-e-y, Sadie, rock me.

Come rock me, Sadie, like the wind and the rain.

Rock me like that south-bound train.

He-e-e-y, Sadie, rock me.

Style and poetic language, 

Residual and delicate—

Aside from songs of rocks and crows,

Aside of seven blue guitars.

All stars fall, all stark

Sparks plunge on virgin ground,

A new-found and impartial shore.

There is, finally, a third

Something or other.

Oh, Frank, Why Did You Wait So Long to Kiss Me?

O-O-O’Hara, you kissed off before I saw
Myself in Lacan’s mirror, before I took off
My angel wings. Why did you 

Wait so long?

David Bowie, a screwed down hair-do—
Ziggy and those irksome spiders danced—
Bowie danced instead of you, Frank.

He danced those fly-blown beds, and
No one will believe you broke
The band, cut those lovely hands, cursed the night
And blessed the forlorn day, Frank.

No one wants to believe that shit.

What the Crow Showed Me

I had no use for words, no use to feel

the triple wind, the tripped and fickle  

words I couldn’t say. A thirsty bird,

I swallowed loss, drank coffee in a demitasse,

and saw my mother’s cotton sheet

douse dawn and dream the wrinkled day.

And I broke my wings on songs
my father couldn’t play.

The Undoing Ghost

In the last three hours of his life,
he shuffled through claustrophobic rooms,
closing doors and windows,
flicking off light switches,
pouring unfinished glasses of white wine
and tumblers of ice water
down a kitchen sink.

He wielded a remote control,
turning a television on
in every room he scuffled through.

His wife seemed always just
not too far ahead, disappearing down this
hallway or beyond that door,
but she didn't look back,
and he didn't catch up.