Two Poems

Unhappiness

Relentlessly they roll
Rise up and crash over
After the curl these waves
That symbolize one life after another
Rising up out of the dark deep
Without stopping or going anywhere
But back and forth with a purpose
If there’s such circumstance, meaning,
Hope, concept, or direction
But the force is considerable and plays with, is played by
A moon above, yellow and round in the upper reaches of sky
Yet close, very close
And rotating —

On a circle, one step away from beginning
Is a step toward beginning
But no beginning exists in such a case
Other than the illusion of beginning
One merely names
That constructs a sad ending
A curve and a crash
A dissipation and undertow
Children love to play in these waves
Whose smash rumble and twittering backslide
Carrying sand up into it
And sweeping it out from below
Excites and frightens them until they master it
Knowing they don’t really master it
But master it enough not to fear

—

Intransigency
Of physical world
That resists the mind’s
Blitheness — the jar’s
Lid that sticks
Pen that skips
The collapsing bridge
Wind that blows the house
That’s subject to stress
Down — but the mind
Not beholden to the
Past’s enjambment
Flows always smooth
Nothing in it can break or bend
So the whole world flows
Even when things fall apart

—

The career of a poet:
1/32nd of a second
In which success and acclaim’s
Assured temporarily

—

Surrounded by the sea
In a small boat by white-tipped
Sloshing waves in all directions
Undulating mercilessly
Is a metaphor for something having to do with
Desire, having to do with how one
Mistakes in life the forest for the trees
The figure for the ground
The sand for the siren
The quasi for the complete
Sail on dear ship of state
Flimsy as you are
Into the sweet waters

—

A certain amount of unhappiness goes
Along with the need to create in words
Something that before the words appeared in mind
Did not exist or even be dreamed to have
Existed in an inconceivable verb tense
It has nothing to do with intelligence skill or knowledge
Only the luck of being in the right place at the wrong time
The unhappiness comes with the never being able
The never quite being able
To remember this

So Much Can Be Derived

So much can be derived
From perusing the mail
On an average day in the swamp
This one falling ill, that one falling in love
The other maligned by forces beyond her control
Justly or not, the world’s contentiousness enough without
Such censoriousness
And to whom are we speaking
As we press our idle thoughts upon one another
Little letters in the sand when surf’s at its heaviest
I can hear it crash against the rocks
Tossed there by a mathematical god
In a random universe
In which rocks are names
And water the substance of the named things
There’s pressure in my head
Causing my eyes on stalks to pop out yellow
Swiveling around unbelieving
Must one believe to live in the world at all?
Speak loud so you can hear me
Thus they packed their beach towels and lunch pails
And off they went to price appliances
In a foreign country, untethered by shame or fortune
In heaven there are no automatic weapons
To be found guilty of a crime there
One need only to have arrived unexpectedly
The scream of gulls and the silent relentless progression
Of pelicans over the waters
There’s a body of knowledge out there somewhere
One need only glimpse it behind the drawn blinds
The clocks tick on, and then on
But time remains the unmentionable
I thought history would provide us with context for our lunacy
Instead they say it merely repeats some other history
Unknown in these parts
An heirloom of the fortunate families
Inundated by passionate memories
Of a time when light was crimson and always lonely
And many people knew sorrow and forms of psychic dismemberment
We keep finding these things out
And wish we didn’t know them
Or that later they’ll prove to be something like stage machinery
Various hidden gadgets to be maneuvered
So that the play can go on
Magnificent in its elusiveness
Everyone has a flower or is a flower or names a flower
Or plucks a flower for putting in a vase
And here’s a still life with the head of a chicken
An apple, a tornado, and a pipe
The words must come from somewhere
Various texts composed in advance
By financiers if they don’t
Spring out fully clothed from my mind but how could they?
There’s nothing there but the shrill sound of silence
The bush before the bird
The hush before the heist
Before the hammer falls
And all that was promised is finally delivered
And we are far beyond puns and oxymorons and metaphors
Just don’t grab stuff and you’ll be fine