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Poetry brought me to poetry: the Hebrew Bible,
Lorca, Rimbaud, Hopkins, Yeats, Karl Shapiro, Whitman, the Beats....
Here is one of several poems where I speak to
my inspirational buddy, Walt. This appeared in the anthology Broken
Land: Poems of Brooklyn:*
FOR WALT AND THE LION
TAMERS
First ran into you
hiding out around Bushwick Public Library
I was in love puppy love with a young blonde librarian
stamping long litanies of date dues
she loved my first after-shave lotion
touched me touched your book
made me blush and come back
for more date dues
Public library had small concrete lions out front
what a rush of lines and lions!
verse after verse you devoured me!
I was raw and you ate me raw
you got to my bones and sucked them clean
turned them into panpipes in a tenement
where the only pipes I knew
were cold radiators and faulty plumbing
man, you had me
Later someone tarred the lions
still later someone smashed the lions
later still they up and disappeared
it’s tough to be a lion in Bushwick Brooklyn
library lions don’t stand a chance
in the man eating streets
they went just like this
the neighborhood went just like that
gone with the lions to some landfill
Sometimes, Walt, I still see you around
working in a shelter for the homeless
I still keep in touch with your Leaves
first touched in a leafless slum
where grass was out of bounds
where I was ashamed to bring a friend or a date
but I wasn’t ashamed to bring you keep you renew you
pay your date due fines bail you out
always tempted to steal you
I knew that you knew me inside out
I touched you touched a man
I would’ve loved to touch the librarian
but what’s a blonde compared to a book, Walt
I knew you’d outlast the damn lions
*edited
by Julia Spicher Kasdorf & Michael Tyrell (NYU Press, 2007)
In the 1960’s and ‘70’s, poet types were putting together cheap,
sometimes gov’t funded, magazines and chapbooks. Readings on and off
the campuses. Ethnics and beatniks and real life celebrity poets, wow,
took the place of dead or almost dead white men.
Downtown Poets got started in the 70’s as a cooperative endeavor--poets
pitched in to lay out and bind the books by hand. The Print Center in
Brooklyn provided cheap printing and stapling machines. Don Lev, Ivan
Argüelles, Enid Dame, Fritz Hamilton, and Althea Romeo-Mark--a
young award winning poet who started out as my student in the Virgin
Islands, were on our list.
One of the
Blackbeard poems
from my Downtown Poet’s
collection, Play Mas’:
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Blackbeard teaches
his wife karate
kills her in the process
it’s OK
the police lose the evidence
what are friends for
his girlfriend
is pregnant
so the score is even
one down and one up
he doesn’t want her
to lose the evidence
claims his baby
will bust bricks
with a single chop
minute he comes out
he has a few bets going
the police will keep
the evidence
if his baby is born
with a beard on
*******
And another true life poem from Paradise:
She was pregnant
when she flew in
and she’s leaving
with empty arms
and a tan
She’s tasted clocks
and coconuts
and done her time
and drunk her milk
laced with sand
It’s strange how
the grains get
into everything
you drink
Papayas tenderized
her stew
mangoes puckered
her lips
You’re not allowed
to carry soft fruit
off island
She drops her fruit
and flies.
******
I rewrote most of the poems in another small chapbook, Kanji:Poems of Japan. “Asakusa”
survived intact:
ASAKUSA
anone
no need for priests
for pagodas
for incense
and saffron sleeves
today must be a day
for us cagey crickets
don’t ask who let us out of the cage
when we’re green we sing
Tsuyo
look up...clouds cut the sun
only a few pigeons block the wind
& the giant sandals at the Main Gate
wait for the Lord of the Untranslatable
*******
Elijah’s Child
(Cross Cultural Communications, NY)
is an autobiographical collection.
I converse at times with the prophet
Elijah himself: |
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INTERVIEW: ELIJAH AND THE POET
POET: Well, Mr. E,
you don’t mind if I shorten your name--
it’s the fashion in a fast age.
ELIJAH: No, I don’t mind. I’m used to speed.
My chariot really moves.
POET: You have a chariot?
ELIJAH: Fire’s the color.
POET: That’s right, I caught you once in a famous painting.
can’t remember the artist.
ELIJAH: You were the artist. You were a kid.
You liked flaming wheels--fire engines....
POET: How do you know?
ELIJAH: Same as I know everything.
POET: What I want to ask is
are you still real?
ELIJAH: Are you?
POET: I’m a fictional character who suffers.
ELIJAH: So am I.
POET: But you’ve been around for thousands of years.
ELIJAH: And you’re one of my agents.
Youv’e been around for thousands of years, too.
Time’s up. I’ve got other appointments.
POET: O.K. Where will you be next Passover?
ELIJAH: Open the door and find out.
POET: But I’ve opened the door for years,
for centuries, for eternity.
ELIJAH: Open it again.
It’s the opening that counts.
Everything else is child’s play.
*******
DAVID
Again in Jerusalem
someone calls out my name
Who knows me here?
A young mother
calls out David David
in the City of David
Who knows me?
The cracks in the stones
call me back to an echo
I turn around to see
where the cracks lead
where the child is hiding
David David
in the City of David
I was here before
and I’ll be here after
If not me another David
advancing toward the tower
and the young mother’s voice
following
calling
echoing
David David David
come home
*******
A pile of manuscripts await the verdict DONE.
This is from Dividing Jerusalem,
the title poem:
DIVIDING JERUSALEM
In memoriam: Yehuda Amichai
You take the olives
I’ll take the figs
you keep the sparrows
I’ll take the doves
you take the oranges
I’ll keep the pomegranates
you take the red grapes
I’ll take the green
divorce divorce
and there’s no divorce
I heard a prophet say
peace peace
and there is no peace
I heard a widow weep
divorce divorce
you take the rose
I’ll die by my jasmine
you embrace the clouds
I’ll treasure the rain
you take the thunder
I’ll keep the lightning
divorce divorce
you close your roads
I’ll open mine
you take the rocks
I’ll take the bones
you take the skulls
I’ll keep the tombs
fifty fifty
on the seven gates
to the city
Lion’s gate for you
Zion gate for me
Omar for you
Moriah for me
we divide Gehenna
we split Siloam’s waters
we share Dolorosa
we flip coins
for David’s
Tower
yes yes yes
you take no I take yes
you take yes I take
no
divorce divorce
I heard a man calling
to his echo
divorce divorce
I heard a blind imam
whisper to the deaf
divorce divorce
I heard a deaf rabbi
talking to the wall
divorce divorce
a mourner’s vow
divorce divorce
an orphan’s wail
divorce divorce
you take the voices
I’ll hold the visions
you take the tears
I’ll hold the cries
you hold the breeze
I’ll hold the air
Solomon Solomon
how do we split
this baby
you take Muhammad’s horse
I’ll take Messiah’s donkey
you take the pita
I’ll take the matzáh
you take the Prophet’s suras
I’ll take King David’s psalms
you beat the durbakee
I’ll blast the shofar
you take Allahu akbar
I’ll take the Shema
you make whole
the maimed and crippled
I’ll ask Ezekiel
to liven up
wake up
bring back the dead
*******
Mexico is a mythmonger's playgound and its Mariachi music always puts
me into another orbit. The Aztec gods lie just beneath the surface.
Running up the pyramid of the sun at dawn and sundown is one way to
commune with the Plumed Serpent. From Mariachi
Murals:
MAN MADE GOD
After the basic necessities
fuel my red mouth
to overflowing
after my bed is filled
with all the meat I can handle
what am I again
the governor of cactus
the kicker of stones
the skull basher
the chisler of hearts
the carver of cliffs
what am I again
the ruler of toothaches
the pain in the neck
the reviver of dead birds
To the illiterate go the laurels
in accidental gardens of turquoise music
eccentric obsidian and flint
I cut the ice of words in bloom
I can only be touched by flowering euphemism
when I wake up in another language or another dance
I have abandoned the bones of the shining houses
and my only fire comes from smoking mirrors of mica
I’m reduced to being a museum piece
another Aztec god biting the dust
calling it nourishing calling it home
********
LULLABY FOR BARE LIGHT BULBS
Early and late broken lullabies
rattle laments for bare light bulbs
mocking homicidal maracas
I bury the dead moon twice
over smoking mica mirrors
and melancholy echoes
nursing infants in Aztlán
where umbilical cords burn
in forgotten war zones
to the tune of peyote baby formula
No hallucinations--no leaps, no mirrors
no other face for inventing faces
for scorpions spiders rattlesnakes
for dogs with perfect vision and no insight
not even for the old lady of the childbirth market
walking the riverside at night
crying crumbs and baby bottles
crying diapers and pulque
searching always searching
for the infant drowned in her breasts
No one helps her look for her sons
ripped out of ancient narcotic calendars
old men now
missing men now
men missing brains now
Alzheimer’s men with no sequence or consequence
men with bald heads gold teeth decayed voice boxes
no excuses no alibis no crimes
except matricide fratricide infanticide
I listen with them now
for the bedtime song in the street
confessions of self torture
raising bells in the bones
cradling the ultimate blueprint
*******
STATIC
Where are you calling from?
beyond the paper border
the river missing from the map
the marketplace of masks
the teeth in exile
What are you running from?
the keepers of dust
the First Woman and the Last
the metallic taste of dead moons
the eternal phone ringing
Tonatzín Tonatzín
What are you hiding from?
the bells from invisible mountains
a throne of thorns
a bed of decapitated echoes
a voice crying “go to Aztlán!”
an ambush of laughter
Speak louder! What’s in your mouth?
a crushed snake
from the roadkill road
dedicated to Xolotl on the run
What did you say?
sssss sss ssssssss ss sssss
gods of bad connections
cutting in and out
don’t cut us off
don’t
*******
From the forthcoming American Alien:
EDNA, WE MUST STOP
MEETING LIKE THIS
There’s Edna St. Vincent Millay
my mother’s favorite
scandalously romantic poet
her verse confronts me
among the advertisements
on the Manhattan bound F train
(Hey! Poetry-in-Motion
it’s good for you--eat it)
it seems I can’t escape the Spanish refrain
recuerdo recuerdo
I’m willing to bet Edna said it
with an American accent
recuerdo recuerdo
and I see a candle burning at both ends
for my holy mother Mary
who tried to burn her own way out
and got burned
using the wrong burner
recuerdo recuerdo
and I go back and forth
on the Staten Island Ferry in my mind
seeing Edna and my mother so merry
why do I feel like jumping off
as Lady Liberty hits the high notes
a yenta on speed recuerdorecuerdorecuerdo
I wish Edna would get off this subway
with her Greenwich Village Spanish
why does she have to bug me every morning with
recuerdo recuerdo
I recuerdo too well
and it kills me before breakfast
recuerdo recuerdo
when they opened my mother up
they found a short candle
burning at both ends
hardly any time left
recuerdo recuerdo
when they open me up
what will they find
a crematorium for candles
or some knives that were twisted by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
mugging me on the F train into Manhattan
*******
TUTANKHAMEN’S CHAIR
Three thousand years ago
in my first kingdom
pomegranates were new in Egypt
I sat on an adult chair
my feet not touching the floor
Three thousand years later
pomegranate seeds
stuck in my throat
until a Sudanese giant
picked me up
slapped me on the back
and sent me soaring
through the sky
to my white ship
waiting to sail the Big Sea
Thanks to the Sudanese giant
I found safety
in an exploding ocean
and landed in New York
blind towers in December fog
uncle with black sedan
big eggs for the asking
milk you didn’t have to boil
festival lights of the cult
that wears a cross
tall buildings so tall
a land of milk and snow
but that wasn’t enough
It was too gray
too cold
too far from Alexandria
too far from stars over Canaan
and peacocks in Persian gardens
and young pomegranates
beginning to swell
but when I sit down now
my feet touch the ground
and I’m older than Tut
May Anubis, Ra,
Horus, Amun and Allah
bless the Nubian
and may I be lifted up again
and set on a different course
I can use another slap
on the back
the seeds of Egypt
the ruby seeds
can still lodge in my throat
*********
STRANGERS WAVING
People wave I wave back do I know them
do they know me who cares
I just like to wave back
it’s good exercise
if I ever run for president
I just like to wave
though I don’t recognize a soul
I wave to children truck drivers sailboats
anything that waves
or makes waves
I’m a born waver and wave maker
for anything close to my wavelength
cars roll by drivers wave
they seem to know who I am
when I hardly know myself
it’s disconcerting not to know
when others in the driver’s seat
zip by seeming to know
and with a wave of their hand
acknowledging this knowledge
leaving me mystified
on the sidewalk--what a gesture!
was it the wave of true recognition
or the wave of mistaken identity
was I taken for someone else
and if so who is that person
who passes for my person
am I impersonating someone
or is someone impersonating me
I can only wave them off
as I wave hello
to a stranger in a passing vehicle
headed for gridlock
*******
I’m
attracted to the Japanese literary and aesthetic world, in
particular haiku. Haiku writing releases alpha waves in my gray
matter--at times I go into a trance-like state, sedate and meditative,
as opposed to the rhythmic, driven, impulsive high of the free verse
free fire zone.
Here’s a Haiku Society of America prize winner:
the rock gardener
making sure
nothing grows
***
For the New Year:
in a busy year’s diary
one blank page
after another
***
From New Jersey:
power outage
picking out stars
with a flashlight
***
stiff with autumn
the hop gone out
of the grasshopper
***
hiking
only a Monarch
breaks the silence
***
tired of hitching
pointing my thumb
in the wrong direction
***
forest preserve--
a woodpecker chooses
the utility pole
***
 photo, DG
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 photo, DG
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by the pond
fishing for his notes--
the haiku poet
***
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at the dock
watching someone else's boat
come in
***
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For more illustrated haiku, click here for Caribbean Haiga.
A mix of haiku and prose makes a haibun. The haiku often crystalizes
out of the prose
or reflects on the prose in an oblique and tangential manner. In this
haibun, in Frogpond, I use a
thematic haiku sequence:
SPRING CITY
N.Y. Port Authority
bus terminal spring weekend free theatre free dance free crowds oops
sorry I’m in your way--a group of hare krishnas hare hare rama rama
ramamama rama drums tambourines ramalamadingdong thanks gang you’ll
never know what an inspiration you’ve been I’m heading for the
mountains free air free pines free streams goodbye krishnas hello
Ramapos hello Ramapoems. Get me outta here.
spring--
running up the escalator
I miss the wrong bus
my bus pulling out
your bus pulling in--
what could’ve been
goodbye, New York
Oh for that first whiff
of skunk
bus stop
back to New York
every dandelion plucked
***
While it’s
stimulating to have an established track to run around in,
some tracks don’t do it for me. I give a wide birth to villanelles and
sestinas. However, I am attracted to pantoums, mainly for the echoes,
often surprising to me and possibly to the reader. There’s a kind of
singsong, obsessive quality to them.
When I use specific poetic forms, I use them as a guide and try not to
adhere too rigidly to the form--there’s always room for play and
innovation.
BABY NIGHTMARES
My baby’s got nightmares
Only three years old, precocious child
She’s got the late night panics
She puts my sleep on hold
My child’s only three years old
Not old enough to know the world
She puts my sleep on hold
I’ve got to lullaby and goodnight her
Not old enough to know the world
What can she be afraid of?
I’ve got to lullaby and goodnight her
She’ll know the world of nightmares soon enough
What can she be afraid of?
I know my fears from A to Z
She’ll know the nightmare world soon enough
Her night terrors make me jump
I know my fears from A to Z
Fires, tsunamis, terrorist attacks
Her night terrors make me jump
I’m a professional nightmare jumper
Fires, tsunamis, terror attacks
She puts my nightmares on hold
She’s got the late night panics
Precocious child, my baby’s only three years old
*******
GOOD! YOU WAKE UP
Good! You wake up ready to take on the absurd
Now you look both ways at the traffic of birds
And before you know it you won’t know what hit you
It’s that simple--you can die laughing
You stop to look both ways at the traffic of birds
No need for seers when the leaves prophesy
It’s that simple--you can die laughing
There are strangers who will know what to do with you
No need for seers when the leaves prophesy
I add my fears to the confusion of too many candles
There are strangers who will know what to do with you
They will bring you home in a jar meant for fireflies
I add my fears to the confusion of too many candles
Soft echoes and one more light to burn
They will bring you home in a jar meant for ashes
They will pour you like breadcrumbs on the water
Soft echoes and one more light to burn
The holidays come at you like exploding candy
They will pour you like breadcrumbs on the water
Your sex will embrace a new shape of rain
The holidays come at you like exploding candy
And before you know it you won’t know what hit you
Your sex will embrace a new shape of rain
Good! You wake up ready to take on the absurd
*******
WE TWO SEEKING ONE
Our faces light up after long separation
We split the pomegranate
It’s a red letter day
Why hold anything back?
We split the pomegranate
Two halves make one whole
Why hold anything back?
It’s Plato’s fable in the Symposium
Two halves make one whole
That’s the kind of math I love
It’s Plato’s fable in the Symposium
Alone together and together alone
That’s the kind of math I love
It’s amazing how seeds fall in fall out
Alone together and together alone
Recalling whispers, your bite or mine
It’s amazing how seeds fall in fall out
Fruits we shared, apples in Eden
Asking in whispers, your bite or mine
We have a language and a private garden
Fruits we shared, apples in Eden
It’s a red letter day
We have a language and a private garden
Our faces light up after long separation
*******
“Poetry Loves Rain” takes off from Verlaine’s famous ballad “Il pleure dans mon coeur/Comme il pleut
sur la ville” and recalls student days in Paris. Verlaine was
also one of the first Western poets to use the pantoum form.
POETRY LOVES RAIN
homage to Paul Verlaine
Poetry loves rain
An evening with Verlaine
Pouring words into poetry
Turning words into rain
An evening with Verlaine
A refrain over the Seine
Turning words into rain
It becomes hypnotic!
A refrain over the Seine
Turning rain into words
It becomes hypnotic
Words turn into wine
In the rain on the run
I thought I’d be back
Turning words into wine
But where is that map?
I never went back
I was on the run
It took a different map
to know the way
I was on the run
Turning wine into rain
No idea of the way
Poetry loves pain
*******
The ghazal is
another intriguing form. It has a filmatic cut and
splice quality--dream sequences that make their own connections,
suggestive and sometimes surreal. The poem is made up of several two
line couplets, verbal beads on a string, yet each bead can stand on its
own. Its Arabic origin in the sher
must also appeal to my Near Eastern side.
GHAZAL OF AMBER BEADS
The wine disappears in the mouth of a drunken sage
A blind translator hands me an empty page
I worry the beads in hand, a shepherd of stones
The ruins of Babylon litter a babbling age
Are you married to your calculating heart of hearts?
I fall into a midnight collapse, the opposite of rage
There’s no refund for clay gods or sky gods here
We pay to release white doves from an iron cage
Come inside in the name of a loving ambush
Come alive to where our bones may click and engage
Searching for an address you come to my door
every address except yours swept off the stage
Understanding that there’s no understanding--
the understanding that lets us disengage
*******
GHAZAL OF THE UNATTAINABLE
Give your bones the choice of winter or May
I long for the unattainable and sleep on what you say
Ah, woman, I wake up to the silent treatment
Sleeping policemen shake up the dying day
Partners in crime suffer the same horoscope
A lottery of losses is the game in play
My fortune for today: get another fortune
My fortune for tomorrow: same as yesterday
You wrote in code on the calendar
Your words hid in the open: winter words I salted away
You fell off the planet--I’ve come down to earth
You were a woman, not a metaphor for clay
*******
“Storks” is a ghazal in free verse, which makes it something else, more
of a free verse psalm....
STORKS
The ram’s horn no longer blasts your bones into roses
The candelabrum no longer ignites fierce tribes of thorns
What leaps out of sleep like the dawn gazelle?
What voice shakes the dew off the mountains?
Old prophecies come and go like beaten echoes
driven into a wall of misunderstandings
You lost the war on mirrors and return time and again
to pick up the bits and pieces from the bottom of the harbor
Only an ancient migration of storks
can lift your eyes to voices out of the blue
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