the Destruction of word(s)

Friendly Moments

Pass by
Floating temporary
Puff of smoke

To whom it may concerns reference the frantic moments
Dry up to the well
Lied about the secrets reveal the past
While the booze sustains any sort of bond

I lost it all in a market
And regained nothing in these fleeting periods
Of withdrawal

No one burns in water
Of drowns in flame
Yet I manage

The unsettling happiness roles around and down
Pushing it in
And the voice on the phone
Isn’t the same voice that spent hours
Molding substance and truths

Played out and the band marched on and on
Like a New Orleans funeral procession
The jazz stings your face
Like the wind should
But the shanty shacks still withhold
Their foundation worn
Faded from catastrophe
Disaster settles and last but not least
Acceptance

The bar closes yet the few remain
In chit chat
And the skeletons line the ceilings
Dropping like an avalanche

Madness is fleeting
The grip is substantial
As smoke rings around the head
And the retina focuses to know use

Those moments are lost













Old poet

Sour body
Flattened mind
Words on his breath
Like whiskey
Brown words
Dying of possibly under
An influence of another
Spitting out art like an accident
Wasted on the lack of worries
Aesthetic amnesia
Passion less worries
Life is unholy and gay
Harking back to poetry class
The workshop pains him
So great yet so tragic in flaws
To embrace not change
To breathe not hold it in
Put the page to the grind
And work
Workhorse
Trojan horse
Disappointment after another
The publisher has dust on its press
And yet his name shivers on his tongue
The readings were few
Yet time told no lies
And his face told his poems
Before his words
His beautiful words
Cracked and frantic
Tremble the students
Waiting for thunder but just a light breeze
Tv dinners line his trashcan
And the sofa worn in one place
Eternal wisdom held inside
Never tapped just suffering
Until the ground swallows him
In all of its majestic glory

Psalm for Oppen

In worse forest
deer bed over--
there.


as eyes soften
lips nibble
nipples nuzzle
alien plastic grass
filling the remainder
of Easter crosses

roots dangle from mouths
like flesh
earth scatters ash
yet the natural tombs
are there.


Paths nibbled thru leaves
circles outsource
honor is aforementioned
side notes whiter in reference
reign in environment--
no green piece left unturned
words left to hang in the sun


Faith in the wild
Dear George,
Harps left sharp
Dual messages undelivered
Students lost beyond the depths
Studies of academic yearnings
left naked
to engulf and to leave not in exile
but in sheer vulgarity.








this poem is partly taken from this Oppen poem

Psalm
In the small beauty of the forest
The wild deer bedding down --
That they are there!

Their eyes
Effortless, the soft lips
Nuzzle and the alien small teeth
Tear at the grass

The roots of it
Dangle from their mouths
Scattering earth in the strange woods.
They who are there.

Their paths
Nibbled thru the fields, the leaves that shade them
Hang in the distances
Of sun

The small nouns
Crying faith
In this in which the wild deer
Startle, and stare out.