Poemunity — your poem community

Curtains drawn back, the door ajar. All winter long, it seemed, a darkening Began. But now the moonlight and the odors of the street Conspire and combine toward one community. These are the rooms of Robinson. Bleached, wan, and colorless this light, as though All the blurred daybreaks of the spring Found an asylum here, perhaps for Robinson alone, Who sleeps. Were there more music sifted through the floors And moonlight of a different kind, He might awake to hear the news at ten, Which will be shocking, moderately. This sleep is from exhaustion, but his old desire To die like this has known a lessening. Now there is only this coldness that he has to wear. But not in sleep.—Observant scholar, traveller, Or uncouth bearded figure squatting in a cave, A keen-eyed sniper on the barricades, A heretic in catacombs, a famed roué, A beggar on the streets, the confidant of Popes— All these are Robinson in sleep, who mumbles as he turns, “There is something in this madhouse that I symbolize— This city—nightmare—black—” He wakes in sweat To the terrible moonlight and what might be Silence. It drones like wires far beyond the roofs, And the long curtains blow into the room.

O little-know facts—how Robinson attracts them! Pilgrims rocked ashore here, before Plymouth Rock. The word scrimshaw is of unknown origin. The stock name of the archaic two-lane main road? Route 6A. Really it’s Old King’s Highway. Some facts are useless: the paper bag was invented in Dennis. Some facts are not: Wellfleet’s town clock sings out ship’s time. 19 th century Americans observed only three holidays. The Fourth of July was one. O witty aperçus—how Robinson accrues them! Good food is self-made, like a good millionaire. Don’t just do something. Stand there. It’s got to be the weekend somewhere. Robinson is crisp & perspicuous. His wife stands next to him on the sand. Democracy could be a lot more sexy if . . . this one fades in the rockets’ red glare. Ann blushes, runs a hand through his hair. Robinson looks up, concussed. Fireworks percuss.

the Tuesday after he was last seen. A policeman is there to pick the shrill thing up. Who is it? the couple of friends present ask as he cups it to his ear. Then hangs up. There was no one there. They have come to recon a vacant property—a mise en scéne: Knoll butterfly chairs—a pair of them— two red socks soaking in the white bathroom sink, a saucer of milk for the cat to drink, a stack of reel-to-reel tapes, a matchbook from the Italian Village where he ate his last spaghetti dinner, & two books he’d been re-reading, or wanted someone to think he had: The Devils&The Tragic Sense of Life. Preoccupation & a certain mode of self-presentation. Even when absent, Robinson has a style. No wallet, though. No watch, no sleeping bag, no bankbook. The apartment looks the way it feels to read a newspaper that’s one day old. The policeman wants to go back outside, among the lemons & fog & barking dogs. Out where the sun can copper their faces. Writing takes space, recordings take time. The place puts the policeman in mind of something he read recently, about the collapse of a dead star. About how it takes ages for the light to become motionless. Seven years after a disappearance, a person can be pronounced dead. But that’s nothing compared to the size of the ocean.

the ideal city building itself in his brain. Is this mile magnificent? He’s lived here a while, but the mile feels unreal. Robinson’s training himself to act blasé. Do museums amuse me? Yes, but not today. Would he like to be in one? Of course. Why not? An object of value with canvas wings, an unchanging face in a gilt frame, arranged— thoughtless, guilt-free, & preserved for eternity. Robinson doesn’t want to be exceptional. He knows he is. He wants to be perceived exceptional. Trains plunge by, steam rising from the grates. Sing, muse! of a man ill-met at the Met. A man on his lunch break, heading for a heartbreak, a break-up with Time. A break-up with time? Feeling filled with ice, the way you chill a glass, Robinson passes the National Academy. He craves a sense of belonging, not to always be longing. To be standing in a doorway, incredibly kissable, not waiting at the four-way, eminently missable. Is this mile magnanimous? He wants it unanimous: that this is his kind of town— up & down & including Brooklyn. The sky is clearing, but the isolation sticks. Robinson’s not sure what a camera obscura is for, but he thinks he should have his portrait done with one. Faces blur by as he heads toward the Frick. Something used to photograph the obscure.

" Was Andalusia here or there? On the land . . . or in the poem ?" —Mahmoud Darwish I must admit to this outright theft. Before the crickets could impede me, I reached outside my window to grab as much of Andalusia as I could in the palm of my hand. I took the evening's silver from the olive trees, the yellow slumber from the lemons, the recipe for gazpacho. I made a small incision in my heart and slipped in as much as my left and right ventricles could hold. I reached for a pen and a piece of paper to ease-out the land into this poem. I closed the small incision in my heart and closed the wooden shutters of my window.

with clear-cased woofers for heads, no eyes. They see us as a bat sees a mosquito—a fleshy echo, a morsel of sound. You've heard their intergalactic tour busses purring at our stratosphere's curb. They await counterintelligence transmissions from our laptops and our blue teeth, await word of humanity's critical mass, our ripening. How many times have we dreamed it this way: the Age of the Machines, postindustrial terrors whose tempered paws—five welded fingers —wrench back our roofs, siderophilic tongues seeking blood, licking the crumbs of us from our beds. O, great nation, it won't be pretty. What land will we now barter for our lives ? A treaty inked in advance of the metal ones' footfall. Give them Gary. Give them Detroit, Pittsburgh, Braddock—those forgotten nurseries of girders and axels. Tell the machines we honor their dead, distant cousins. Tell them we tendered those cities to repose out of respect for welded steel's bygone era. Tell them Ford and Carnegie were giant men, that war glazed their palms with gold. Tell them we soft beings mourn manufacture's death as our own.

They look Like Big Strong hands Don’t they? But for some They are eerily reminiscent Of drunken stepfathers who didn’t listen Abusive lovers Who didn’t ask permission Of bullies Who never got to see the gold within ’Cause they were too busy fracking the aether out of Innocents These Bronze Hands Give people flashbacks of Brass Knuckles Tall, dark, and sinister Skip across their eyelids Wary of their trinkets These hands Look like they would snatch their children out of the night Fright In the eyes of a stranger Is hard to chisel away So I choose to dispel the myths and preconceived notions Not all giants from the ocean are created violent Some of us Dream of violin solos While fumbling with a lack of nimble Sometimes These Big, Strong hands Are too small to cradle all these broken dreams I hold them too close, I suppose The pitter-patter of shattered hopes on tattered heart-strings Are a practiced tune These fingers sing Sometimes They make me a target So many Napoléons Want their volley to knock the nose off the sphinx So I meandered to the metamorphosis of these metacarpals into mandible munchers and it made me malignant They look Like big ol’ meat mashers don’t they These boulders Used to reduce mountains into molehills But though they Once Were Warriors These old soldiers gather moss now They’ve seen enough violence for two lifetimes and have since retired They beg forgiveness For sinning against their brothers And taking up arms against them Nobody ever asks me what I see ’Cause to me They look like blame the big kid For defending himself against the antagonistic little shit with the chip on his shoulder They look like These big digits won’t fit fingertip thimble kisses They look like high-roller scapegoats And tactile regret I know What they look like But they are Grandpa’s fissures filled with pride in combing my hair They’re Grandma’s amethyst veins helping me cross cracked pavement They’re dad’s throwing discus My Uncle’s shooting hoops My brothers playing music Regardless of what they look like My hands are Large And Powerful From a long line of love With no time for the presumptions Of Mice and Men My hands Were trained by Earth mothers Who let ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i roll thunder ’cross the valleys and echo from the Cliffs My granite palms Are diamonds in the rough Smooth enough to wipe away little streams from Northern Springs And put pressure on cuts To stop rivulets from leaking My hands Massage Caress Intertwine And Heal Move nimbly with knot work They tremble and quake They help me stand up straight My hands can stand the heat So that even while it’s still molten They will help shape The golden heart Within the next Mountain

Think of our blindness where the water burned! Are we so certain that those wings, returned And turning, we had half discerned Before our dazzled eyes had surely seen The bird aloft there, did not mean?— Our hearts so seized upon the sign! Think how we sailed up-wind, the brine Tasting of daphne, the enormous wave Thundering in the water cave— Thunder in stone. And how we beached the skiff And climbed the coral of that iron cliff And found what only in our hearts we’d heard— The silver screaming of that one, white bird: The fabulous wings, the crimson beak That opened, red as blood, to shriek And clamor in that world of stone, No voice to answer but its own. What certainty, hidden in our hearts before, Found in the bird its metaphor?

watchdog howling (all caved in beyond the pale — tis my home cold wind implacable driven unaccounted sooth shawl of sorrow unplanned unmapped swallow order blunt trees mended like man even our shadows belabored in light commonplace rumble — shaken alliterative portrait of a ploughman struck down cattle thief contraband — pig iron — intermediate between two states & cargo untold undetected huckster amended airs an untapped inventory — catholic in the tall grass — laughing — mask chimerical goods for summer sink in

The river stones are listening because we have something to say. The trees lean closer today. The singing in the electrical woods has gone dumb. It looks like rain because it is too warm to snow. Guardian angels, wherever you're hiding, we know you can't be everywhere at once. Have you corralled all the pretty wild horses? The memory of ants asleep in daylilies, roses, holly, & larkspur. The magpies gaze at us, still waiting. River stones are listening. But all we can say now is, Mercy, please, rock me.