A Poem that is not a Poem
This poem can't make up its mind.
It wants to be a poem but realizes that poetry's futile.
So it struggles to turn itself into prose, which sometimes makes a difference in the
world,
but then it remembers the stillness of early morning,
the way the moonlight looks
when it seeps through the window slats
striping itself across your body,
naked beside me on shadowed bed.
It remembers the ocean,
the sound of falling waves,
our laughter that year in Brazil
when nothing mattered but love.
It can't help it, this poem that is not a poem,
it's what it is, what it is.
Bear Dance
....human
speech is like a cracked kettle on which
we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while
we long to make music that will melt the stars.
Flaubert, Madame Bovary
These stars need me to say something to them
but I'm speechless as usual to their immensity.
How easily the night passes without saying anything—
just looking at the sea or reminiscing about
how things used to be before life set in
"with all its matter-of-fact about the ice storm."
It's hardly worth mentioning mere states of mind
that get us through one day after the next
except what else would there be to write about
if we ignored the stops and starts of our synapses?
We can say "London Bridge is falling down,"
but its always falling and boring as hell to talk about.
So I gather the flotsam and jetsam that floats in my head
and put it down here for your eyes to pass over
and scratch your head in puzzlement, wonder or despair.
What I want is an exact transcription of things as they are
and what I get is some clunks and clanks on a page
that might serve to make bears dance,
but does nothing, nothing at all, for the stars.