-songbird-

I slipped into eyelight.   The mouth,

Lipped.

Sung high——   The polished

Chord spun sweetly of blonde——   Brushed 

Elliot's sideboard powersong with burning

Coloratura.   

Songbird——   The filament 

Linked a radiance at the face of such 

Steel——   A fire's

Obbligato ignited into the imagery of its cool 

Phosphorescence.   

I didn't tell her.

     

I slipped into eyelight.   The mouth,

Lipped...

                                 for Michelle 

                                City, 2010

                              

-in the 16th century briefly-

As evening defined its heart's failure to run

As once sweet waters dried earth-

Red like cold terra 

Cotta—

Once observer's Phaidon Renaissance  

Locked within two frozen

Hands—

Its glossy

Page absorber strikes to set in chiseled

Stone——

The tomb

The icy

Gates to the dead

Lorenzo.

                               Wellston notebooks

                             

-living with winter and a newer water-

we went to the river. seductive

light is slate-stone blue-

grey,— like nickel, nearing 

planetary.

we're older, now,

you and I and all we knew.

the shape of March

was sharply drawn. the indelible

night swept across the sweltering Del Rio

and outside the awakening of the stars.

for Linda Bauer, Ann Arbor, in whose memory

this poem is written 

                               

                               

-as silence becomes it- 

Regarding the element of space—

its                    notation                     as

lineage                    between                    two

daughters of the staves——      Distinct

at its face, defining  

that which arrives at the pause of its line——    Is piano born.

Stubby-fingered at the sheet music's side——  The flat

side of the key—

cigarette to the mouth in a study of silence exploring its smoke.

Here's sound as foundation. 
But its formula lies in spatial equations— 

Invocations 

at the edge of breath——   Benedictions closing at the face 

of the elements around it.

(The instrument probing its borders gives birth to the movement

as happens across the abstract nature in the space of falling, 
and in this experience is found the bloodline of spacial existence.)

It took six beats to the measure from note to note. 

It took ten seconds from the 93^rd floor.

                                                                 for Morton Feldman

                                                                (Variations (1951) for piano)

-Callie-

From Carrollton, Texas a thick wind came 

Shaping the land to a structure in steel,

And riding the wind came Virgil Whatley 

Within his fists a contract’s authority, claiming

The deed to the land of Callie Wallace

To profit from Carrollton's hunger to build, 
And line with the coin of the realm, its shady sleeves.

Now comes the glutton's hunt for the land 

Which anchors' the house— 

The land and the house bequeathed to her, who for forty years

By the sweat of her brow and the pain of her back       

Labored the barb-filled cotton farm of Charles McKamey,

Long before the mouth of Virgil Whatley

Came to claim its prize, the wealth of her deed, the stone- 

Cold contract's suck of injustice, the justice in forfeiture

Leading to capital gain, as the house and the land of Callie Wallace

Bleeds into steel, bleeds into glass— feeding the pockets  

Of Carrollton, Texas and Virgil Whatley.

 1984 / 2009

-sojourner-

not

like Venus

rising, or

the stone of the

Nike. 

not                                          

like Nefertiti

a thousand olives in her skin

and African

jewels 

around her throat, or

no such history

no such myth ––

strike of stone, olive

or amethyst —

but warm-
blooded

she drew my draft of Schlitz
into a pilsner from behind the bar, the white

foam rising, harnessed at the rim
on a winter's night a long, long time ago.

                       

for Linda Bauer, the Del Rio Bar, Ann Arbor

                  

            

              

-in the sty with hogs and Juanita-

ever see an Essex

sow

like this? 

a female 

of the species

and

if you're 

a farmer of fatty pigs

and you

don't have

one

you're a bum.

New Mexico, 1969? 1968  (Colorado 17)

-when you're old. an advisory-

don't feign an impression of long windedness

or mention frustration over the forgotten typewriter

don't tell them that you're young at heart

or allow them to pretend that they think you matter

don't believe they always appreciate what you've given them

or try to appear any differently than your current moment

don't bother to relay the order of an active history

or sheepishly excuse your behavior

don't try to advise them of love's possibilities

or explain how she quietly managed the laws of her beauty

don't try to define what it was you saw in the glance of her mouth

or of how the glance of her eyes filled a void in your world

don't let them convince you that they know what it is you like

don’t abandon the beauties that passed through the years yet remain

in your heart.

follow these principles 

and live beyond the borders they'll lovingly set for you.

                                                                   fall river

  

-entartete-

1.

It once pierced a fractured continent with its own blood,——

And as it struggled within the borders of its habitat’s assault, 

Music moved somewhere in the distance embracing its performance 

From what was ridiculed then silenced within the exhibition’s noxious 

Sound-booths of Dusseldorf.

What, beyond sheer madness drove

A nation’s passion to snuff the formula 

Expanding the atmosphere of sound at its ears

Below its boots?

But Krasa spoke-up,

And Wolpe, too—

And Haas, who perished with his penmanship in hand

With a chorus of Krasa’s children at his side.

2.

Silence keeps its company, 

Blindly sharing itself with anything in front of it.

Dropping its narrow eyes, it rubs its neck by the lick of its arms

As it sticks to the stillness.

And in the stillness, silence bites——

And you’ve got to swat it——

A process not required if you’re saying 

Something.

                                                          

-Traveler-

1. 

How softly distance paints the Rockies.

Behind us the echoes timelessly dissect  

Our past impressions in young disobedience.

The distance brushes 

An orange tincture to the peaks.

The mountain’s ember. 

The sweep of the valley is lightly-

Colored.

2.

What warms from the hearth 

Is what moves through the room

Is the warmth of the wood

At the strike of the fire.

What warms at the hearth

Is what lives in the room 

Which is finding its way

From the smoke of the wood.

                                           for the girls of Colorado 17

                                          Denver, Boulder, 1969?

                                       

-distances-

1.
of the river 

running from its mouth
between its banks  
the distance
has narrowed to a space 

now reserved to history's reach.

2.
what is the distance
from your mouth

to your eyes 

from my eyes

to your mouth
from my mouth
to your mouth

from your mouth

to the river?



                remembering Linda / Ann Arbor