On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer – John Keats

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Kubla Khan – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
     Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
     The shadow of the dome of pleasure
     Floated midway on the waves;
     Where was heard the mingled measure
     From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

     A damsel with a dulcimer
     In a vision once I saw:
     It was an Abyssinian maid
     And on her dulcimer she played,
     Singing of Mount Abora.
     Could I revive within me
     Her symphony and song,
     To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Compliment – John Updike

We were both of two minds about adultery
and wasted our couple of stolen hours
half-undressed in the Afternoon Motel
kissing and drinking and doubting and forgoing.
She had never betrayed her husband before.
I said, “O.K., so don’t, let’s not. This has been
a lot of fun in any case.”
But something inquisitive in her, in Eve,
would not move back from the brink,
and after the longest, gentlest time lying
side by side on the still-intact rented bed
(I admiring her upper lip while it twitched
in well-phrased trepidation, time running out),
there was a surge as in a written exam
when the answer had suddenly come to her;
we completed the half left un- (see above),
and the shy sea-creature of her ferny pubic hair
gave me something else to admire, and
a new aroma to activate my briny deeps.
She was sweetly tight but not dry, not quite
a virgin. “O.K.?” I asked, half guilty,
glancing over at her proximate profile.
Tremulous eyelids nervily closed upon
a dreaming vision of the fallen world’s dooms,
and all the web of her sensation bent
to hold the pulsing bulk of this new captive,
she breathed the single smiling word “Terrific.”

People at Night – Rainer Maria Rilke

Nights were not made for the crowds, and they sever
You from your neighbor, so you shall never
Seek him, defiantly, at night.
But if you make your dark house light,
To look on strangers in your room,
You must reflect—on whom.

False lights that on men’s faces play
Distort them gruesomely.
You look upon a disarray,
A world that seems to reel and sway,
A waving, glittering sea.
On their foreheads gleams a yellow shine
Where thoughts are chased away.
Their glances flicker mad from wine,
And to the words they say
Strange heavy gestures make reply,
That struggle in the buzzing room;
And they say always, “I” and “I”;
And mean—they know not whom.

The lake – September 2024

Dusk called you on a quest for your reflection.
Comment dire le fait de "se remettre en question" ?
Lounging at the lake brim,
the water showed an unfamiliar apparition.

You looked, in search of a placid reassurance.
He stared back with a rippling insolence,
gripping in its wickedness,
quick to erode the fangs of your innocence.

So you're swimming in the mire of your contrapart
with anguish shining cleaner than its grime depart.
Dawn wakes you with a start,
for the spirit of the lake has replaced your heart.

Ode (with love) to the gr10 – August 2024

All 'round the mountains, the walkers wake.
Beneath the drizzle, their coffees bake.
High up where shadows drift on clouds' wake,
whole legions eager to this quest undertake.

The stone remains stoic, as always, it seems.
Even now when with all of these leeches it teems.
Bundles in coats beyond Joseph's dreams,
even the pack's cost counted in reams

of fabric exceeds all that for a king.
If counting the contents, add that of his offspring.
Hannibal's slaves would've killed for such things!
Or herders of sheep on this trail they were blazing.

No planting or sowing, they're just passers-by,
equipped with aluminum sticks they fly.
Oh! How the Catalan cattle bells cry
at wannabe Magellans and Sisyphi.

Da isy – July 2024

Sunlight stained your bedroom walls.
You and I hid baking in the sheets.
Eyes shut, we searched
and found each other’s skin
still damp from the night.
We took turns sinking back into sleep,
fleeing our obligations to The Greats
who paved the city streets.

After noon we emerged
to face the day:
our groggy eyes opened;
your dimples glistened.
We feasted
on beauty eternal, carved into stone
and on beauty fleeting, your tender lips
wrapped around a burning cigarette.

You took your last drag.
And from the ashes,
a daisy was born,
meant only to wilt.
And so I tried
to catch each petal as it fell.

As if. – July 2024

She’s a mystery.
As if I wanted to cling on to her drapes
to reveal a clouded sky.
As if I wanted to know.
As if she wanted the same.
As if I didn’t mull
for some time before she woke
over whether my fingers
could lace into hers. Now it’s
as if the thought never entered
my mind, but
it hasn’t left either,
as if it’s been
gliding around inside
for an eternity already.

As if I couldn’t see when you were
lying. I lied back as if
you couldn’t do the same. As if
I didn’t see how you two said
goodbye. Him all red and smiling as if
he were drunk. As if
I didn’t look down to
see his red, drunk, smiling hand
brush your waist as he turned
to walk away, as if
I weren’t there, as if
I didn’t care. As if
I cared.

As if sex were a commitment.
As if it didn’t exist only in the instant.
As if thoughts of your sex had been
gliding around inside
for an eternity already.

Untitled – June 2024

Morning growls
While the di-named lioness
In exhaling betrays
Her thoughts hidden still
On that hillside crest
Where our fallen arms defined us
As the grass defined the meadow.

Free to float – May 2024

If he could float from tree to tree,
on which clichés he’d perch?
Barefoot on her knife’s edge,
or rocking the cradle to ease
Babe
back to sleep.
Back to dream states
where men, like birds,
are free to float from tree to tree.

While in decline – May 2024

The sun still shines while in decline
And bees slave all their lives
Sea waves collapse in foamy smacks
And trees in hollow snaps.

A man may choose to honey bathe
Or surf the lightning’s strike
But he like all must heed the call
Of sunset on his back.

Untitled triad – May 2024

Break my bones
            if you want to
                        I’ll wait

For them to heal before
            I call you
                        again

And when I do
            I’ll come to you
                        and crack yours too

The fractures’ll fill
            us one
                        with the other

The reluctant sheet
            can fall
                        between our feet

Moroccan mist – May 2024

Moroccan mist evaporates away
From all the dusty hash that filled our lungs
An offer Flo a coffee kind of day
Afloat but crooked, far from ferry’s strait.

We’d rather stop for cars and caravans
We waited wafting in the evening gas
To every city vite-fait brined in wine
For Tim as well who kept the rhythm’s beat.

Till Basque I surfed to take the solo lead
Far from the hold of Silvio’s belay
Without a name I spun that game of chance
And downed those drunken sips of Leah’s sweet.

Watch – May 2024

Watch through the window
the mug that wobbles unprompted
wait wait and watch
the shards that settle among the crumbs
wait outside an hour
after the shatter settles
and the lowly he rises
to lick the spill off the tile
like a dog

Untitled – April 2024

Puddles stain the pavement
under sun’s afternoon
trampled by the tourists'
dampened leather shoes.

Slouching on a concrete bench
sidelining the plaza,
he’s chewing on some homesick
and his heart’s beating blue.

The doghouse – April 2024

Awakened in a troubling grime,
the morning crawls out of the doghouse
to confront its own ragged, plastic self.
It whinges, squeaks, shudders
and slumps back inside,
packed in with the other.

Their mammalian hides
side by side - crystalline.
In heavy wimpers
one expands while the other contracts.
Both frightened
by the heightened sense that lasts
dew-dampened before the fall
of noon’s eventual descent.

Un mardi soir – March 2024

Du temps perdu
sous la pluie
d’un mardi soir.
Trempé, il se déchire tout seul
quand on essaie de ramasser
ce qui en reste de la table
après qu’elle parte.

The tower – February 2024

His eyes and Hers align to keep
panoptic, periodic rhyme at sea
and frothy mermen arms outreached
for prey who slips away beneath
the tower’s twin-turn stare.

Frustrated shadows lurk below
for sheer is water as it flows
firmly caught within the tow
of Their revolving omniglow
where washed-up mysteries lay bare.

Then one night the twin pair winked —
Her brother fell from tower’s brink.
Straight He dove and straight He’ll sink.
Sister waterlogged by weeps,
She cast Her duty off without a care.

Storms arise when rhythm’s lost,
sirens shriek like albatross,
long-drowned urchins shed their moss,
nocturne barges glide across
the purview of a watch in disrepair.

By dawn Her misery ossified.
A corroded heart beats in half-time
all while shadows grow twice as wide.
Her mood now high and low like tide
ever bound to the pull of out there.

In the dark – January 2024

Pinned to dusk and strung like wire
Tower the branches' fractal spires

A brass bell drones with windy pull
Dull reverberations chill the air
Birdlings dream and spiders' drool
Seeps into webs of waxen stare

Never a crack nor rust nor grime
Hours to ages pierce without remark
The lonesome architect’s got time
To manufacture beauty in the dark

These streaks will soon be printed on the dawn
Where fractal spires linger on and on.

A cool, dry place – January 2024

Sitting pristine in her sleeve
plastic shrink wrapped unscratched
unplayed her ways unheard
wait to be
instead left
bought and forgot
In a cool, dry place.

Could she ever do what others do ?
Be used as lovers use ?

Cut up and torn off
clicked nicked greased up and down
soaked and dried
out spun around and flexed
And also
one day forgotten

Then they’ll do what others do,
And leave as lovers leave.

Set to dust collecting
spores or moss tossed
under another
overplayed eventually clichéd
wedged among the others
In a cool, dry place.