Ran into Ben Henry Howard,
In the black of the hotel cellar a few hours back.
He had only a short time to spare and spoke
Full of confidence and consequence,
With his dromedary bottom lip,
And that speck of know-it-all worn by cosmic gurus.
The moths swarmed the solitary condemned glow
Like constellations in motion; peering, swirling,
Eyeballs gazing back from the mirrored walls
Smeared with interstellar dust
Painted in pigments of love and lust.
He suggested I kill my imagination
And count my chickens before they hatch
And begin to scratch at their shells and beg for food.
To do this would unhook the clasp of mystery's cloak
And send it floating rumpled to the floor beneath the hat rack,
Until it climbs again to weave golden thread as it did before.
You can feel the Spice Islands' tradewinds
Warm your face before they pale upon the backs of whales
Across the shorn spring lambs skin
Of the bleating North Atlantic toward a battered bowing inn on the shore.
The torches light the drooping tropic night
That sags beneath the weight of its own perfume
And the weight of being Eden in each extreme.
It is always day where it snows.
Always white with perpetual light and fleshful of pumping blood,
Adieu, Adieu.
The last kiss before boarding a train
Lies frozen beneath the slow drifts
That creep motionless across artifice of day.
Look, there, another plump thigh
In purple garters warbling the songbird's goodbye to night,
Adieu, Adieu.
And I simply wait and hope the telephone rings
For a conversation about the evening's mundane trials
With the inevitable farewell, awkward and sterile
As it always is across the lines, across the miles. Â
And I simply wait and ventilate the balmy breath
That blows unseen between the wiry veins of all things.
See that wall there. It never whispers
Or cracks its toes or masks its intent
To become the universe in miniature.
Best as anyone knows it bears its load
And waits like a curious turtle in repose.
A thousand sermons dangle
Condemned sprung jacks in their boxes
They bounce and cackle from the tree's unsteady arms.
Each one naked knowledge,
A singular original sin to pluck and bite
And with delight begin another lapsarian lineage,
Rise, line of Cain, Rise, line of Eve
We are all fallen here,
Get up and breathe.
An empty urn black with tarnish
Greets the tongueless thirsty traveler
Beneath the neon's flinty flickers
And the maypole's sundered wreath.
We are the spring sprung children
Spinning, spin, spin
Spin with your nectar-ripe ribbons
So that we all may be born again and again.
My head is full of numbers
Manipulated and constantly recogitated in an endless algebra
To push aside the regret and all that is lost with it.
This time I hear the drums
Pound and drum beneath the Banyan tree
And between the fixed wooden wings
Of the samurai city's soaring gates.
All Hail a little sprig of jasmine, dazzling,
And placed in her hair, just behind the curve of the ear,
Or a wedge of lemon in the blue iris of her stare,
Come, Rise, Hail, Spin, Adieu- and again.
A deposed simple primeval emperor
Marches across the cold vast silver
Folds of the budding rose
As it sways in the infinite fileds
On an ordinary day,
And now it's best I be on my way.
Author notes
Written April 28th, 2005
In a list
What did you think
Comments
1 - 26 of 26
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u.
no one here does this.
but u. -
LOVE IT!
You have such an amazing gift with words. You are like a wood carver, a craftsman who is not satisfied unless he is totally original. (I am surprised that you haven't formulated your own language! I am sure that you could.)
You always make me wonder and think. Your poetry is something to think about, mull over. Sip like wine and twirl it around in your mind. MANY great phrases. I especially like: ..."the balmy breath that blows unseen between the wiry veins of all things, " and the personification of the wall.
This poem sings to me.
Did you mean "infinite fields" near the end?
~ Joyce
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Hi. yes, it is me. Reading this again and actually grabbing the link to share with a kindred spirit.
come back. make magic. please? -
just your stalker of Eden swinging in for a read.
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Well... i too have to thank Lisa for directing me here...looks like she's been your introduction to many of us 'wannabees"
You write like I want to.
it's a flow full of image and adventure without pause
an odyssey in the best way.
I'll read more of your work.
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got to thank Lisa for pointing her poetic finger at you
There is not much to be commented on this poem from critical perspective (I don’t really do that anyways) and I don't know why but I feel any philosophic dissertations would only distract the attention from it.
I just enjoy it as it is and I think it’s great.
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wow.
been that long since you wrote this. hardly seems possible. think about it often this one.
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Rise, line of Cain, Rise, line of Eve
We are all fallen here,
Get up and breathe.
but still the last Stanza oh maybe the opening or the third okay the fourth
It still sings & whispers Magic.
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When I feel sad. I read good poetry.
Okay I read good poetry all the time. I wonder if that means I'm really sad all the time.
"To push aside the regret and all that is lost with it." poignant. I want to read your others now. I'll go see them.
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I love beautiful poetry... this piece has been calling me back .. but I wanted a quiet night to immerse again.
I think the whale back line is my favorite tonight.
Lisa
Edited on Jul 20, 9:28 p.m. because ''. -
I read somewhere that" Every poet runs the risk of being misunderstood". Though I read this poem several times, I did not post a comment for the fear of misinterpreting these apparently disparate images (with an inter-connecting thought known to you). The poem seems to speak about love, lust, suppressed desires and yet, seems to conceal a deeper meaning within its folds. I realize that I should have allowed myself to be led by its myriad nuances. To explore further than what you are wiling to tell, is rather a tall order.
krishna -
Lutey is a romantic, lurching towards sentimentality with every dither, but he liked your poem, which must be a good thing, yes. As ever with this sort of doodah, it resists critique. Something in the rhythm, even the pinprick bathos of the last two lines, reminded me of Richard Thompson. Finest songwriter alive, say some. I'd love some concrete evidence of how I connected those two discrete things.
Ah well. I suppose modern poetry and mice were made for each other. I can slide up and down this poem and read it in various orders. I love it. It ventures on largenesses I'd never dare go to, and so it makes me jangle a bit. -
Simply superb.
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To be the quiet, simple, screaming, power held within a wedge of lemon in a blue iris stare ...
Much enjoyed. Thanks.
Lisa
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Yay! What Spydey said cause he said it real good. (Remember the first time you saw the opening of Raiders and how perfect it was? That's the way it is, and then it raps around you like a warm shawl--what Pataliyah said too. Ah the true taste of Poetry, I feel as though I saw Keats undernesth the willow, his quill falling from his fingers the notebook open to the latest poem, the sun slanting away between the trees patches of gold catching the green. The feel of things is very far away, and save for the twittering of the birds all is very quiet.
Oh, yeh--Welcome Home.
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is this just a tease? maybe you'll vanish for awhile after I comment?
I'll be back... and as soon as I say, "I'm so fucking happy you're back".... you'll go 'whoosh'.... or something
'
either way, when I'm 1. sober or 2. feeling social... I'll comment.
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Travis has told me again and again about you, and I'm so glad you've posted something new. There is a lot here, and I'm away from home, on a strange computer, and I feel disconnected with the screen, so I'm printing this and saving a real comment for later.
What I do notice, and it's a wonderful device, is that as I read I keep thinking "I've just read that word," but I look back to see I haven't - it happens repeatedly, from "swarm . . . swirl . . . smear" to "jasmine dazzling"; this is such musical use of language.
Anyhow, hello and nice to see you here. I'll come back for more for sure.
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I am grinning with pleasure. what a marvelous poem, matthew.
the sounds are magical, the imagery carries me into your mind's eye,
and your rhymes and rhythms are delicious. I feel like I did after
the first time I saw raiders of the lost ark ~ delightfully blown away.
I see in this the fruit of your worldly travels and your spiritual quests coming into maturity, ripe and accessable, served up like a feast for us to devour. and the last line of the poem is like a tasty dessert. perfect!
thanks, matthew. I've been needing this for a long time.
~travis
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/Spice Islands' tradewinds pale upon the backs of whales/ I simply wait and ventilate the balmy breath/ what brilliant descriptions and phrases, what a great poem! This is some complex and laden poetry. This is like being in a story book, the scope is large and I find myself in so many places in the poem, like an adventure, a path of realization. This is not a once or twice read I will have to print this and spend some time with it, it certainly makes me want to.
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Magnificent!
Dearest Poet --
In a musical maypole of movement and motionlessness, sound and silence, bleak day and tropical night -- ah! a night staggering under the weight of being Eden! -- your poetry poured itself into each significant and seemingly unimportant detail, to bring alive text and context. Becoming conversation, island, breeze, inn, clasp, mystery, cloak, floor, sin, sinner, saved soul ... endless miniature cosmos.
... to have HER in sight ... Ah. She. And all of her essence loved.
Let go and leave. Also infinite fields ...
A brilliant verse of veinless veins of a Universe ... all a dream-reality.
Love
Myra -
Encore!!
As above you throw out your crumbs far too sparingly and we chickens wait baitedly for your words.
You have this knack of walking the reader into a poem very casually and then gently force them into your world, as if you are letting us know that 'here is a block of stone now watch as I chisel out David for you.'
( hear the drums
Pound and drum ) Do you feel the repetition of the word works?
& infinite (fileds) fields?
Jules
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I often wonder if people pay close enough attention to the craftsmanship of your work... the rhyme-play and sound of this piece along with the very unique visual combinations and phrasing, line breaks and repetition in places as well as the placement of your rhymes (end of line, middle of next line, etc...)... are all done exceptionally well... so well, this could all go unnoticed by a reader ... because it all happens so naturally and effortlessly and you become so engulfed by the poem that you could easily miss it.
(which to me, means success for the poet) :-)
I've missed reading you and I'm thrilled you've written something new and chosen to share it. They come few and far between from you, but it is always always worth the wait.
~ Wendy
Edited on Apr 29, 6:01 because 'uhh'. -
Maybe the drums could do something less pedestrian than drum. I know. That's what they do. It seems pound and rattle, or reverberate. Just a suggestion. Everything else was pretty cool, but now I want a hit of ecstacy and I don't know why.
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I think this is one of your best. Now, you have written so many . . .so many ohters have not read had you not deleted them. . .this is great stuff. . .very unique. . .and you know uniqueness is highly valued. . .yes?
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Ah, my tender brother in arms of dreams... I love seeing his words here again. Words that will take years for me to comprehend... But no matter-- he writes. He writes.
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