A Rigoberto González Poem

Other Fugitives and Other Strangers

The nightclub's neon light glows red with anxiety
as I wait on the turning lane. Cars blur past,
their headlights white as charcoal.
I trust each driver not to swerve. I trust each stranger
not to kill me and let me cross
the shadow of his smoky path.
Trust is all I have for patrons at the bar:
one man offers me a line, one man buys the kamikaze,
another drinks it. Yet another wraps his arm
around my waist. I trust him not to harm my body
as much as he expects his body to remain unharmed.
One man asks me to the dance floor, one asks me
to a second drink, another asks me home.
I dance, I drink, I follow.
I can trust a man without clothes.
Naked he conceals no weapons, no threat
but the blood in his erection. His bed unfamiliar,
only temporarily. Pillows without loyalty
absorb the weight of any man, betray
the scent of the men who came before.
I trust a stranger's tongue to tell me
nothing valuable. It makes no promises
of truth or lies, it doesn't swear commitments.
The stranger's hands take their time exploring.
Undisguised, they do not turn to claws or pretend
artistic skill to draw configurations on my flesh. They
are only human hands with fingertips
unsentimental with discoveries, without nostalgia
for what they leave behind. I trust this stranger
not to stay inside me once he enters me.
I trust him to release me from the blame
of pleasure. The pain I exit with no greater
than the loneliness that takes me to the bar.
He says good night, I give him back
those words, taking nothing with me that is his.
The front door shuts behind me, the gravel
driveway ushers me away. The rearview mirror
loses sight of threshold, house, sidewalk, street.
Driving by the nightclub I pass a car
impatient on the turning lane. My hands are cold
and itch to swerve the wheel, to brand
his fender with the fury of my headlights.
But I let this stranger live

to struggle through the heat and sweat
of false affections, anonymous and
borrowed like the glass that washed my prints
to hold another patron's drink.


(2006)

A Richard Garcia Poem

Mozart's Concerto for Glass Harmonica

There you are, at the gate of the memory palace
underneath the rusted teeth of the portcullis,
your hand raised in a puzzling gesture—
is it farewell, come here, get back, no blame,
or are you just trying to hitch a ride? But I've seen
that gesture when you sleep, as if you were saying
to someone, on the one hand . . . on the other hand.
Here is a memory to store in the palace—
You and I at the circus. The arena is dark
except for one blue spotlight. In it, a clown
stands before a table. On the table an array,
crystal wine glasses filled with different levels
of water. He's dressed in white with a conical hat,
tear marks on one cheek. With a wet finger,
he plays music that was once forbidden
because it made musicians lose their minds.
There is a blank look in his eyes and he performs
perfectly, as if he were a mechanical clown.
Now look up, the lady on the trapeze
is dropping large blue crepe-paper flowers.
Maybe the palace is the size of a dollhouse
and my eye at the window is the eye of a giant.
Maybe the palace is in my chest and my heart
is beating too loud inside. I remember
when I woke but was still asleep and saw
my chest rising and falling on its own
and then I accidentally rolled out of my body
and there were two of me lying side by side.
In an alcove shaped like a scallop shell I've placed
a list of the way lovers have said goodbye.
Developer fluid heated up, passed off
as consommé, is a standout. As is GOODBYE
written in shaving cream on the dusty windows
of a row of abandoned cars in Baja. Just as I begin
to suspect what is wrong with this picture
I notice how lightly you step over the grillwork
of the oubliette, that terrible lace under which
men are forgotten. You raise your hand again
and now I understand that gesture—
it's how you erase the distant mountains,
the palace, the sky, everything.

(2006)

POEM: "Reading A Letter of Bukowski's"

Reading A Letter of Bukowski's

This letter spells it out:
Fear makes us eat shit.
Not a happy image.
But it explains
why you needed those
twenty-five jobs to retire early
and thrive as a beach bum.
Or a builder.
Or a bartender. 

Or a barfly poet.
Or an English teacher 
living on the foreign edge where 
they only understand 40% 
of what you're saying.
They tried to murder me.
Your days are different now.

You write about the perfect moments.
Near the airport
your calico cat smirks
under the flightpath.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

A Garcilaso de la Vega Poem

"When I Stop To Consider..."

Cuando me paro a contemplar mi estado

y a ver los pasos por do me han traído,
hallo, según por do anduve, perdido,
que la mayor mal pudiera haber llegado;

mas cuando del camino estó olvidado,
a tanto mal no sé por dó he venido;
sé que me acabo, y más he yo sentido
ver acabar conmigo mi cuidado.

Yo acabaré, que me entregué sin arte
a quien sabrá perderme y acabarme
si quisiere, y aún sabrá querello;

que, pues mi voluntad puede matarme,
la suya, que no es tanto de mi parte,
pudiendo, ¿qué hará sino hacello?


(1501?-1536)

Little Bit 4th Wall, A Little Bit Aside 14/7/14

Constant Reader, 4 years on, it occurs to me that the ordering of these poems bears far too much relation to the material world, what with the one thing always being stuck behind the other, even while another one, possibly better, keeps nagging for a spot. I don't blame you for being antsy. (But I'm grateful that you haven't mentioned this.) Once again, thanks very much for coming here to read these little poems. They come at random. And when they're scattered like this, we all go together into the lucky dip to determine what any of it has to do with us.

A Pierre Martory Poem

Bastille


You let your shirt hang down
putting on airs of cuffs
at the edge of ending night
like the end of a java with double ritournelles
or the way the canaries in the cage of still-closed mornings
were singing that it mattered little
to them that their windows were open
the stones the paving stones the door-frames the armatures
the window-frames the sheets of the bed clothes in their colors
were beating the dawn along with us
better drums than your belly
better drumsticks than my fingers
and the trees and the roofs the river and its bridges
the clear distances of the city the factories without smoke
bathed as at their birth stammered
a trial hello
that only ended however
in this word round as a doubloon
placed on the edge of that day
by a considerate friend
the sun on your arms naked against my cheeks
hello I said to you
the day of quatorz'juillet


(1961) trans. John Ashbery

A Ben Jonson Poem

On My First Son

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;

My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.

(1603)

POEM: "After A Lifetime Spurning Science"

After A Lifetime Spurning Science


Maybe the penny drops a little
faster than the tar pitch drip
70 years at the one experiment
white coats, cigarettes, cameras
the viscosity has been vicious
said a scientist (name withheld)
the tension killed many of us
meanwhile comes another one
slower than ideal, slower than
the time it takes this all to fall
between two people, a lifetime
to drop that distance, how slow
it needs a moment to be formed
(the glance, the touch, the kiss)
tonight about this tar pitch.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

MUSIC: John Legend, "You & I (Nobody in the World)" & "All Of Me" (2013)

Go on. Have a listen. Don't be such a miserable bastard. Have a heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi3bc9lS3rg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=450p7goxZqg

POEM: "Drones"

Drones

                        
                   "War is boring, we do it so you don't have to."
                         Anon.

Do drones drink beer at 
the consoles and fall sleep

dream of the other games 
they'd rather be good at

ticker-tape parades when 
you come back successful
spin the wheels on a Chevy
Bel Air and bounce with joy

like that pretty girl sitting
across the table looking likely
is there a drone policy for you
do some sorties get messed up
talk to me a minute about 
your training for this job.

© 2014 Rob Schackne

A John Poch Poem

Liquid Italy

                     If you don’t drink wine, God won’t give you water.


The summer the Bolognesi went crazy

for the spritz with orange Aperol,
I stuck to chilled and sweating Prosecco
though switched to Sangiovese
and later couldn’t refuse a little red fizzy
(one tries to stay hydrated)
in a second floor flat in Casalecchio
where we three poets had been invited
for a full-blown home-cooked supper
by Mina, Italian grandmother,
who had been warming up the apartment
all day, and what I got to compliment
that perfect 100 degree heat we wallowed in,
Fahrenheit our God, water the religion,
and our Italian host seeming nearly heroic
when she brought it iceless, stoic,
to us seated at the table next to the little kitchen
with the big stove where water boiled, rabid
for the fettuccini while a ragu of wild rabbit
simmered, and only one window of three
was open but no breeze graced us anyway
so our shirts hung like wet laundry
the Italians hang out their windows
(Oh, if someone could have only
hung me out a window), what I got
was a wild boar tortellini
drowned in a salty chicken broth
for starters and then the steaming fettuccine
and saltless bread to soak up the last of the sauce,
and when the gelato finally came
even that added fat to the heat and warmed
our tongues with vanilla liqueur and cream
so thick no ice crystal could hope to form,
of course with grappa and nocino following it all,
and/or limoncello (who could recall?)
thinking the burn up our nasal passages
and down our throats might distract us
while the golden hillside wheatfields drying
bleached under the last of the purifying
Emilia-Romagna sun declining
by, we prayed, degrees
that evening, and the figs in the trees
and the grapes green and waxing clearer
were just beginning to fatten at the height
of summer on the longest day of the year.


(2014)

MUSIC: Anya Marina, "High On The Ceiling" (2011)

A fine track by an artist even you might not know. Recommended for when you're ready to drop from the ceiling. Also recommended for when you're not. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY_A4qTUhsc

MUSIC: Jens Lekman, NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert (2011)

Jens Martin Lekman was born 33 years ago in Angered, Sweden. 

(He is not now (and never was) any singer named Blind Dennis.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wftQvpqo6Rg

POEM: "Talk Talk"

Talk Talk


Fake monks all talk talk 
fake dreams on the street
soteriology is a foreign word

fake talking nearly everything

up the big stack of the world
every night hear the screams 
loud enough for gorillaland
tired men say all women want them
tired women just say it's all talk talk
air quality readings moderate today
the week’s reading list see teacher
don’t come to me all moaning 
talk talk they can’t feel love
fake monks talk anger all talk
how they all got here talk talk.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

A Lynn Emanuel Poem

Frying Trout While Drunk

Mother is drinking to forget a man
who could fill the woods with invitations:
come with me he whispered and she went
in his Nash Rambler, its dash
where her knees turned green
in the radium dials of the 50's.
When I drink it is always 1953,
bacon wilting in the pan on Cook Street
and mother, wrist deep in red water,
laying a trail from the sink
to a glass of gin and back.
She is a beautiful, unlucky woman
in love with a man of lechery so solid
you could build a table on it
and when you did the blues would come to visit.
I remember all of us awkwardly at dinner,
the dark slung across the porch,
and then mother's dress falling to the floor,
buttons ticking like seeds spit on a plate.
When I drink I am too much like her—
the knife in one hand and the trout
with a belly white as my wrist.
I have loved you all my life
she told him and it was true
in the same way that all her life
she drank, dedicated to the act itself,
she stood at this stove
and with the care of the very drunk
handed him the plate.


(1983)

An Elizabeth Alexander Poem

Praise Song for the Day


Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.


(2009)

POEM: "Illuminatus"

Illuminatus


A natural darkness
one by one the flashes
swallowed up by dark
trillions of light globes
see them all burnt out 
inside-of-your-pocket 
black intent bad dreams 
miss abyss depression
nothing to know besides
the lights that say ghost 
the whole compassion of
small things needs adjusting. 


© 2014 Rob Schackne

POEM: "From A Tired News Agent"

From A Tired News Agent


How does the news improve your day?
Let me count the ways. The sun rises at 6:05.
Killing Myanmar. Killing Ukraine. My great-grandson
Graduates from university with an accounting degree.
I've been reading crime for 60 years. It's not journalism.
There is corruption in high places. Pretty girls are sexy.
The world grows warmer. People grow more vicious.
Poisoned watermelons. Record monsters caught in the deep.
Worse than it's ever been. Better than it's ever been.
You're as smart as they let you be. My faded eyesight
Has turned inward. I read the furrows on every brow.
The cars are double-parked. Everyone piles out.
There's no reason for the changes to be worse.
I don't know why you're reading this.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

POEM: "These Defended"

These Defended

                                ...and saved the sum of things for pay
                                     A.E. Housman (1914)

Restless, not knowing, we turn away
From what we are convinced is not real

Anguished, angry, wailing, taking the lie
To bed with us, wake and tell no one

Keep no blanket, save none from burning
Brook no curiosity about what set this fire

We are iced. We cannot stop this shivering
Every night we need remember how to sleep

All spirits, does every dream have to stop?
The times can’t be sustained. We mustn’t hope

It won’t do to suffer a reckless childhood
Suffer the enemy, this battle, our selves

Keeping a book, open up her look again
Mindful of your post, aghast, that memory

Reversed, humbled, change is awkward
Falling to the mud. Miracle, day brings sun

Rubs our eyes with the eyes of some other
Sees the next second’s flash of thunder.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

PHOTO: "Man With Kite"

Hi, kids. This is my kite. His name is George. He is a bird. He is your friend. Do you want to play with him? No? This is my city. He is my friend. His name is Shanghai. My house is just over there, across the river. Do you want to go there with me? No?

A Kazim Ali Poem (2)

Ramadan

You wanted to be so hungry, you would break into branches,
and have to choose between the starving month's

nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-third evenings.
The liturgy begins to echo itself and why does it matter?

If the ground-water is too scarce one can stretch nets
into the air and harvest the fog.

Hunger opens you to illiteracy,
thirst makes clear the starving pattern,

the thick night is so quiet, the spinning spider pauses,
the angel stops whispering for a moment—

The secret night could already be over,
you will have to listen very carefully—

You are never going to know which night's mouth is sacredly reciting
and which night's recitation is secretly mere wind—


(2008)

A Raúl Zurita Poem

from Sunday Morning

XXXVIII

Over the cliffs of the hillside: the sun
then below in the valley
the earth covered with flowers
Zurita enamored friend
takes in the sun of photosynthesis
Zurita will now never again be friend
since 7 P.M. it's been getting dark

Night is the insane asylum of the plants


XLII

Enclosed with the four walls of
a bathroom: I looked up at the ceiling
and began to clean the walls and
the floor the sink all of it
You see: Outside the sky was God
and he was sucking at my soul —believe me!
I wiped my weeping eyes


LVII

In the narrow broken bed
restless all night
like a spent candle lit again
I thought I saw Buddha many times
At my side I felt a woman's gasp for air
but Buddha was only the pillows
and the woman is sleeping the eternal dream


LXIII

Today I dreamed that I was King
they were dressing me in black-and-white spotted pelts
Today I moo with my head about to fall
as the church bells' mournful clanging
says that milk goes to market


LXXXV

They've shaved my head
they've dressed me in these gray wool rags
—Mom keeps on smoking
I am Joan of Arc

They catalog me on microfilm


XCII

The glass is transparent like water
Dread of prisms and glass
I circle the light so as not to lose myself in them


(2009) trans. Anna Deeny

A Wisława Szymborska Poem

A Poem


Nothingness unseamed itself for me too.
It turned itself wrong side out.
How on earth did I end up here—
head to toe among the planets,
without a clue how I used not to be.

O you, encountered here and loved here,
I can only guess, my arm on yours,
how much vacancy on that side went to make us,
how much silence there for one lone cricket here,
how much nonmeadow for a single sprig of sorrel,
and sun after darknesses in a drop of dew
as repayment—for what boundless droughts?

Starry willy-nilly! Local in reverse!
Stretched out in curvatures, weights, roughnesses, and motions!
Time out from infinity for endless sky!
Relief from nonspace in a shivering birch tree’s shape!

Now or never wind will stir a cloud,
since wind is exactly what won’t blow there.
And a beetle hits the trail in a witness’s dark suit,
testifying to the long wait for a short life.

And it so happened that I’m here with you.
And I really see nothing
usual in that.


(2014) trans. Clare Cavanagh

A Valerie Mejer Poem

Parenthesis


Nothing's in the nest. No needles. No newborn ravens.
Maybe something like night in the deep hollow,
an eggshell planet, cracked in the middle, an empty bowl of soup.
Nothing's in the nest. No thread. No webs of words.
Maybe something like my navel, the eclipse of a magnifying glass.
A slice, mute with regard to its empty depths.
In the nest, nothing. The web unwoven. Dismembered.
In the space, something, yes. A piece of cloth. Sounding like flags
taking wing, a worm in its beak and suddenly, eyes, my eyes
which, cutting across the empty air, direct themselves at
                                                                        something noiseless over there.                                                                                                                 

(2013) trans. Forrest Gander

A Mariana Schackne Poem

The Spider on the Screen

“John”, I said
In a delirium of fever and painkillers
“There is a very large spider on my screen.
He has been there for three days.”
Or so I thought. I was, after all,
Not quite myself.
“Where?” John asked.
“Up there. In the upper right corner”, I said
Proud that I could be so coherent.
“Oh, cool!” was his response.
“No”, I said. “Not cool. He has been there for three days
Staring at me."
“He is a she”, John said.
“Oh.”
John knows these things,
And I am proud of that.
“Well”, said I, “would you do –
Would you do something with her, please?”
We both knew what I meant.
We have opposing views on spiders.
“She’s on the outside of the screen”, he pointed out reasonably.
“Oh”, I said
And went back into my fog.


(2014)

POEM: "Shanghai Yangpu Lilong"

Shanghai Yangpu Lilong

                                                     for JR & Sue Anne Tay

Her huge portrait grips the wall
An errant balloon has run its course
Surrounded by demolition rubble
Now lodged against a period gutter
She nailed memory as long as she could
The children the stories and the pain
Yearning to return her old home love
The photographer nailed one image
Against the need for ever going back
But what does he really hope for this
How can any big picture tell the truth
Of one part dead and one part still lives
I wonder about the shape of her bed
Whether it provides proper dreams.

© 2014 Rob Schackne

photo by permission © 2010 Sue Anne Tay
www.shanghaistreetstories.com

POEM: "Not A Second Glance"

Not A Second Glance

                                             for Greg Gamage

Not a second glance will you get
No second thoughts, no compliment
People step on your shoe, hit past
On their way out, will not regard
The thankful loops most live in –
Sometimes you want to ask them
Ask why do you – of all your goodness
Why will none ever be directed at me
And when the warm days arrive
When you start to see lovers again
When the spring is finally returned
And you look to rhyme what you see
A sullenness still waits there, open –
The obviousness of such indifference
You will resent – the attack is personal
Only because it is you and me and them.

(2005)

A Charles Wright Poem (1)

In The Midnight Hour


This, too, is an old story, yet
It is not death. Still,

The waters of darkness are in us.
In fact, they are rising,

Are rising toward our eyes.
And will wash against those windows

Until they have stilled, until,
Utterly calmed, they have cleansed.

And then our lives will take substance,
And rise themselves.

And not like water and not like darkness, but
Like smoke, like prayer.


(1969)

A Charles Wright Poem (2)

After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard


East of me, west of me, full summer. 

How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard. 

Birds fly back and forth across the lawn 

                                      looking for home 

As night drifts up like a little boat. 

Day after day, I become of less use to myself. 

Like this mockingbird, 

                     I flit from one thing to the next. 

What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four? 

Tomorrow is dark. 

                Day-after-tomorrow is darker still. 

The sky dogs are whimpering. 

Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening 

                                        up from the damp grass. 

Into the world’s tumult, into the chaos of every day, 

Go quietly, quietly.


(1995)

A David Tomas Martinez Poem

The Mechanics of Men

I have never been the most mechanically inclined of men.
Wrenches, screwdrivers, or shovels
have never made nice with me. In the shipyard,

I worked alone, in the dark, deep in
the bilges of frigates. For two months,
I hooked a torch to an oxygen tank with a green line and pulled a red

hose through bulkheads to gas. The brass tool
hissed like an ostrich
when it fed on metal. That day, my flame cut

permanent deck fittings; the loops fell like bright oranges;
I ripened the rusty metal. I knew
that this was a job to baby-sit me, a job they gave to bad burners,

beginners playing with their tools: who pretended their brass torches
were trumpets, and that gulls in the bay were tables
of distracted diners. When my father was a boy, his father loaded him

and his siblings in the car and dropped them off downtown
so my grandfather could get drunk and my
grandmother could pretend he wasn’t drinking again. When I was a boy,

I enjoyed watching my father dig; with dirt between his palms, he spun
the shovel before he dug. As I grew, I tried
to stay away from work, even when he paid me. I stayed away from him too.

I never understood how he could work around so much grass. For him,
life was work. For him, everything was hard. For me,
it was not hard. He stalked my mother a long time after their divorce.

He never understood she was not sod to be laid, or a sprinkler to be
attached to a pvc pipe seven inches in the ground.
That pregnant at fifteen was too soon. Neither of us is the most

mechanical of men, yet we still pride ourselves on how we fashion our tools.
I wake up shivering and crying in an empty bed,
the afternoon light entering and leaving an empty bottle of wine near

an emptier glass—or roll over and try, and fail, to remember a woman’s
name, which never really gets old, just uncouth
to say so, and feel fixed. To feel fixed is to feel a mechanical spirit, to feel love,

or at least to play at paste for an evening, to make believe she will never leave me,
as life almost did when I cut the green hose, and was
lonely and shaking that day on the deck of the destroyer, looking into the

green water, and wondered what would be written on my tomb:
“Killed by oxygen was this unmechanical man.”
In that moment close to death, I only wanted my own lungs. I didn’t regret

returning home and sleeping on my father’s couch. And that summer, I returned
to each of the women of my past and bedded
them all, trying to reheat our want. I don’t regret that– drinking wine

and making love, or writing poems and making love, of wanting to stay
but nonetheless leaving. I don’t regret returning
with Said and Spivak, with Weil and Augustine, of telling my father

“All sins are an attempt to fill voids,” or rebuilding my grandfather’s
house with Hopkins in my head
as I ripped the tar and shingles off the old roof with a shovel.

And I am not mad for being the second favorite son,
Esau turned inside out. Can’t regret saying
that summer, I was, in fact, already, a bigger and better man

than my father because I understood more. I didn’t mind he
favored my younger brother, who knew less
than him. I favored my brother’s way of living, of skating

in the park and smoking weed while I studied and wondered for us all.
How ridiculous I was that summer for us all;
for not attempting to rebuild any of his love that summer, at all.

(2014)

POEM: "The Poetry Brothel"

The Poetry Brothel

                                            "da do-wah do-wah do-wah ditty 
                                             talk about the girls in New York City"

The poetry brothel is the place we work at
Nervous bodies come and sit for a few hours
We wear no clothes at all and we are fetching
Say outrageous things then watch them sweating
Tonight we write home “All is well. I have a job”

Ah, but to weave those new words into you
The recollected dialects of an uncountable people

No hesitation and lots of surprise here’s the thing

Nothing is more kind or blue or close or distant
When you join our lovely dreamy people at the bar

Shanghai, New York and Rotterdam observe
Friendly poets are the friendly whores are us
In the end nothing is more exciting than reality
Look, we can play anywhere, we’ll do anything!
(Not for fame exactly my dear but for love)

Many glorious moments shine in you
High feelings work beneath the waves
We'll dream you in any direction it takes
And guess what: tonight we're giving it away
Darling just come inside when you’re ready

The poetry brothel is where we usually are

The carols of our bodies are designed to please

We dance alot (good sex is always a possibility)
You jump up from the table and start to shake it
Maybe later you write “All is well. I have a home.”

© 2014 Rob Schackne

Le Bain Turc, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1862

A Cyril Wong Poem

Excerpts from Satori Blues

*

What fails to be reined in
pushes out, freezes, breaks off—crashes.
No telling who might place a chunk
in their mouth. (Who wouldn’t pay to watch them
taste it?) Some protrusions merge with air, but
not before melting a little, flowing everywhere
within the self, hardening in places it never
meant to make a home.

*

Fields of emptiness between the wild arc
of electrons and every atom—a vacuum not
nothing after all, but the purest form
of something like compulsion that fixes
us into being, stopping the self from
coming, no, flying everywhere apart.

*

What we talk about when we talk about loss
are the catastrophes: walls collapsing
and the terrible flood. What we forget is what
we fail to detect: the line opening like an eye
from one end of a dam to another;
a startled look and the averted vision
at a wrong word at yet another wrong time.
Loss is an ever-growing thing. The same
is true of how we win.

(2011)

A Xánath Caraza Poem

Que la poesía

Que la poesía se vuelva lluvia
Que moje todos los techos
Inunde las charcas vacías
Y reviva los renacuajos secos

Que la poesía se convierta en viento
Que ulule entre los árboles,
Choque en las ventanas rotas
Y viaje por toda la tierra

Que la poesía se haga relámpago
Fulmine pensamientos cuadrados
Llenándolos de círculos
Y amarillas ondas floreadas

Que la poesía se ponga color verde
Que cubra la tierra
Se enrede en los patios y
Las flores blancas se hagan poemas

Que la poesía se haga granizo
Que golpee mi cuerpo,
Me dé frío y absorba
Cada sílaba incompleta

Que la poesía se torne en fuego
Que devore las casas,
Las llene, recorra los muebles y
Queme la indiferencia

Que la poesía se vuelva rayo
De luna para que por las noches
Nade entre aguas oscuras
Alumbrada por ella

Que la poesía se haga tornado
Se lleve la apatía
Despierte del letargo
A poetas despistados

Que la poesía se transforme
En agua de rosas
Y apague ese fuego
Que llevo dentro

(Granada, Andalucía, España, verano de 2012)

POEM: "Almost A Postcard"

Almost A Postcard


Where aggression rules
big city men push ahead

bravado is what fuels them
the little people are astounded

the country girls are moving
suzhi suzhi look at her hands

babies are sold in the provinces
big protests in the north-west

sunrise is a gentle promise

everyday comes the river tide

the terror of one child failing

30,000 fingers lost in a year

the hard city can protect us
the way cars protect bicycles

the small collapses into big
the sun sets fast into the sea

(tongues ever spoke like eyes
everyone would be undone)


© 2014 Rob Schackne

MUSIC: Jack Hylton (1928), Jo Stafford (1947), "The Best Things In Life Are Free"

Sure. You didn't know. You never missed it. Till now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD5tyat_L68

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6raAdR-1s0o

MUSIC: The Devil Makes Three, "Live at Amoeba" (2009)

...then the Devil makes four. Relax.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7yXBFc2oig

POEM: "The Fool's Vernacular"

The Fool's Vernacular

We might find this evidence for ourselves
If there should ever be galaxies without stars
Preemptive pockets with only dark matter
And would you sigh for the big long press of it
To think for a time around the infinite clouds
And consider who or what had it plundered?

Anti-matter, anti-meaning, irrecoverable
Knowing where or why you’re not, in parallel
Multiverses bubbling like busted washing machines
Sure, you’ll be missing that, and the laundry too
Eleven different dimensions, but you’re dreaming
If you think any dark matter will be missing you

There was a time string theory was the theory of string
When you pulled hard it almost stretched the distance
Hell, we know everything complains it's being pulled
A million light-years later radio telescopes still stretch
Deep theories of empty space, of yours, of hers, of mine
Dark energies indeed, when we’re in a dark time alone

Poetry provokes what science takes time proving
In the aberrant darkness of our star-lit days, when
Poor buggers scan the moonlight for enough light to see
The thought keeps dropping on us like parallel coconuts
After we read about it and talk about it and write about it
Yes, it was always pretty much like we suspected.


© 2005/2014 Rob Schackne

POEM: "There She Goes"

There She Goes

                               …chasing down my lane…
                                        The La’s (1988)


Concrete falls on the street
her heel catches rocks a boat
the weather looks very foreign
her ass sways rides a swell
our eyes meet two little smiles
seems we both take a breath
maybe it's the real red thread
2 people hold draw ever closer
(alley cats sit up take notice
umbrella birds all go quiet)
she floats a moment she shines
then goes like she always goes
& into the abyss like rain goes
nothing mentioned comes back.


© 2014 Rob Schackne


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht0GxBFUvNo

MUSIC: Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings

Ahem. My soulful nephew Sam Holt (trumpet) is in Europe now on tour with Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. Here's their May 19th show at that great place, AB - Ancienne Belgique, in Brussels. Watching this, I wish we'd both been there.

(Sure I learn things the hard way too.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zImmHPv7X0&index=61&list=PLh-NSOlqHJDVgOx1FumUcUmxyDa1b-gi3