POEM: "To A Future Lover"

To A Future Lover

                                I.M. A. de Saint-Exupéry

The earth was noise and dust
my horse surprised a snake
I walked all night under the stars
the desert was a bank of hums

Dishevelled in this mirage
where desire is unkindled limit
a kiss that didn't even matter
night was an ocean of those days

Way back I stood there then
as fearsome as a pilot waking
to a slow smoke and a brandy
that spoke to him on his last day

Hard grim lines drawn in blood
for a time when laughter’s wrong
to continue in blood until there’s
no more discussion in blood

I'm still walking years later
distraught of many concerns
delinquent of the inconsequential
every animal drawn to its own smell

It hardly mattered what love was
shadows and the sun would not light
each caress or that busy time did not
search for the fine wreckage all about.


© 2015 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Thrown Into The Shade"

Thrown Into The Shade                                           

                                           
                                           for Jason Molina RIP

The jukebox is in an empty room
And only the gods are dancing there
A security guard checks the outdoor lock
Before thieves make their rounds of night
A Ducati Panigale screams past with love
There's enough strong nectar for everyone
Thor is hammered again, Zeus is passed out
A conga line of gods is winding through the bar
The robbers sigh and pour themselves a whisky
An old fellow in a cap unplugs the jukebox
Outside the moon sings high & lonesome
It's very late, all the buses have gone home
Across town the parties are in full swing.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

A Barbara Guest Poem

Roses

          "painting has no air..."

             — Gertrude Stein

That there should never be air
in a picture surprises me.
It would seem to be only a picture
of a certain kind, a portrait in paper
or glue, somewhere a stickiness
as opposed to a stick-to-it-ness
of another genre. It might be
quite new to do without
that air, or to find oxygen
on the landscape line
like a boat which is an object
or a shoe which never floats
and is stationary.


                              Still there
are certain illnesses that require
air, lots of it. And there are nervous
people who cannot manufacture
enough air and must seek
for it when they don't have plants,
in pictures. There is the mysterious
traveling that one does outside
the cube and this takes place
in air.


                               It is why one develops
an attitude toward roses picked
in the morning air, even roses
without sun shining on them.
The roses of Juan Gris from which
we learn the selflessness of roses
existing perpetually without air,
the lid being down, so to speak,
a 1912 fragrance sifting
to the left corner where we read
"La Merveille" and escape.


(1995)

POEM: "Outside Tianshui, Gansu Province"

Outside Tianshui, Gansu Province

                                                                          for Anna


 759. Du Fu went to Maijishan

There are few monks left in these remote shrines,
And in the wilderness the narrow paths are high.
The musk-deer sleep among the stones and bamboo,
The cockatoos peck at the golden peaches.
Streams trickle down among the paths;
Across the overhanging cliff the cells are ranged,
Their tiered chambers reaching to the very peak;
And for a 100 li one can make out the smallest thing.


2014. I've never been to Maijishan

Purple red sandstone in one cave
At the Maijishan Grottoes observes
The original male form of Guanyin
Not Mother Mary and not Madonna
Not Lady Gaga or your grandma either
But a fellow much like us who exudes
(Exudes? The man is dripping with it!) 
Sweetness tempered with no-nonsense
Obviously our man's a former dissident
At Wheatstack Mountain it’s understood
When Buddha turned into Bodhisattvas
The lout still packs one hell of a wallop
Stand here your head will be changed
(Changed? Are you a complete idiot!)
When on the other side you see knives
Guns on the floor the heavy truncheons
Soldiers in tanks the frightened students
But sharpness is all the memory has left 

You might understand there is nothing soft
About kindness or about compassion, there
(There? Come here, I'll give you compassion!)

                                                                         
© 2014 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Interior Anthem #1 (The Rig)"

Interior Anthem #1 (The Rig)


On any National Day, it's made
Unhappy by unfulfilled promises
Standing out upon a sea-platform
Clouds rolling in, smelling the spray
The giant sculpture’s great unreal
As it stumbles on its waves, says
No flowers here, no biscuits there
The half-moon is the derrick's light
Its tower is stacked with rotting fruit
What the fuck are you on about?
I want fine food, a normal family
A job that doesn’t make me too crazy
A sane head, ten fingers, ten toes will do
Some good poems from time to time
And stop promising me nonsense.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Crazy Diamond Sutra"

Crazy Diamond Sutra

                                                              Living beings, born from eggs,
                                                     from the womb, from moisture...


The future of poetry bright
the incandescense blinding
before the facts of expression

This hip-hop Dylan thing
is so very listenable awhile
words wait the pen and page

We're speaking normal speech
discussing the normal poundage
of poetic flesh we want to know

Is it poetry? Hipsters fighting
to get on the plastic treadmill
listen to the baffled instructions

Knock her off, Beamish! Get her!
And yet there is music playing
the Beach Boys maybe Beatles

Back in the penitentiary
the sky is dull earth swimming
through water a summer night

Taxis await us two directions
and supposing the same heart.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

A George Mackay Brown Poem

The Old Women

Go sad or sweet or riotous with beer
Past the old women gossiping by the hour,
They'll fix on you from every close and pier
An acid look to make your veins run sour.

'No help', they say, 'his grandfather that's dead
Was troubled with the same dry-throated curse,
And many a night he made the ditch his bed.
This blood comes welling from the same cracked source.'

On every kind of merriment they frown.
But I have known a gray-eyed sober boy
Sail to the lobsters in a storm and drown.
Over his body dripping on the stones
Those same old hags would weave into their moans
An undersong of terrible holy joy.

(1959)

A Vasiliki Katsarou Poem

Pier At Cannes

seen at a film (fish)
marketacross the bay, a string of lights

never thought she’d find herself

in an Antonioni film

yet here she is and so is he—
mere witnesses to an abstraction

the dark sea and dark sky meet somewhere

                                          she thinks,
              directing herself to find a gesture
as apt as this moment

he stares back
in irreflection

The sea and sky may kiss at the horizon
Why not we?

                                         She turns
a cartwheel instead
                                         to approach him
and yet remain distant

absurdity strikes
at the very heart

of the proposition

What a child, an American!

He is of course a French polygamist
with several children by several wives in farmhouses
scattered about the French countryside

so fated to act out

two wholly different scripts,

he says

                                Un écrivain a dit…
                                [A writer once said]

là où toutes les eaux se mèlent, là où il y a un delta—
[Where all the waters come together, at the mouth]

la merde l’a créé.
[shit created it.]

But what about beauty
she wonders too late
                                   doesn’t beauty equal love?

she wanders too late
the sky darkens further

                                  La bêtise
                                  [Nonsense]
is his reply

from the edge
of that shore
they part

(2015)

A Jane Hirshfield Poem (2)

A Person Protests To Fate

A person protests to fate:

“The things you have caused
me most to want
are those that furthest elude me.”

Fate nods.
Fate is sympathetic.

To tie the shoes, button a shirt,
are triumphs
for only the very young,
the very old.

During the long middle:

conjugating a rivet
mastering tango
training the cat to stay off the table
preserving a single moment longer than this one
continuing to wake whatever has happened the day before

and the penmanships love practices inside the body.


(2015)

A Seamus Heaney Poem

North


I returned to a long strand,
the hammered curve of a bay,
and found only the secular
powers of the Atlantic thundering.

I faced the unmagical
invitations of Iceland,
the pathetic colonies
of Greenland, and suddenly

those fabulous raiders,
those lying in Orkney and Dublin
measured against
their long swords rusting,

those in the solid
belly of stone ships,
those hacked and glinting
in the gravel of thawed streams

were ocean-deafened voices
warning me, lifted again
in violence and epiphany.
The longship’s swimming tongue

was buoyant with hindsight—
it said Thor’s hammer swung
to geography and trade,
thick-witted couplings and revenges,

the hatreds and behind-backs
of the althing, lies and women,
exhaustions nominated peace,
memory incubating the spilled blood.

It said, ‘Lie down
in the word-hoard, burrow
the coil and gleam
of your furrowed brain.

Compose in darkness.
Expect aurora borealis
in the long foray
but no cascade of light.

Keep your eye clear
as the bleb of the icicle,
trust the feel of what nubbed treasure
your hands have known.’

(1975)

A Philip Levine Poem (2)

Our Valley


We don’t see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I’m nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you’re thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn’t your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

(2009)

BOOK COVERS: Lisa A. Phillips, "Unrequited: Women And Romantic Obsession" (2015)

(Ah, but it's not so hard to be obsessed by the Romantic, nor is it only the experience of women.) 

PHOTO: Lee Jin-man, "Tiananmen 2012, Raising the Flag"

BOOK COVERS: Scott Timberg, "Culture Crash: The Killing Of The Creative Class" (2015)

And the case won't be resting here either.

POEM: "Raiments"

Raiments


Unrequited clothing sounds silly.
I wish I wore her memory as well

As I still wear the knitted clothes
She once made for me. Comfortable

In the extreme, that fit me perfectly.
Had them for years. Anyway at this rate

They’ll outlast me. The shell cast away,
The cosmic sea, then where will they be?


© 2015 Rob Schackne

An Emily Dickinson Poem (4)

774. "It is a lonesome Glee"

It is a lonesome Glee —

Yet sanctifies the Mind —
With fair association —
Afar upon the Wind

A Bird to overhear

Delight without a Cause —
Arrestless as invisible —
A matter of the Skies.

(ca. 1863)

BOOK COVERS: "Reading The OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages" (2009)

He remembers that as a boy he frequently had his nose in either The Times Atlas of the World or The Oxford English Dictionary. (A solace in taxonomy? Sure, he was a strange child.) Come to think of it though, whether language can hold sufficient territory, or whether any such loci are even defensible today, largely explains what this different fellow is still searching for.

A D.H. Lawrence Poem (2)

Moonrise


And who has seen the moon, who has not seen
Her rise from out the chamber of the deep,
Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber
Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw
Confession of delight upon the wave,
Littering the waves with her own superscription
Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes towards us
Spread out and known at last, and we are sure
That beauty is a thing beyond the grave,
That perfect, bright experience never falls
To nothingness, and time will dim the moon
Sooner than our full consummation here
In this odd life will tarnish or pass away.


(1917)

A Rosemary Nissen-Wade Poem (3)

Victory

They are all

dead, my husbands, so now I can choose.
Tonight for the Asian Cup
it's Bill I invite
to come watch.

As we did
a long time ago,
late nights with the kids in bed.
'How good is that goalie?' I say now —
then we score.

A tense game,
the Socceroos against Korea,
tied at the last minute
so now we're into
extra time.

It's almost
as good as that match
when underdog Sunderland
won the FA Cup ('73).
Nail-biting!

Like old times,
my soccer-loving second husband
sitting with me here tonight,
barracking with me.
Like old mates.

Countdown's on —
Queensland election —
right now I don't even care.
We get past that goalie one more time,
and we've won!

(2015)

POEM: "On Paul Celan"

On Paul Celan

                               to R.S.

For so long thought

merely a poet of pain
usurped by his exile
so much of memory
escape and near-escape
(and he was right)
the Seine took him
and delivered him to the sea

© 2015 Rob Schackne