Photo From Lost Days At Stillborn Falls
You see them all morning while driving,
broken cars, omens, those towns you drive
through graveyards now. Your one good
tooth a headache, windshield wipers break in
the storm. Road side glass cuts your feet.
You curse your shoes in the back seat,
fumble with blades in the rain.
One good town out of six and that's the one
you leave behind where your shorts hang content
at home on the line, back yard neighbors
speculating over lingerie with black lace.
The sun can barely contain itself.
The mail man wishes he was me.
The story is Jalise - I was nearby - she dripped in
soaked from rain announcing, 'I need to get
out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.'
For me? only a towel to dry her and nothing more.
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Mimimus Creaks Oar
I pose you you're question:
shall you uncover honey / where maggots are?
- Charles Olson
myself
the intruder, as he was not - Creeley
1
I, Minimus, tongue in cheek, creak oar, row out, too,
into the Homeric sea, not old Greek singer, long of breath,
but as Winslow, local seer, his paints, straw hat consigned
to mistook heroics, pure accident, radio maritime, ask
captain if row boat worthy of even an American sea,
projected too, to go a-row row rowing,
claw oar into wave tipped whitecap safe perimeters,
smell of earth nasal-yet to keep oriented to dirt.
Have, instead, reaped I redundant whirlwind
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poem by Warren Falcon
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I, Twitter, Stutteringly Remember In Cyber Chases
for Ocean Vuong
a reprise from
Stillborn Falls.
'It's got to do with America,
my love of music, my grotesque loneliness...' - Henry Miller
Are not all summer nights
born late in America, fading
only when morning glories
breech fairgrounds entire
continents long,
fog draped at dawn?
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Autumnal Math
The ground assumes its portent.
The good of the season remains in what is left behind.
It takes what lays down or is laid down upon it.
You'd think it a kind of king of accountants.
You'd sink down an addition of arithmetics,
heartbeats, breaths, footings found and lost,
all the unintended landings of a life.
You'd think it wouldn't stop.
You'd sink down even wide awake in this season.
Such sinking pretends its endings in countless
geometries of folding life down or over
and under sundering fractions apart,
forgetting theorems, all but the final one.
The rest can change or pretend to.
Admit you are no good at numbers.
Admit you can only count to a certain sum,
or down to it. Reverse your life if you want to,
wind it down with a memory. Beef up the end.
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Delusion Of One
Born: Year of the Dragon.
Horoscope: 'Today's the lucky day.'
Luck, you say? O.K. Once. In a small town
on a snowy road, the scenery spinning round.
When it stopped you were pointing toward a good
place - Home. The message: Go back.
You can decide again to begin again
or stay warm there: Wombtown, population: 1.
No Lions Club or local Jaycees.
No chocolate bars and brooms for the blind.
Free room and board. It's kick and dream,
kick and dream and cleanliness more efficient
than a space suit. Talk about luck?
You're here aren't you? Don't say good or bad.
It's no accident the year's the Dragon's.
Chinese or no, the year has a tail long as a river.
Peel the scales behind the ears
you'll still roar for pain o roaring boy
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Delusion of One, A Lunar New Year Reprise
Born: Year of the Dragon.
Horoscope: 'Today's the lucky day.'
Luck, you say? O.K. Once. In a small town
on a snowy road, the scenery spinning round.
When it stopped you were pointing toward a good
place - Home. The message: Go back.
You can decide again to begin again
or stay warm there: Wombtown, population: 1.
No Lions Club or local Jaycees.
No chocolate bars and brooms for the blind.
Free room and board. It's kick and dream,
kick and dream and cleanliness more efficient
than a space suit. Talk about luck?
You're here aren't you? Don't say good or bad.
It's no accident the year's the Dragon's.
Chinese or no, the year has a tail long as a river.
Peel the scales behind the ears
you'll still roar for pain o roaring boy
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Sleep Walk
Piss shock hot
on sleeping knees,
the sudden tilted pail,
its wilted contents,
evidence enough to convict.
Slips into focus a memory
of crocus crazed upon her
matriarchal sill, the killing of
a cock, hacked, dimmed
eye sideways turned,
a dying sun behind a hill.
Red the axe clumsily wielded,
but a boy toying at men's work,
killing to eat, her forgiving skirt,
ankle deep, no longer riven to
morning, unable to witness the
last glorious color bleeding out
in less than insect hour.
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Instead of the Griffin Prize* All I Get is the Griffin** or What I Get for Reading Too Much Godd*mned Charles Bukowski - A Poem-in-Cheek
for Karthik gone almost a year now,
'so much for mythology'
Many clips of poets, some known enough,
some not known, at least to me. I live
beneath a rock under a rusted old half-
bridge beneath the only cloud on earth
that doesn't move unless a rare bird,
a big one, flies beneath it. And so I
try them, 'the Winners.' Some I can't
bear to look at. I swear,
THAT'S NOT A POET!
I swiftly move to the others, one by one.
They don't know that they're all being
weighed, I admit it, in unfair balance,
GUILTY AS CHARGED.
But I'm magic.
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poem by Warren Falcon
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I Once, Your Other Darkness
for two paintings, one by Caravaggio,
'The Conversion of St. Paul, '
the other by William Hawkins, 'Horse'
I once, your other darkness, quoted Hopkins to you,
of seasons of dryness in the bitter pitch midst
his discovery, 'What I do is me, for that I came, '
not a text for self worship but, rather, an assent
to keep world woe intimate, felt in that greater
scape - inner - making poems from orphan woe, from
furtive grace which eludes then storms, in bleakest
place sudden parses in the greener green,
newly, of things while pleading still,
'Lord, send my roots rain.'
In the shorter light, the extended
night, of cold and star-bright questions,
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Response To Bernadette Mayer's 'First Turn To Me...
'you appear without notice and with flowers
I fall for it and we become missionaries
we lie together one night, exhausted couplets
and don't make love. does this mean we've had enough? '
- Bernadette Mayer
Failing the Grand Coniunctio
this is the only one we know
the one where we eat dirt
and swallow, are filled and
swell belly up a meal to be
eaten when the Messiah comes
Leviathan is our heavenly bridegroom
presses the banquet table with elbows
manners forsaken in the end
yanks at sallow meat forsaking
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poem by Warren Falcon
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