Haiku D'estat - Staten Island Ferry Wake, 1984
This Sunday of ice cream cones
the locals cruise for a dime.
Pigeons here or there peck pretzels
thrown down. New in town
I read these indifferent faces,
news from Sunday frowns.
Last night's drinks were on you and
old friends. Felt like I had skin again
when a certain rub made wonder but
sleeping it off on your floor I woke up
screaming, dreaming death with a bloody nose.
If you wore nylons I could kiss you. I'm confused,
infused vagrant blood refuses no stops, lust cops
wait in dark glasses near darker doors to bust.
I've managed before. Two black coffees
and the shakes, bad. I pack enough clean
clothes for a sidewalk or two. Now I
find myself here in this somewhere floating
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Remembered Laughter of the Frail Daughter There Beside the Fields Sweet Grasses - Impressionist Autumnal Portraits In Miniature
.
[Notes jotted while gazing at Impressionists paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, Autumn]
*
Among ginkgoes
cloven leaves fall
whose burnished
berries yellow late
melon sweetness
of Autumn days
Among boxwoods
evergreen for no good phlox
blooded leaves settle upon
golden flax of weeds
seed the chilling ground
receiving soundless
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Tore Carefully The Edge, Open, Of The Thing
1
a New York, perhaps, story
drunken, again, postmaster/
mistress deposits, months,
your long sent gift into the wrong
mailbox downstairs, tenant of
said mailbox on vacation long away
only just arrived from Barcelona
only just got to his mail, found your
gift for me delivered at my surprised,
happily, door only this dull morning
making/waking up the coffee cup
which, too, was flat until the surprise
knocked, arrived, tore carefully the
edge of the thing, which
brought/brings me still surprise,
joy, eyes, scanning in the images/words
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Hog Which, Something, Is A Beginning - For Tom Gone Awandering, Somewhat Shakespherical
.
1
Haven't heard of, from you.
Are you OK or mighty fine?
Perhaps in love merely which
is why one escapes mortal time,
friends, especially such as I?
Or is it 'me'?
No matter the matter.
Wondering how, where.
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Upon This Wide Water, For Staten Island Ferry, circa 1985, Manhattan
.
'On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross,
returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are
more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.'
- Walt Whitman, from 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry'
1
Upon this wide water, Whitman's bay, wandering
outward toward Eastward windings -
Upon this white-starred charted bay we ride
gray with midnight leaning toward the Towers**
distant growing, stalking, yellow and glowing,
mimicing the stars -
Our eyes stare tearing,
seawind pushes lids to slits.
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Found Poem After News From One Roaming Alaskan Wilderness
.
for Andy
far flung from
Black Mountain,
Charles Olson
in mind, quoth -
'I come back to the geography of it...
An American is a complex of occasions,
themselves a geometry
of spatial nature.' - from 'Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27'
*
You lost
again,
poor boy,
in way out
places.
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Hard Days On In At The Rehab For Drunken Poets, An Opera Of Sorts, circa 1981
They can't all be like these, I guess.
The days are good, though, when they are.
The formula is simple really -
We take our ragged bones out of rented rooms for long walks.
You point out between bricks the rainbows in windows, the dirt
now become your dirt, your genius for transformations.
I ram my own by now trite and hackneyed points
home over and over, but it works on days like these.
Reprise. Then cold beer in the dying light of
a gray bar. The stage is set. Laughter over the
wear on those other faces as we shudder behind
our own, the usual exchange of wind.
Full darkness mutes the swarm and it begins.
Curtain up.
Back inside our rooms, last castrati on the radio.
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Turning Thighs to Diamonds - Alchemical Passes For Father and Son
.
Or what man is there among you, of whom if his son
shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone? - Matthew 7: 9
*
No blame shall stain us now, father.
The heavy ball you hit to me is never caught.
A floppy glove always falls from a hesitant hand.
Mars in you still storms the makeshift diamond.
Each base of cardboard weighted with stone is still our house.
A bat, a ball, a mitt, hard rules of the game,
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Are You Hungry? A Poem For Departure
for Karthik, departing
'Who has twisted us like this, so that -
no matter what we do - we have the bearing
of a man going away...so we live,
forever saying farewell.' - Rainer Maria Rilke
out of hearing
the last sense
to go
sing to me now
before ears take
leave and I shall
have no more need
for words, sounds,
even these my sighs
heard as I hear you
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Because They Rhyme They Live, Not I
'O Poesy! for thee I grasp my pen
That am not yet a glorious denizen
Of thy wide heaven; yet, to my ardent prayer,
Yield from thy sanctuary some clear air,
Smoothed for intoxication by the breath
Of flowering bays, that I may die a death...'
- John Keats, 'Sleep and Poetry
I suppose it is the late, or soon to be, poet's lot to jot one
for daffodils. At least one. This is mine, a last will to verse.
But first, I take a pill before dying, I mean,
its meager meal, yellow sun on a jaundiced plate.
'Consumption' is the word I want. I've got that,
and few breaths left and a flat voice to tell it in.
'The daffodils were yellow as the sun.'
So lay down thy pen. Ungrasp! I say.
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!