Upon This Wide Water, On Our Broken Boat - Two 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.
We glimmer. Lights shimmer
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
2 Proems from ' 'Now, Heart' - Some Of What I Remember When I Listen
for Willie 'in the pocket' now of earth
A river is a process through time, and the river stages are its momentary parts.
—Willard Van Orman Quine
One [Remembering Chattanooga Days With Willie, Tennessee River Close By]:
One night Willie, much 'in the pocket'—an expression for being well onto drunk which I've never heard from anyone but him—wanted to dance to a Bessie tune playing, 'Back Water Blues', him recalling nights as a young man in rural Tennessee where he had worked hard days in oppressive vegetable fields then hit the after hours juke joints for 'colored, twas parting days, Jim Crow, ' he explained, where he would drink, dance then dive/delve into sensual mysteries of moist skin, hot breath, mutually open mouths, their commodious moans and mumbles, venial hands, always vital parts, private hearts mutually pounding ancient known rhythms, odors, tastes of gin and those slender, forbidden, now greedily stolen bites in those all too short nights with their damned intrusive dawns.
Jumping to his feet, Willie described 'powder dancin'' (pronounced marvelously, 'powdah') which I had never heard of. Talcum powder would be copiously scattered onto the planked dance floor where couples in stockinged or bare feet would ecstatically dance, gliding and sliding sweetly scented, muskily bent toward later glides and slides in slippery joy of momentary allure, amour on dimmed porches or in surrounding woods often enough and gratis upon delicate slabs of moonlight gratuitously dewy providing cushion for Passion's out and in, honoring, dignifying deities of skin wanting more making more skin, headlong Nature's frictional algorithms indelibly scored in every each his her yawing yen.
Two [Paean To Rivers]:
I know that wheat is anciently holy but now even more so for flour, the sight and feel of it, its unbaked smell, turns me again toward a Chattanooga 3rd street, its compass river swelling like bread nearby bearing witness still for one cannot say too much about rivers—their irreverence of edges scored, spilling themselves, proclaiming natural gods deeper than memory yet dependent upon it for traced they must be in every human activity no matter the breech, for something there is to teach even deity though it may be wrong to do so, or hearsay to say it or sing, but the song is there for those whose ears are broken onto bottoms from which cry urgencies of Being and between, dutiful banks barely containing the straining Word.
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Der Einfall, Remaining Light In Duino
[Beginning with two lines from Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke]
1
'You that fall with the
thud only fruits know, unripe, '
here wait to be shaken.
Here we carry, or ought to, driven so much past
bitter root,
sugar,
not for selves but for the gods to sweeten their too
objective palates
(at least they have tongues/mouths,
we know they have teeth)
to open them into our subjectivity which, secret told, is
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Where Dispose Of The Joke Of Bones - Minimalist Cryptics Sometimes Metaphysical, circa 1981
.
For two:
Agnes Martin, American artist,
minimalist painter extraordinaire
Elaine Bellezza, artist, too,
and traveler,
and early Anima-as-Fate,
and 'eye giver'
'Is that dance slowing in the mind of man
that made him think the universe could hum? ' - Theodore Roethke
1
off the square
in the darkest cell
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Of Li Po Waking The Morning After, circa 1981
'Let me be forever drunk and never come to reason!
Sober men of olden days and sages are forgotten,
And only the great drinkers are famous for all time.' - Li Po
'We share life's joys when sober.
Drunk, each goes a separate way.' - Li Po
Waking up among these frail green things,
by the stream I hear the hornets singing.
I do not fear them but I fear the sting
of light as day creeps into my shade.
I have read of sad and joyful things
under last night's moon and now I weep
for the Immortals fading from light
to light with their pockets of pine bark
and resin to chew, their wine of sorrow
to drink in their, and my, sorrowful season.
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
History Before Was Brunch Ever
For Workers everywhere, bricks, straw, verse.
The breast naturally of Woman is bread before
there was bread, the child the loaf swelling in
Her arms to farm & from such frame a world.
Thus Labor. Bread is History.
Child's toil, unspoiled, forms a culture beast,
he crawls forth, makes bread of soil native &
other, a Mother culture all & still, everywhere.
- Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, from 'Immigrants Exile, Labor, Drive Or Will, And The Lady Mother - A Malafiction'
1
History before was brunch ever in the world.
Sunday. St. Marks & 1st Avenue. Red, red Simone,
doors open to sun and saunter, the wander, now
'arm in arm they goes' just past the corner where
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
That We Can Be Broken - A Bird Spirit Speaks Of Beginnings
.
Citizen! What have they done with all the air? - Victor Serge
1
I began
a bird flown down a chimney,
an empty house hidden in a
mountain valley, a night time
fire upon surrounding hills,
a moonshine still's signal flame,
a bootlegger's warning,
a silent spirit conjuring
drip by drip
metal and grain.
No blue fire therein.
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Missive For Darkness As Vocation, William Hawkins In Mind
[after viewing a film clip of the American
self-taught artist, William Hawkins]
How would he depict it, your
great sorrow now,
even a corner of it?
Perhaps
forge on, find a
photo, a horse
to paint, as in the film,
then busy himself with the making
of it, then see how the belly is too much,
needs to be thinned, a back haunch
trimmed to size,
a concise seizure of eye and paint
dependent upon hands,
a monumental concern which arights,
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Four Against the Shapeless Wind
for Selin
1
You may find me thundering in a hut
on the small of the mountain reading
poems to curious goats. They listen
patiently before eating the paper
upon which they are written.
I have now resorted, denying loneliness
(thus the always hovering goats) ,
to arguing with the sad priest twice
a week over bad sherry transported
over the mountain. The pass's old Rock
comments on the shape and weight of
each bottle carefully wrapped in soft
flannel curved the shape of the way
upon which unsteady travelers depart
and return. From such a journey it
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Upon Kingfisher Wings - Letter 1 From Minimus Cast Out Into Space Praying Net Or Nest Catches
.
'The kingfishers! who cares for their feathers now? ' - Charles Olson
1
I, Minimus, launch forth regardless.
I have right to dare my feeble casting
forth, and off, of fetters, the jellies of
sin, and sally, well, if not sally, to jostle
the crowd in the bus station to purchase
my escape to spacious...what? Space,
I guess, to dream outside of who I am or
of what I have become and can see in-
ex-or-ably, ably, I hope, written in stars
or just desserts, just well-dressed guesses
derived from stormy Herald's blurting,
O winking paradisio, distant still,
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!