WTF?! publications 2009-2011

Thanks again to Frank, Rachel, and Rattlesnake Press for producing such an awesome mag for the last 4 years!

IV. Daylight- From Above (from “A Long Slow Photograph of Dillon Beach in October”)

Awake
And the morning air illumines
Diamonds

Over the sand riddled with marks
Looking like raindrops
From a distance

I’m up at the balcony
Of the cabin watching
The white lines disappear
And ripple the infinite blue

I can see my son
Looking just like a man
By the shore,
His silhouette
So much like mine
Without the consideration
Of perspective
Or time

And I imagine
The ocean in his eyes
For that first moment
In his life-
His closest comparison
Must be a pool
The swims out in every direction
Till the distance swallows it-
A pool as large
As his imagination
Will allow, and alive
With noise and frothing
White smiles
All the way down its line,
The big brown mouth
Of numberless blue tongues
Curled open to lick
His toes and air

Worshiped by birds
Circling its lip
Like monks squawking out
A white robed prayer



A Spring Night is Taking Me

A spring night
Hears the fan splay
Ideas into strands
Hears airplanes roar
From so far inside the engine
The brain spins
Into one heartbeat
Where worlds are possibilities
Constantly dropping to either side
Of the blades
Twirling windows away
From each other
And the pen’s knifing edge
I write upon
For I am a rider
And a spring night is taking me
The room the fan
Into its whirling
So at least something will know
Some time like the
One fine thread
Unwinding
Around the whole where
It is woven



A Wake on the Other Side

“Dearly departed, we are gathered here
Today to celebrate the morning
Of the end of living, which is not
As so many believed
The end of everything
But more akin to the reflected scene
Upon a pool of water, dependent
On the actions and memories of the living
And slowly dissolving
Into only eyes following,
Into watching.
Rest in Pace.”



Between Echoes and Echoes

Instead of listening to the tick-tock of a raindrop,
have you ever tried tuning in on the sound between?
It's an elusive quiet,
a moth drawn to the splash like flame,
darting behind each drop and becoming distorted,
easing between echoes and echoes,
ever so slightlike
intervals between thoughts…



Campfire Gazing

The fire wields a tongue of eloquent destruction,
Speaking spirits from the uncoiling smoke
Weaving curls out of each new web
To string together
A basket of stories,
The roads we’ve seen
Our whole lives
Drawn out in clouds,
Our visions somehow always leading
To the sea,
To test ourselves
Against a chance to swim
The horizon we would be,
To dream upon unchained wings
That yet loop around these human feelings
As we gaze
Into the misted eyes
Of our ghosts,
Our memories and hopes,
Steam of dreams and desires,
Always watching us
Through the eyes of the fire-



Circling My Life

Even flying in a straight line
The birds overhead are still
Circling the world.

I move beneath, watching them,
Going forward in my own way
With no container to hold my days,
Just a thin residue of the past
In the older cells of my body
Or recycling in memory

And yet I continue to pass
In the vastness
Things of familiarity-
Forms, faces,
The apparition of yesterday’s reappearance-
And the flittering, fleeing arrows
Of the bird’s continual arc
Above



Coincidence

Seemingly
Pointless wanderings
Until a harmony
Forms temporarily
Between passionate honesty
And footsteps tangentially
Drawing their wavering line

And then
We are in a garden
Crossed with fractallated paths

Arbitrary points
Given meaning
Because of where
We intersect on the map

But also seeming to stem
From some deeper decision,
A coincidence of dots
Gathered together
In unaccountable precision-

And in the end
Are left feeling,
“Is my choice in this moment
To the next one leading

Or is it already reflected
On the other side of the line,
Like two mirrors
With faces that are, always,
Towards the other reeling?”



Colors

Why give the colors such arbitrary names
So far from the fires they light in the mind?
Give me sky and stormy sea,
The color meadow and lighter prairie.
Does red describe the perpetual fire
Of blisters of bloodburning desire?
Can it capture that shade of rage
That blinds the eye
Under a gluttonous haze?
Does white know the light of infant purity
From dirt freckled footpaths spread across linoleum?
Give me oak and muddy river,
Browning rice and stellar silver-
Colors that brush strokes in the mind
Long after words are left behind.



Let It All the Way In

Let everything way in
Let the way in
Let it all the way in
Let the fresh grass cut you
Let the cars roll all over you
Let the sky rises elevate your head
Let the bag lady’s quiet cries of despair
      Tear at the backs of your eyes
Let the season of everyone’s weather
      Align you which way the wind is blowing
Let anger be cold dignity
Let lies be testimony
Let truth be self-evident
Let One Way arrows point into you
      Street lights shine inside you
Let your frailty and fear be overwhelmed
      By the reservoir within
      Without you
Let the trees draw the sun
      Down to the roots of you
Let the white lines be themselves
Let the danger alight on one shoulder,
      Wondrous beauty on the other
Let distances expand you
Let every moment of potential romance
      Be every moment
Let a harsh word destroy you
      And a compliment burn away the ashes
Let every decision bear its full weight upon you
Let your mistakes shine brightly
Let your shame be hugged
Let your deepest wish merge
      With where you are
Let nothing stand in the way of everything
Let everything in
Let it way in
Let the way in
Let it all the way in
And you will know
      Who’s been writing this poem



When Power Meets Power

I need to swim in the river of words becoming poetry
For at least
One sacred eternal instant
To suffuse my wisdom
Of already being there
Already telling you the only truth of the world
In differences
Of eternity so finely splayed on a page
You can see the constellations words connect
You can put together the misty face of clouds of space
Adrift on sine waves of time,
An acknowledgement of the fact
The hill needs to meet itself
To harmonize a fully revolved tune
That can only arrive when we climb
High enough into our depths
To grace our life’s tangent
With every other
With something, with whatever we have practiced
I shoot words off the cusp of a racing mental tooth
The spit glistening galaxies reflected
In the wideness smile
That greets them
And when power meets power
Myself or the universe, whichever,
Enter each other exactly and
We’re even



Where?

What troubles me about Rimbaud
was the way he so decisively died
and yet remained
so clearly here

How
does an artist of
such obvious gifts
not only to others but
himself
completely forsake them
to become
of all things
a businessman?

I can’t buy it,
the Artistic Impulse
is too strong
he was young
but
he committed himself to it
body and soul
right there
on the page
there is never any mistaking sincerity

I can only conclude he had
multiple personalities
and one or more of them
burned up
or out

either that or
all those letters back home
were a carefully crafted lie
and he was in fact
still hot in pursuit
of the unspeakable

or maybe
he continued to write
and the words have forever become
entangled
with the wildness of Africa
lost to those
it wasn’t meant for
and his letters never mentioned it
because there was no point
in explaining to those who can’t
or won’t understand

or there could have been
a deep inner conflict
also unstated

the only last conclusion
is that he achieved an equilibrium
of philosophy and reality
a reconciliation
of vision with the physical…
I would like to believe this, though
the tone of those letters
don’t say so.

Where did he go? Never
have I known a boy
grow so into a man
entirely unlike him.

Where?