"My life's long radiant Summer halts at last,
And lo! beside my path way I behold
Pursuing Autumn glide: nor frost nor cold
Has heralded her presence; but a vast
Sweet calm that comes not till the year has passed
Its fevered solstice, and a tinge of gold
Subdues the vivid colouring of bold
And passion-hued emotions. I will cast

My August days behind me with my May,
Nor strive to drag them into Autumn's place,
Nor swear I hope when I do but remember.
Now violet and rose have had their day,
I'll pluck the soberer asters with good grace
And call September nothing but September."
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox, September

enthralled

"I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.
I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air."
- Theodore Roethke, The Far Field

The day-before-the-first-of-october feeling: for midterms

i think the Fall fell while I was falling behind
and now i want to fall asleep
in the autumn sunshine
and forget this fallen world
and how much it hurts
to fall
and
have to get up again.

i wish i was a leaf today.

the Difference

The one spoke reams about her dreams and laughter and showered her with star-words, while
the other woke up each morning and asked "where are you?"

that was the difference, you see.

OCTOBER

I will lay me down and fall
asleep.

drifting leaves will cover me

I will lay behind this wall
to weep.

heavy stones will shield me.

I will lay here in your thrall
and deep

your wings will shadow o'er me

oh autumn,
what a crimson-falling wall you are,
a quiet, witching thing
the apples and chrysanthemums are causing me to sing!

my friend

she said stop looking for doors that lead OUT and start finding ones that lead THROUGH but he said will you go with me?

I'm Glad You're Back

i come out, still pulling on my sweater
and you are sitting
right there
grinning straight into my earliest morning face,
a cheerful affront
to monday.

i thank God for you my friend.

Perhaps

Yes, i think there is one more love poem in me tonight. It is shy though, and is hesitant to step around the curtain of weariness that hangs between heart and pen.

Come out, my lovely thing.
Come out into this dim warm room and let me hear you sing.
It need not be a noble song
nor need its verses go for long.
In truth, o starry child of this most dark-filled heart,
even at song's sweet end there is the start
of melody that stretches on and on right out of time
whose very essence is sublime.
I'm sorry if I've startled you with words. I'm coarse and spare
of grace, while you are only and alone most fair.
And so begin.
I will silent sit and silent weep, for lo
and very briefly must I yield
to sleep.

yet let them not call me beggar who once did hold your gift within my ear -
i am king of wealth beyond their scope for I know you, my dear.

Gomer

It must end somewhere.
the well run dry and the oil run out.
it can't keep going on -
surely there isn't enough left. You can stop pretending.

I remember once you told Dad that no matter how harsh his words were, you knew he loved me. And how afterwards I couldn't believe how much I hated both of you.

Herbert said we are twenty different men within twenty seconds, but i've never seen you change.

I'm sorry.

Your strength revolts me when I'm at my weakest. I guess I just wish it was a more equal fit, that sometime,
sometime maybe you could come to me,
maybe I would have something to forgive.

Written On the Occasion of Your Birthday

I want to write you a birthday poem,
42 stanzas and a grand finale that Neruda and Keats
would turn green at & have to eat the rest of the cake to comfort themselves.
I want to bake you that cake, 6 stories high girded with chocolate and reinforced with
butter & all the good things that you deserve for having survived this long.
Twenty years. 86,400 seconds every day, every day since
your little wrinkeldredself first breathed in. I want to write an ode to your hair, to your hands, to your mouth, things which for decades have caused wonder
to light up in the minds of those around you.
It's your birthday, and you deserve the Arc du Triomph in verse & cake & candles
and a million cards that categorize the billion reasons I love you from nose to toes,
but it's 1 am & i'm tired & my poetic side malevolently went off to chase unicorns
somewhere, and i'm weary beyond bearing - not quite as weary as the lady that night in primordial pain, her cheeks two concetrated roses of effort in her pale face. Your mother's pain gave you the chance
to taste Time & feel it for yourself - I am not as weary as all that, not at all.
Mostly, i'm just glad its your birthday
and you haven't jumped ship or skivvied off into the jungles of some city or adventuresome place - i'm glad you're twenty here and now, where i can
track you down
and hug you till your bones crack. Maybe someday i will write you a birthday poem,
so stay alive.

1920 - The September After

i would like to know just one thing from you:

why do you leave your shoes on the mat
on all the mornings
of the nights when you don't come home so that i have to stare at them over breakfast
and lunch
and the late lonely dinners when i almost wish
that you hadn't come back
from that war you can't forget.

That One Night (for M. B. Martins)

There was one night
when the moon didn't rise
and it rained until the middle of the next afternoon.
I woke up alone in bed, and after stumbling around all morning, we met up again
in the middle of a puddle.

it was still raining

Your ankles were white, white as alabaster. Your eyes were tired
for a lot of reasons.
But then you splashed,
and the puddle and the silence shattered,
and I wanted to carry you
all the way through life until the poppy-fields bloomed into your dreams.

But instead we went down to the dead-endstreet
and put flowers next to a weeping Mary
and the body of a dead Jesus.

and then it stopped raining.

Political Science Research Methods

FIRST QUESTION: Are you curious by nature?

ANSWER: Heck yes. I mean, of course I am. Burning with curiosity that would light ten-thousand cats on FIRE!

SECOND QUESTION: Are you a drug user?

Art Critic

He was a man unaware of the fair,

unaquainted with the painted,

and unimpressed with the best.


"Art matters because life matters."
according to that logic, "Socks matter because feet matter"...etc.

Ecclesiastes

there's a broad & arrogant suspicion
spreading among the young
like a disease.
as each day goes by i notice it more:
they think they will inherit
this world when we are gone.

they do not realize this world will die with us.

Goodbye

My breath is sore within my chest
my chest is sore beneath my shirt
my shirt is torn above the breast
from where you arrow caused this hurt

In disbelief I mark the wound
A wound of spirit and of kin
Could kin of mine by blood-ties bound
cause this grief now lodged within?

No splintered cross or thorny crown
No crown or cross claim I to wear
I wear but what you’ve made my own
This fresh and crimson stain, despair.

I stagger back - my hunted heart
Haunts the ruins of our days.
No wholeness there, no joy, no art
all destroyed by traitors ways.

Bridge and boat lie burnt behind
and burns the friendship that we knew.
One hour past your words were kind-
How strange is change to false from true!

A Plan

take it wise & slow/a look before a leap
this desert rose will grow/baby go to sleep

take one step at a time/one ephiphany a day
time alone will prove/if love can make a way

patience in your touch/iron in our will
we don't know too much/we probably never will

building higher walls/around an open gate
should we walk though now/or baby, should we wait?

The Queen Mother and the Queen.

weak & wounded words pour from my mouth
o mother no
not again not another exchange of hurt.
i am finished,
in your eyes i have seen love, i swear. what about the
sledding times? apples and horses and diamonds-in-concrete?
hold tightly to that memory i try to, but
don' t you see in my eyes, the normal defeat
weeping. (its been years. its been years)
i think that as new baby i was afraid to cry in front of you.
i have always been awed by your strength, but afraid too.
once, i think, you were tender & green & shattered even as I;
but somewhere somehow you became
a tower of thorns
and why why why do you want to add another dagger-child
to your quiver?

more noise (abandon ship).
there is no wildness like that of a reckless woman; no savagery in the world like her tongue.

from A Letter, Written to Miss L. in My Head While In Key West

Dearest-my-friend,
the thought of you and your ambitious summer plans and appetite for literature and good poems inspired me to try and hold on even when my brain had gone all sleepy and numb so i fought to remember: what were all those poems that coursed down my face early as i walked and sweated under the huge cloud formations in view of the sea? I will try to remember and if i cannot oh what will you say? You will smile and shake your head and say "child, thoughts can be as whorled as the shells tumbled in the surf and their beauty sometimes eludes us like a wave snatching back its treasure. Only some shells stay on shore long enough to hurt your feet, and only some thoughts form long enough for their beauty to cut into you. Just write down what you can, silly girl. That's all you can do."

So i heard you say that in my head and it was less lonesome and then i lay and for a while thought about the book Killer Angels and the Civil War. I lay, sweaty and dreamily happy with stars in my eyes at the great deeds of Chamberlain and Kerlain and Tom and Meade and Hood and the tragedy of Lee and Longstreet and the soft decaying dead and the rank smell and the fierce eagles that watched Gettysburg destroyed. I lay on a white beach in the south, in the Deep South of Florida and there are no slaves or weeping slave children, but just Americans and it is an odd feeling, stepping out of the heat of that horrible, exulting time back onto the beach of America. I feel stretched and breathless, like i have been in the grip of some thrilling fever....battle-blood.

These men are in my heritage.

I want to be a warrior.

(Isn't it remarkable how books make you think bigger thoughts and dwell on greater truths than you are actually capable of doing? They are mind-stretchers, laboring with pick and axe to hew out enough complacent ignorance so there is room for doubt and questions and homegrown, original thoughts).

VALIDITY

max weber
seems like someone who
would come in and order a large americano
and rib us barristas about
our politics, skills, and choice of shoes;

someone we'd only put up with
if he tipped well.

TEN OUT OF TEN

Amazingly graceful and without scent
i can't believe i ever went
a day without admiring you
and all the crazy things you do

i'd never guess you had to fart
your honesty delights my heart
the way you burp is joyful, too
I like everything you do


for a certain non-roadtrip carride i will never forget.

Rational & Cautious

i'm fighting laughter:
you're in the middle of a forest fire
with a dipperfull of well-water
you gathered at the world's end -

but this is the the world's beginning
and
it's burning with the sunrise and flames from where my eyes
met your eyes.

the wise man who sent you out with that tiny silver cup
who turned you out and sent you off with a high quest and glory-thirst;
the old, scarred knight whose tales of brave adventure spurred your feet
through lone and undiscovered countries-
don't you think he too, long and long ago, reached his journey quest,
dipped up the stars
from that fabled & unchartable deep
and drew that cup of striving to his lips
to down a draught unparalleled...

don't you see, before that liquid mystery kissed his tongue
a billow of smoke
from an olive grove afire
walled him in, distracting and the seeker in him paused,
just long enough to hear the cry
of a desperate, wide-eyed dryad in distress...

look closer: why is your ladle's handle all scorched and charred?
you are not the first foolish son
to sail past the sirens
to the uttermost of reason and enter the forest beyond.
nor are you the first wise man to find
that love,
love,
love is burning in unquenchable light around you.

Come on, laugh with me-
your journey was not vain!
Come, let's watch the colors of the cinders dance
and marvel at their brief and brilliant rain!

monday

walled in by days
where little but the noise of straining hearts is audible
mired in thoughts
that circuit in unsatified interrogatives
beset by feelings
small growing things fighting for any drop of rain
I,
I think of You, who once was darkened by walls and mired for me.
And Your heart, O jesus,
your heart feels what mine cannot.

Create inside another one.

Like yours.