Wednesday, January 30

bear with me

Still Life with Raj


in the room hides
an unwell mind

laundered clothes fester in piles

the chair is plied
with question
the table
has been drunk

in white cups of tea the bitters seep--
brown fingers cradle
palms together

he bows
where the English have planted their
names like trees

the English have piled into my name,
(the walls stroked in ink)
my tongue,
mine--


if you want some exposition: Raj refers to the British Raj.

Tuesday, January 29

? (helpican'twriteanymore)

the carthaginian
queen
defined a shape, but the atom's
edges are uncertain.

the electron comes and goes from node to node.

light lifts and strikes like minute hammers
flung.

the girl washing leaves,
the button scored like a mushroom cap:
the dog pricks its quizzical ears--

between you and
me--distance the length of the train

Monday, January 21

This was written in late December. Haven't found a title yet. What's new.


I come to the table with questions.
These will be the last, I say,
but on this surface
no voice takes on the task.

Potpourri in gold gift-wrap,
and blocks of imported cheese
uneaten on the black wood.
Next to him her face is animated
and milk-white. He nods in
pantomimed sympathy, his hand
smoothing her nervous leg.

Across the table I am the guest,
watching, my insides bowled over
and body flattened by the reoccurring
mistake. A fever, an infirmity
made pure by sleeping fiction.
I am only sleeping. I know this.

We’ve met here before, with
and without sound, or taste.

I see through his affinity to
varied black.
Each time is real as day, repeating
the same deferred fact,
gesturing the silent answers.

Monday, January 14

trying to write haiku but...

the poem fills with word:
imitation not finding the
difference of branch and tree.

one blossom-
a particular grief.

Monday, January 7

I'm back from bumming around. I found this poem, translated from Polish. I love the 6th stanza.


I Would Like to Describe
by Zbigniew Herbert

I would like to describe the simplest emotion
joy or sadness
but not as others do
reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light
which is being born in me
but I know it does not resemble
any star
for it is not so bright
not so pure
and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage
without dragging behind me a dusty lion
and also anxiety
without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way
I would give all metaphors
in return for one word
drawn out of my breast like a rib
for one word
contained within the boundaries
of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say - I love
I run around like mad
picking up handfuls of birds
and my tenderness
which after all is not made of water
asks the water for a face
and anger
different from fire
borrows from it
a loquacious tongue

so is blurred
so is blurred
in me
what white-haired gentlemen
separated once and for all
and said
this is the subject
and this is the object

we fall asleep
with once hand under our head
and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us
and taste the earth
with their tiny roots
which next morning
we tear out painfully