|
Click here to access poetry in Real Audio.
Having Dinner with Billy Collins
Far from the standing-room-only auditorium,
I find myself, a friendly native
directly opposite, eye-to-eye, so to speak,
dining with the leading poet of our time.
Who is this literary star, charming champion of popular poetry?
I see an oversized leprechaun from County Cork,
his bald head beaming, he is his own locomotive,
headlamp shining effusively with adulation and red wine.
The Little Engine that Could, a teacher,
professor of English Lit at Lehman College in the Bronx
now smiles and quips, surrounded by Admiration's warm paneled glow
as an honored guest at the Harvard Faculty Club.
He describes his straightforward yet cunning craft,
how he extends his hand to the reader
and leads her down a magic path
where the deer and antelope of the imagination run wild.
Conservative, accessible, funny,
in love with his mission as Poet Laureate,
he jokes, incites, and as the evening ripens he cracks open
more wine, with boozy confessions:
surprise at his new-found success,
and with a smile so wide it circumscribes humility and pride
he concedes that he used to write
horrible depressing self-directed verse.
Now his poems are light as the wing of an angel,
perhaps only jesting about darkness, death and the afterlife,
but in this moonfaced man an ambiguity persists,
something familiar, something human.
Anne Sexton
I'm walking through the thrift shop
20th century stuff
dusty polyester
a dinette set, a Formica table with chrome chairs,
a frayed paperback,
the cover marked with Anne Sexton’s red lipstick.
I see her at the table in the pre-dawn hours,
her Dexedrine smile,
her corps-like complexion.
She combs her lacquered nails through raven widows peak,
feverishly discovering undiscovered lines.
Like Silvia Plath she is in Lowell’s class,
where she learns to scratch the surface
of her discomfort on yellow legal pads
transcribing again and again
a prescription
for her bi-polar genius,
her hemispheric suffering.
Who understands her pathology:
her undiscussed dual diagnosis-
depression and addiction,
self-medicating, psychotic, anorexic, borderline, abused?
She is a walking encyclopedia of mental disorder.
Inadequate, erratic dopamine levels
drive nicotine craving and unbridled desire.
She wants to die:
into that rushing beast of the night,
and I wonder why
I love her.
Poetry in Motion
The gentle lovers on the subway car
so young they speak a language all their own
from Eastern Europe have they come so far
yet still romantic tongue and touch intone
a message that makes all around them sigh -
the firm flesh adorned with studs, tattoos
her pierced brow and soft and naked thigh,
her easy pose, his smile he wants her too!
I watch this picture from a distant place,
for at my age the senses aren't that strong
and I have never framed a gesture slowly trace-
ing hollow of a knee for so damn long!
If I were young again would I still hide?
Yes, for true love lasts a subway ride.
June
Spring heaves its last heavy breath
as every leaf unfolds as far as it can.
The rolling mid-June carnival
leaves us motionless and spent on straw rugs,
while ferns beg for soft drops of rain
to come with cool evening jazz and cars purring
down Cat Rock Road.
My sister,
you have found your place and you own it.
The house holds your past and your future.
In the stone walls and hand-blown glass
gypsies dance and love lights up the night like fireflies.
We have come to the moment of the solstice,
the pinnacle of long day dreams,
the place where growing pains end,
where we lie back and look at the falling stars,
and fall with them.
Physics
A body in motion stays in motion.
Universe expanding to disorder
Yet, a body in motion stays in motion.
No systems runs indefinitely without energy from the outside.
Yet, bodies in motion stay in motion.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Perpetual motion.
There is the Second Law, Entropy, God, Infinity.
There is inertia, and there is you
A body in motion, staying in motion.
There is us, two bodies in motion staying in motion.
perpetual, bodies in equal and opposite reaction,
in motion.
Vectors collide,
angles of incidence equal angles of refraction,
equal and opposite
bodies stay in motion.
in expanding container.
touching less frequently,
yet, perpetually,
we
stay in motion.
Grand Central Station
I®m walking backwards
down History's dark tunnel
to the basement of the station
where black men shuck oysters in starched white jackets,
and chowder steams under hat brims of commuters.
The scene has not changed in over 100 years
and looking up I hear
echoes from the century of Currier & Ives
bouncing of the vaulted ceiling.
The wheel of the steam drive pumps
industry's strong heartbeat,
black smoke pouring
down the rails and through the canals
to rivers where men in topcoats fish for trout.
Civilization moves at the clip of a fast carriage
raising dust as as bare-handed boxers dance in circus tents.
Mink trappers smell of spring thaw,
Cocks fight, and and men wager on how may rats
Billy the Rat Killing Dog can run down in the ring,
snapping their necks with powefull jaw and stacking them up in a pile.
Men chop ice blocks on the lakes,
and great fires in Pittsburgh and Chicago
level the old to make way for the new.
Slaves are branded on the Ivory Coast
and in chains arrive at ports
reeking of whale blubber.
The country heaves forward
forging horseshoes at night
lit by lantern and strong rum.
The ninteenth century finally ends like last night's Rubber game
like bleary-eyed captains of the clipper ships
like black powder triumph on the Mississippi.
like Ice boats on the Hudson,
like the stages of a drunkard®s life,
like Queen Victoria's beauty.
What remains?
The Falls of Niagara, with spray rising toward a rainbow.
Optimism. Kandinsky, and non-representational art.
Crushed shells, and the world tightening like a knot.
Geometry
A line goes on forever in both directions.
A ray goes on forever in one direction.
A segment has two end points,
yet still an infinite number of points between.
If I work out my problems on a flat plane,
circles, squares, triangular sections,
I cannot see others off the surface.
There may be millions of solutions
of which I'm unaware.
Do I care?
When I focus on all of space
I look out my rectangular window and see
bleached water towers baking in the sun.
Planes become volumes,
Cylinders, cones, parabaloids aimed at heaven,
ready to be filled with sine waves
from the new digital gods.
Exhaustion takes me down dozing
through curved lines
and the smell of newsprint and coffee in the cold,
lines of Music, lines of Art,
lines of Poetry, healing heart.
Then with eyes closed to the cloudless sky
I fall into the space in front of me,
through the plane before my eyes
down the line inside myself
to the point where I begin again.
East River
You awake to icy grate of the Brooklyn Bridge,
and the uneasy shimmy of the wheels
while the full moon flashes by the cables.
An early film strip in black and white shows
flat river with breathless calm
reflecting splinters of light from city and sky.
Reggae on the radio orchestrates
the chilling beauty and cold empty mystery of the full flood.
Bodies lie below the surface still as shining stone.
Swallow the fear in your throat, for you will follow one day
as food for fish.
Up the Drive feel the brine and frost
and return to a childhood delighted by the sight of a burdened barge
being pushed North through the ice flows by
an arrogant tug all lit up like a Christmas tree.
Last summer on the Esplanade the river teamed
as you pounded out another middle-aged mile,
with sweat evaporating into the thick air and noisy Hispanic carnival.
Jiving to the timpani of oil can drums, rap, and sweet barbecue smoke
young fertile teens in haltertops lean out over the guardrail,
their tight buttocks smirking at your aching limbs and
fight against the future.
The river does not flow down to the sea
but up towards Hell's Gate and back to the Harbor.
In and out and back and forth like an animal on a leash,
straining against the pilings and conceited man-made meanders
that mock God's glacial plan.
Strong running and slack, narrow and wide, up and down,
and breathing in and out with shallow breath
you tremble at the ebb and flow of
New York's river streaming by.
Chess
The elements of play are force and space and time
You sacrifice one for the other in the game
and so the battle wages in the mind.
The opening is rich and undefined
The possibilities are endless none the same
The elements of play are force and space and time.
Options narrow mid game as you grind
pitched in struggle and bright flame
and so the battle wages in the mind.
Destroy the enemy with brutal violence blind
sans merci attack with cunning the black dame.
The elements of play are force and space and time.
And so you think that you have found the line
to trap the king and push to end the game
and so the battle wages in the mind.
Your premature attack falls short and you're behind
in misery you see your end game lost and lame.
The elements of play are force and space and time,
and so the battle wages in the mind.
Stephen Wainscot
The day he found his mother dead
in vomit red on the bathroom floor he fled with
short seaside breath and brackish tears,
a gentleman at every turn.
Taking charge,
he grew up strong, a Green Beret
they say, he had to kill with his bare hands,
a gentleman at ever turn.
Eyes glint, gray steal through wire-rimmed glasses
that kept him from the Navy.
He was a yachtsman nonetheless,
a seersucker dandy in the House of Representatives,
and in latter years lobbied for defense contractors in the district.
A gentleman at every turn,
of wrist, strong, clipped humor
the drop, the lob, squash court shot,
the silver trophies of
Steven Wainscot,
winner in English tailoring and
custom-made shoes, boxer shorts with button fly,
honorable, he never let the dirty laundry out to dry.
His gallant charm was irresistible to women,
he found a wife for every turn in life,
He loved them like his hunting spaniels.
He had to have his sport.
And when they finally left, he'd count the years
with short seaside breath and brackish tears.
One winter morning early, his purebred bitch
gave birth to eight lab mutts.
A gentleman at ever turn, he did the bravest deed,
the the honorable thing to defend the breed,
taking each one, pulling them from the teat,
and placing them in a bucket squealing,
carried them to the pond to drown each one by hand,
and there with feeling dug a whole deep in sand
and stacked the puppies in it.
Shredded Wheat
Shredded Wheat day.
Cold run through Franklin Park
where brown leaves roll surf sounds
and ears hurt as gusty thoughts crash
on yesterday's New Hampshire hillside.
Light rain lichen lives on
damp grey headstones.
Weathers granite, softens scene
to dark smudge of oil pastel.
Kick back crabgrass and swallow the sight of
my name engraved on the ground.
Today sketch wind chimes in the afternoon
as cat whines rise from the basement
to mix with Mozart
and angels circling in the draft on top of the staircase.
A warm patchwork nap
under quilt curling deep and dreamless
through the windy symphony.
Time stops as the late sun
streams in the rattling window.
Awakened by this warm hand
the past is so far behind me
I can't remember my name.
c William Duke 2000 |
|