POET SPOTLIGHT: STEVIE SMITH

NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

THE WISE MAN

find strength, i was told,
in compassion; be bold

and alive, defer seeking
approval, he said:

be loved after
you're dead.

JEALOUS

wipe away that
smirk of drink
or privilege
or both --

from your mouth and your walk
and the way you are and you talk.

QUOTABLE

"There ain't no answer.
There ain't going to be an answer.
There never has been an answer.
That's the answer."

- Gertrude Stein

POET SPOTLIGHT: KATHRYN STARBUCK

A GIFT

Who is that creature
and who does he want?
Me, I trust. I do not
attempt to call out his
name for fear he will
tread on me. What do
you believe, he asks.

That we all want to be
alone, I reply, except when
we do not; that the world
was open to my sorrow
and ate most of it; that
today is a gift and I am
ready to receive you.

Source: Poetry (March 2009)

QUOTABLE

"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float."

- Alan Watts

PRACTICING AS IF

people say what
do you think you are
doing? as if

anyone can take you
serious, what
with the short lines
and absence

of imagery.

but i am
practicing as if
my life depends on it.

QUOTABLE

"Obscure or 'difficult' poems are often neither. They are merely arbitrary. Quite often arbitrariness emitting from a quite brilliant mind, but arbitrary all the same. There’s plenty of room for strangeness, mystery, originality, wildness, etc. in poems that also invite the reader into the human and alive center about which the poem circles."

- Thomas Lux, as quoted in CERISE PRESS by Sally Molini

UNEASY FLYER

next to you
is a pilot who
today is only a passenger

but nevertheless wise
to uneasy flyers
and he tells you: think

of air like water.
they have the same properties.
imagine you are

on a boat, bouncing across
the waves. you are
not afraid of the motion.

do you worry, he muses,
you'll drop to the bottom
of an ocean?

("actually one time
when i was nine.")

well you're not
going to drop
to the bottom of the sky,
at least not today.
which is awful

nice of him to say. you
don't tell him you know
two people gone
down in crashes and so
his analogy makes you think

more of drowning
than bouncing,
more of clinging
than letting go.

POET SPOTLIGHT: E.E. CUMMINGS

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

POET SPOTLIGHT: JOHN WIENERS

Pain and suffering. Give me the strength
to bear it, to enter those places where the
great animals are caged. And we can live
at peace by their side. A bride to the burden

that no god imposes but knows we have the means
to sustain its force unto the end of our days.
For that is what we are made for; for that
we are created. Until the dark hours are done.

And we rise again in the dawn.
Infinite particles of the divine sun, now
worshiped in the pitches of the night.

- From "The Acts of Youth"

QUOTABLE

"The awful thing, as a kid reading, was that you came to the end of the story, and that was it. I mean, it would be heartbreaking that there was no more of it."

- Robert Creeley

QUOTABLE

"Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything."

- Thomas Merton

NARCISSUS

i am writing this
as if
i'll be dead,
he said.

you won't die,
she lied,
you are more than
just a man.

ALIKE

funny how when
pain is

at its worst,
sometimes it is

easier than ever to see
spirit, to stand in

truth, to want
what's best

for enemies
and loved ones...

JOY RIDE

you must be crazy to think
you could spend all day alone
with wine and poetry.

and why not?
you've got
the driver, the gas, and the car.

the question is not
a matter of subject

or whether --
but rather:

where to
and how far?

CAUTIONARY

you wait
so long
as if

your life runs
on forever.

in time it grows
clear you are
over this or that
hill.

and maybe
the work becomes less

a stop-

gap to your future
and more
your final resting

place.

BY DESIGN

you think you can
transcend human

nature?
maybe

you have your words
mixed up.

human
nature

is
not

clever.

it's our dim machines
with god's
hands on
the levers.

transcend?
to what

end?

never.

I WONDER

do you drink only
on the weekends
when your body
is at loose ends
and your soul
no longer fits your head?

and do you dream
of flying clear
of your disease and all the people
who well-wish you without
anything true ever being said...?

YOU'RE IT

experts say poetry is
either 'x' or 'y'
while i maintain it
is neither
'z' nor even 'pi.'

poetry is about telling
the truth through
words arranged
however you see
fit.

there is nothing to

it.

EXCUSE ME

i know my shadow is behind
all these dark conversations
taking place in my mind.

like: how

could she wear that,
the fat cow, or

he is not really that
sick, the lazy
prick. i am not

nearly so mean as
my shadow makes me
seem; the key is in

not believing

the discussion belongs to me.

STASIS

always swearing i will
change and then another
night's merry-

go-round
of more
of the same.

never caring but still
masquerading, as if
promising new steps will

lead to feet someday
marching in place.

MEMOIR

when in our minds we
step back from what seems to be
going on

sometimes we think we see
patterns in our history.

we have the illusion
that, "hey,"
if we could somehow

interject

our will here or there
maybe we could author the future
rather than simply living
like passengers encased
in some unfolding
memoir.

but this thinking
like all life is
folly; we are never
stepping back
just as there is never past
or future, only...

present and presence.
we are always
here and nowhere.

and the truth is
we are not

writing our lives, nor will we
ever be given the idle opportunity
to read it from a repose;

we are more
like the typing, we are

symbols of letters
reconstructed into symbols
as words, struck to paper --

the embossed, upraised
outlines soaked in black
ink, propelled to the page

by one unseen
hand or the other, the dull flesh and
blood-filled appendages of some
illusion that imagines itself
whole, but is more like --

hole.

STRATEGY

you want it all and this
makes no sense
but try it

now: pretend

you want
nothing.

you're on to something.

THE RIGHT AMOUNT

there is in the right amount
of beer or other godly byproduct
a kind of quietude
that meditates you.

so that when
walking home from some
BYOB you
stop thinking so perfectly
it is as if
you finally thought

something just right
for the first time ever.

an entirely empty brand
of slack-brained clever.

BIRDS WITHOUT

these days everywhere
you go
it's a whole
world of phone

peacocks
squawking,
preening,
flocking --

birds without
feathers

alone together.

LIFE

we are
probably

not going to make it.

and were it not
for that "probably"

i don't know how
anyone could take it.

DEATH IS NOTHING

is life only
what is

between death
and death?

we know: death

is what comes
after life.

so what
comes before?

and if it is
not death --

maybe death is nothing
after all.

CAN'T MAKE ME

there's always the urge to let the lines run
wild.

but your poet is like an old type-
writer

with an itchy carriage-return
finger

always looking for some new excuse to
break.

POEM FOR KATHY STARBUCK

you find yourself

perched on a flimsy seat
over a dunk tank of roiling recent
cold deaths –-

your husband’s the last dead-
center shot in the bull’s-eye,
his departure your welcome

into the world of suffocating
grief –- and you
do not bother

treading water

choosing
sinking

over
swimming;

no air anywhere
for the living.

and in holding your last breaths
inside your now
hollow heartless chest

you discover there
still is poetry
left.

it won’t keep you
alive
but it’s good company
until you
lose yourself and
die, too.

MIRROR MIRROR

you always want something great out
of the gate, you put
your best foot
right in your mouth.

you can't anticipate
all the mistakes you'll make and
how those stains might
never fade.

your fumbling is a message
that gets mumbled
with precision; you are will-
ful in your indecision.

you wear wonder like a neck
beard tucked in
just below your perfect chin.

you are the perfect
project, a wreck-
less lover, a kind of human
fixer-upper.

TALKING (TO MYSELF)

you
have no idea

what makes me
happy.

BYGONE

don't, he said,
you know (that)
you are my son?

i won't, i said,
let go (of)
what you've done.

RETURN TO ME (with a nod to Matthew Ryan)

alone i long to be
with people;

in a crowd i only seek
my own company.

alive i ponder my
mortality;

when i die will i
return to me?

UNCLE

oh god
it hurts
too much
this

life.

BUT IT'S THE TRUTH

they had a boy
baby all dark around
the eyes, heavy hooded
lids, shoulders drawn
up around the ears
like a vulture
in repose, and
somebody said,
"kinda looks a little
like nixon," that kid will
get kicked around.

POETRY IS GAY (for John Wieners)

i write poetry because i am
an idiot and a malcontent,
not that there’s anything wrong with that.

THE POET DOES NOT DIE

the poet does not die
for lack of readers. he dies
for lack of hope, which is
to say, "love."

for love is nothing
if not wishful and silly; and
poems are nothing but songs
whose only instrument is

the breath, that frail
involuntary whispering
that keeps us, for the moment,
from death.

THIN LINE

poetry is the answer
to: what

to make

of all
this?

but a poem is

no solution, just
artifice
upon which

to drape a flimsy
premise; the better
to dry it
out for safe-

keeping

or burning.

RELEASE

oh for the love
of
god would you

please just
take hold
of some part of me and never

let go. there
now
please

do it again.

THOUGHTS FROM THE FLU

only the sick can see
the arrogance that afflicts
the healthy;

doomed as they are,
inevitably, the sick await
death's murky reverie

while the healthy
pretend they might,
eventually,
outrun the end.

neither endures.
life has no cure.

GHOSTS BARELY

maybe you are seeing
something we're not

seeing: what redeems
anything?

we are all still
reeling
from the news
of your decaying;

and yet
you go on

hoping

while we become
ghosts barely capable
of coping.

GIRLS RULE

if i want to
start something

it takes days
and words
and you
feeling good
about you.

if you ever want to
start anything
it takes place

because you
maybe
only
on accident

touched me.

SHELTERED

someday you will
be old -- don't
think about it;

you won't

remember what you were

told; and you'll know

we loved you not
by what you were

taught; but by what you
never knew or even gave
a thought to.

YOU WON'T FIND IT IN BOOKS

books rot and
writing divides,
requiring us to
take sides --

interpretation
versus
meditation --

declaring "what is"
where once
wonder was
enough,
as in
"is what?"

life is
harder than
we thought.

PRESSURE POINTS

when my wife sleeps
she leaves

all her pressure points

exposed.

i know holds
from self-defense
to make an enemy
or a wife
relent.

laying there spent,
my wife has already submitted,

if not to me then to some other
force, equally dim-witted.
her mouth leaks when

she speaks in dreams,
and her hair
drapes her face and
channels her tears
into streams of wet ache;

and I guard her
borders
like an occupying army,
present
and waiting for something
impossible to arrive.

METAFESTO

locked in tiny verse,
my words are like kids
or worse:

better seen
than heard.

(talk about old-
fashioned.)

in this age of slams and self-
confessing, this way seems so --

funny
there's no shorter way
to say --

minimalist.

but this life has switched me
into the younger
brother: tough.
keep your hands off
my stuff.

my words
are like the paralyzed
army men i placed
all around the room,
prepared for doom.

here's how it is
also the same:
the battle never came.

CLEARCUT

your friend means
well, she says
"i really love

your poems,
you should

try to get them

published."

you write back:
"thanks, maybe
you are dead

right, except
the part about getting

published."

she wonders if a poem is
a question in the form
of a statement,
making that old riddle
all the more relevant:

if a poem is
published
in the woods yet
nobody reads it,
you can't tell her
it ever
made a sound.

you, on the other hand, find
a poem is like the roots
left behind

underground
as the tree is

on the way
down.

INSOMNIA

there is nothing
that truly holds
us; not the world
or our lovers, not
gravity or even mortality.

loosed we are
born and returned
to the infinity of death's dark
and silent mystery.

PEACE

it matters so
little, we know

better, we still
flounder.

the soul is restless,
it flaunts
and feeds
and we

forget the difference

between
wants and needs.