Some Poems

It's been a while since I posted any poetry, and I've written a fair amount over the last few months. So here's an assortment of what I consider the better recent stuff, plus a couple from the summer that I wasn't ready to post at the time, but am ready to post now.

Looking through my journal, it's interesting for me to note that I tend to write prose when I'm in a better mood and poetry - haiku excepted - when I'm in a worse (or more complicated) mood, so this collection is on the morose side. If you want light-hearted humor mixed with clandestine philosophizing, read the post below this one: "How to Survive in Nicaragua without Clothes."

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Assorted Haiku from November through January

November morning
   cool and bright
The car window fogged

So many books
   all full
Of beautiful empty words

Romeo's lesson:
   not to have
Is what sustains us

It's not yet dark enough
   that I can
See the stars

Wandering the tarmac
   a lonely man
Who cannot fly

Wrote a haiku
   then promptly forgot
All about it all

Sleeping in the hotel
   a lost couple
Of Big Apple dreamers

I didn't fear
   the wild scorpion
We have too much in common

Where am I?
   the statue of Jesus
Blocked by flowers

The bugs don't
   consider themselves
Nicaraguan

Las Bélgicas
   mas bonita en la mañana
Que en la noche

In my generation
   we're all just a bunch
Of flitting moonshadows

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Written on the plane to Managua. This one is inspired by the song "The Clouds Breathe For You," by the Glitch Mob.

The clouds breathe for us
When they fill with vapor they cry
like us it's too much to bear, sometimes
and the torrent that follows,
in the hazy afternoon, filling
the air with drops of cold, bitter liquid
draining through pipes and sewers
overflowing from pools and ponds and
all the puddles splash.

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Also written on the plane to Managua.

The world’s lexicon is vast, immeasurable,
Sometimes indecipherable, replete
as it is
with symbols and icons and archetypes,
denotation and connotation, inflection and
suggestion, innuendo, ententre.
The world speaks, in so many tongues,
from so many mouths,
but the Universe remains
Silent.

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An admittedly sad poem written in June. I know that Buckley is not the original writer of the song in question, but his version remains my favorite.

I still cry when I hear Jeff Bluckey's "Hallelujah."

There's one verse, in particular, that gets me.

It speaks to my memory of loving, and losing,

And not being sure if the loving was ever real,

If every breath was, actually, halleljuah.

It throws the whole edifice into chaos, you see,

The edifice in which my gullible heart lives,

Where I believe in love and want to love

And want to need to have to believe

That love can be a victory march, maybe, sometimes.

Then I remember that all of my love has been

And maybe will ever be

Cold, broken

Hallelujah.

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Another reflective poem I wrote in July in Colorado. Not dissimilar from the previous in theme, but better constructed, I think.

What does it mean to have faith?

The damp air, still pregnant with afternoon rain

Even in the middle of the cool night

Sent ripples through the blinds covering the window,

And at the desk in the corner

Across from the piles of boxes -

Symbols of some kind of faith

In some kind of love -

At the desk in the corner I heard

A car passing in the distance.

I remembered looking out of a fifth story window

Waiting for my love, my first love, to arrive,

Waiting impatiently, desperately,

Waiting with impossible desire need lust fear

Waiting, leaning against the brick windowsill

Knowing that someday she would not come

Pretending that someday was today

Letting my stomach drop and my heart shatter

Preemptively, and perpetually ever since.

I have always had faith in the impossible

And what is more impossible than love?

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Finally, my most recent poem. I'm reading a beat poetry anthology at the moment, and you'll probably notice the influence.

Moonshadow

A January night, the sky patched with clouds

Like a toenail, the light from the moon

Shone down in slivers, silvery light beige

Illuminating hardly anything at all

A lamppost and a stop sign

Casting shadows on the ground

A man walking and wanting and caught

in the moon's pale gleam, hardly visible

His thoughts, hardly visible hardly thinkable

Hardly even thoughts at all just the wanting

And the wanting until all he thinks is the wanting

And it's hardly a thought at all.

A sliver of light, a hint of a smile,

the gleam in her eyes, her toenail when

She wore open-toed shoes, reflecting the

light of the full moon on some other brighter

lighter night in some other brighter lighter life

and the wanting of all her from the

gleam in her eyes to the

reflection of the moon in her toenail

A man walking caught wanting under the moon

Casting a moonshadow blocking out the light

Wanting the toenail moon wanting the fullness

of a fortnight later when the shadows

The shadows he might cast then would be

So much more discernible and in her

eyes the moon reflected so clear

and that is the wanting. That is the shadow.

That is the wanting.