"The Next Step"

this is

the next step

on this early November day

the cherries shrivel on the zigzag branch

leaves long gone

the zigzag parts the sky

the crows part it too

dew does not crust the grass it’s frost now

and all this is like nothing else

all this is not a metaphor for that

do not link one thing to another simile-wise

like the plastic cars of the children’s train

you are also at some point this morning

in some state

so is the garbage man in Buenos Aires

and the bumpy horned lizard looking at something

in the Painted Desert

all of these things are

as they are

this morning

"Simple"

if you

were simple

you could walk away

after having touched the Buddha’s foot

placed the stone onto the ground

just so

aligning it with the pathway of thought

that straddles your eyes on the one hand

and the horizon on the other

walking away now

you part the air with your palms

doing so produces a squeak a sibilant

objection from the space

it is asking

for more commitment

"Context"

some say

you can only understand by knowing what came before

i love you just by itself hanging there in the whirl

doesn’t really tell us much

so the

markedly veined marbled right hand of David barely touching his upper thigh hanging

really doesn’t tell us

anything

unless we know

what he had just perceived moving

there

over

the horizon

Splendor In The Grass Glory In The Flower

"The Tree"

it is a mark of

our poverty

that we flee the act of

placing words on this here this earthly emanating goldly skyward

fearing too many tropes have stuck on it

glue-like

how many layers

since that earliest sin-filled garden tale

by now it is the world’s thickest palimpsest

so what should we do this autumn morning

chill licking our fingers ears

and camera shutter barely clicking

as we see

its sharp intensity

bending our sense

of what today

is new

"In The Land Without Adjectives"

in the fall the King

parsimonious

forbade all adjectives from

attaching

to any stone or growing flowing thing



henceforth

the grove had to own the shade or hue

could not be it

or seem

and you

also could not slide

thoughtlessly into that nuance so much fancied then

but had

to swallow quick

and say

I

clasp

now

 it

"Which Of These Scrambled Words"

which of these scrambled words is least like the others

burbles the airplane magazine game page

do you mean

which of the words is least like anything at all

which of them is variously floating

there

in mind space

black chemical ink on cellulose fiber with a light slick coating

so that the printed airline logo gleams

at 32,000 feet

while that particular word over there

and this one over here

actually those physical objects

of black and cellulose

are hurtling along with us and our steel tube

trying to attain our spot of desire

what would be these words’ desires I wonder

do they even have them

basically squiggles impressed on the page

no meaning at all

if you come from Cefalu

and are being accustomed

to different squiggles entirely

the meaning

whatever it is

seems to be a link

kind of like an electric arc

from our mind

to the squiggle

these two things are glued together spiritwise

and that spirit-glue

is also

hurtling

along with us

at one hundred kilometers per minute

to Miami International Airport

"You Just Can't Get Some Things"

you just can’t get some things sometimes

or sometimes any time

eluding us

they lie in their homes

in their home lands

when we write their latitudes and longitudes

the digits slide off the page

nests of sapphires rubies emeralds opalines

shaded far away

by acanthus leaves

washed by what seem to us inchoate speaking airs

tongues lavishing unintelligible complexities

on their ellipsoid shapes

you

here

you go into a store shopping bag in hand

looking over the rutabagas and such

loaves of bread made of grains and sand

blended with a bit of water and thirst

exiting

you feel

vaguely absent

not quite forlorn

is this what we were made for?

"We Go To A Really Good Fish Restaurant In Gainesville Florida"

and we are sitting on the benches outside the Bonefish Grill waiting for the hostess to call us

it will be about fifteen minutes she said

we start talking with the fellow next to us he is from Daytona

a journalist

he looks Native American or Hispanic

he talks with a kind of I don’t know inner quiet

we say we’re retired teachers driving from Florida back to Vermont

what kind of journalism do you do I ask

I cover the courts and the police

it’s sometimes a downer I’ve been doing it for years

I ask how do you come down at the end of the week after all that heavy stuff

I just tell my boss don’t call me after 6:30 Friday night I am out of touch

the biggest case we had was a few years ago

six young people slaughtered beat up throats cut you would not believe it

and all over a bunch of video games

what I ask

yeah this guy was wanted for violation of parole the police went into his apartment

took him out

what am I going to do with all this stuff his landlady said all these video games and junk

just get it out of there the police said just throw it away whatever you want to do with it

well she had a niece living in one of her apartments seems like she gave some stuff to her

whatever

then the guy gets out on parole

busts into the niece’s apartment when she and her roommates are out

sees one game cd on the living room floor and just goes psycho

he is a real psychotic

he leaves waits gets two other thug buddies only seventeen and eighteen they go back one night

the niece her two roommates and three other friends are there

just having a good time

these three guys bust in and slaughter them

you would not believe it

we covered it so heavily never had a murder case like that before I did a lot of research up in New England Maine Rhode Island Vermont

ran a big spread one day on each of these six nice young people

a couple of them had worked at Burger King had come down to Gainesville to start their lives

got some roommates to share the apartment expenses

the others were just friends visiting can you imagine

he gives us his card:

Mauricio Gonzalez Reporter-Police/Courts The Daytona Beach News-Journal 901 6^th St., P.O. Box 2831 Daytona Beach FL 32120-2831 tel 386-681-2557 www.news-journalonline.com

but why did you travel so much up in New England covering this case

because the grandmother lived in Maine

and all the six young people were from Vermont

- - - -

our table was ready we went in

and had some really good grilled fish

"I Keep Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop"

 I keep waiting
 for the other shoe to
 drop
 for that lowest
 pendulous apple to
 break loose
 for the Tower of Pisa to
 waver slightly
 shudder
 then smoothly incline
 carving down
 into that soft terra santa
 borrowed from Jerusalem
 and it
 nestled neatly in that holy court
 would await such
 a visit

 it would receive those stony blocks mercifully
 surely
 but
 is awaiting such things
 our mission
 here
 that is
 standing behind the striped lines
 not proceeding until instructed to do so
 by the higher authorities
 looking looking
 for that event
 that quick
 instant
 happening
 to bring focus and depth and loss
 to our lives

"If You Built Something Very Big"

if you built something very big

very large

all dimensions blasted far out and away

as big as the engineering and construction and sweat capabilities

were capable of constructing

well

what would that mean I wonder

you look at the Olympeion in Akragas

O Megale Ellas

you folks were chomping at the bit

to build something so grand

and also chomping

to smash each other’s polis to pieces

at the drop of a hat

how does that all fit together

you think that the big column

twenty men holding hands needed just to circle around it

you think that in the end means something?

and you

baldacchino maker

when you twirled those giant columns

raised the Cathedra Petri so high up

on the mighty hands of those four fathers

and set the dove in the glass behind

is not what really matters

that light that light

that equally streams

over a single stone

far away?

"I Am Where I Am Now"

I am where I am now

moving through air through clear

as I move the streetscene

curves around me

a continuous

changing

curve

all around 360 degrees around

and the curve moves along with me

when the I that I am right now

is not here any more

maybe it will be in another part of this

maybe it will be in that large decorative stone

in front of the newly restored 1893

house on the corner

the one with the mauve shutters rust trim and gentle camel cream exterior walls

in that rock

ringed by shasta daisies in the hot summer air

the I that I will be then

will not have eyes like mine right now

but perhaps

through the grainy

layered strata of that fairly small rock

by the entry door

I will in some way

perceive myself

as I am walking now

down that street

this street

right now 

"If I Were To Say To You"

if I were to say to you look

you cannot turn back time

you would say to me look

at that corkscrew at that

point sharp

how it gouges into the cork

but it does

does return withdraw

come back out spiralwise

so what would I then say

yes

it comes back

to those coordinates in space

 in time

perhaps

we can turn time back

in some way

that that sharp point

of act

does not really penetrate and pierce

this time around

as it did

at first

"We Could Be For Example"

could be for example

had we not been us

another thing

or scores of them

a museum

filled with let us say inanities

objects which in Diodorus’ time meant many things

but which today

are

for us

odd knobby bits cracked gashed edges

stone tongues what did they say

we do not care

they simply rest inside us

we could be

for example

granite

having swallowed hors d’oeuvres of feldspar

perhaps porphyritic perhaps something else

and with a sleek sheen polished

we would simply reflect

when people looked upon and at us

they would not know what we were thinking

or even yes a thurible

upside down arcing almost orbit-like

whiffs of labdanum and sandarac

winding through the congregation

and they would smell the beatific

or think they do

"Ode to Fennel"

imperious fennel

you rise Venus-like

from the frothy loam

virginal bulb waxing full

as you spire green and thinly

toward the empyrean

we give you thanks

that you deign to donate

toothsome roasted tranches

bathed in unguent herbs and roqueforts

and other manner of adorning

your verdant feathers

clipped

grace

our humble offerings

wafting tasty vapors

from our tongues

heavenward

"Irreducible Squash"

factual zucchini

imperceptible squash

you lurk lizard-like

under the flat umbrella leaf

absorbing the summer morning

not in any greeting-card way

but rather nonchalantly

to say that growth

and green

do not depend

on concepts precepts

theorems paradigms schemata

gridlines ledger sheets or other astutely arranged algorithms

you will grow expand harden your tough green skin

ultimately they won’t even be able to eat you

"Enough"

Enough.

I hate this word

the ending looks like ugh

although it tries to disguise itself as uff

which conjures up warm moist nuances

of fluff and puff shuffle and snuffly

it walks onto my kitchen counter on sleek tiny feet like ants

thinking I will not smush it away

but I do want it away

do not want repose

stillness

finite boundaries

living like Luxembourg

no -- give me baldacchino ogee ormolu

splash and panache

and roasted lobster red

oozing through my bank account

"Husk"

it is not like anything else

not like the jellyfish

because it is hard oval pointed shelled

not like boustrophedon

it floats down it does not go this way and that

not like waves

it forms around space stubbornly hard

but is it like

the ear seeking the echo

the default of love

“Everything Has Salt In It and Artichokes Fall From the Sky”

making hilarious music

unexpectedly

I not hearing them

will turn the corner walking down Union Street

the blue Packard pristine 1927 and undented

will edge out from the driveway

mom and dad and their four-year-old son

walking by the little one in blue jeans sweat shirt and

a fluffy pink tutu


I will not be making this up

the sky shall cut its edges into the line of maples brightly


now

here’s the question:

do you think all of this will come about because of the

way some oxygen molecules danced

a long time ago?

"Are Humans Smarter Than Clouds and Waves"

at Key West sunrise all the band members appear on stage

and go through their act


clouds gold-and-raspberry paintbrushes

waves wet rocks flying-feather-things



do they say to themselves

I do not want to die

I want a café con leche

I want to fly forever through this turquoise sky

I want to be loved by everyone



as I sometimes do

on the pier

at 6:27 a.m.

"A Sense Of"

came flying out of the air of the torrents

a letter

postmarked Ljubljana

espousing flights of sentiment

hitherto unsuspected

what portended those

unfranked stamps?

"How We Could Spend Time"

we could for example

burrow

smear ourselves

sneakily into the top of the hierarchical bureau

arrange the papers

reverse the ones and oughts

such that

a hollow hole gaping

swallowed up all of the lentils

which the peasants had patiently

placed on the stoop

thinking

they were for everyone’s good


or

we could

wander through between among the grasses shrubs tall trees

alongside children brothers sisters

old old elders too pausing awaiting their shuffling gait

til they attained us

and all of us could then and would wonder

at the infinite sun-struck leafiness

feathering our eyes


or

we could sit

in the piazza lazily

our collective rumps you and I and they

all around an impossibly small circular black iron table

the metallic top of which would be

pierced with diamond spade club like holes

reminiscent

of a deck of cards

quite crowded

with our espresso cups

and there

we would spend time


or

as the roman languages say it

pass

the seconds minutes hours days months years

you can keep spinning out the tape as you wish

but in fact

we know

that

time

would spend us

"Archaic Torso of Apollo"

Rainer Maria Rilke
My translation, with help from versions by Stephen Mitchell and Galway Kinnell


<A poem of fierce magical power!>
~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~


We cannot know his unprecedented head

with eyes ripening like apples. And yet his torso

still glows like a candelabra

in which his gaze, though burning low,



holds on and shines. Otherwise, the prow

of the breast could not blind you, and in the soft turn of the loins

a smile could not run down

to that center that held the procreating power.



Otherwise, this stone would stand disfigured, cut short

under the transparent plunge of the shoulders

and would not shimmer like a predator’s fur;



and would not burst out from all its sides

exploding like a star: for there is no place here

that does not see you. You must change your life.

"Like"

if every thing is like every other thing

still there must be

to avoid

the homogenized One

particles

grit in the eye

a piece, a hand

ten tesserae forming the hand of

a frozen warrior about to be

impaled

on Alexander’s spear

thrusting across the wall

of the Naples museum

"A Pane of Glass in the Grass"

standing vertical

shoved into the grass

one-third below eye level

below the dirt horizon

two-thirds above

in air

three dimensions

looking two



you should walk around it

this side and that

ignore the thin edges the third dimension

and focus on the two

what do they say


do they speak in their own accent

do their very words

their merest syllables

speak uniquely

using vowels consonants no one else has ever used

or do they use a common currency

notes and coins rubbed dull by so many fingers

that they barely can express

this clear

"On the Absence of Context"

“On the Absence of Context”




what do you think about the experiment long ago

a literary one that is

not using vials and flasks and sulphurous fumes

done by a teacher in colonial Ceylon

teaching or trying to teach his

colonial charges

the upper crust of the overseen population

how to read poetry

important poetry that is

poetry in the imperial words

how to read those things

correctly



so he distributed to them

the poem about the Emperor

and ice cream

and asked them to write their thoughts



it is about

they said

an immensely powerful

place

an abode of frozenness

where all bow down

in humbleness

and awe

before the Mandate of Heaven



when I first

awoke

the sunlight was inside of me

not from the window

desire

was a book

opened on the shelf

wrinkles on my toes

were

those of the caiman

its shy teeth

glistening

in the sunlight

"On Contemplating Oval Stones In Barcelona From My Front Porch In Key West"

why seek oval stones in Barcelona

artful architecture

slurping shapes of sandpile steeples cornices and such

Catalan concoctions of

stubborn verbs

conjugations wandering from Madrid’s strict path

come back to your constricted island

the tumble-bum scrum of

hip-hop hope

asphalt lanes

and Hemingwegian derring-do



the sand truck dumps

a dream of drug-dulled dozing on the beach

Paradise Itself the website says

here the stones are weathered other

un-sleek lumps and gritty bits

coral crushed a billion years into



insensate ordinariness

looking at you without nuance just itself

hence the need for false eyelashes mascara neon pasties and

oh yes

a fabulous Patti-Page-pink boa (she was Clara Ann Fowler before the change)



come

look at the unglamorous marl

the front walk’s rooster shit

half-chewed chicken bones strewn streetwise

the fawning frangipani cooing the camera’s eye

tourist hawkers hooking their day’s pay

reeling them in like sleepy snappers unawares



do not ask what is it

come let us…buy the ticket

to the Fantasy

but that’s ok too

cuz the second day it’s

the same old play





it’s the is-ness nothing less or more

the dumb-dog quiddity of time and place

let it be what it is

and you too

Be

"You Can't Be What You Are Not"

you can’t be what you are not


can’t be the water in the pot if you are the pot

can’t reverse the order of things

and be that curving container of cooked earth

if you are the unpredictable liquid inside



but maybe you can become

become

alter transform transmogrify

or however you want to call it

go

to a place

a state a condition a perception

a way of moving through the surfaced variety of what surrounds you

in a way different from Tuesday

or the day before



think therefore

about that baked clay container

didn’t it used to be water

at least part of it was

some moving force curving around bends and rocks

before it was scooped up

mashed with dirt of a special kind

turned round and round

heated up then cooled down

and it thus became

that which could now hold

that which it used to be

"After the Key West Poetry Writing Seminar"

read it again, she says


you read the words and stop full stop reverse rewind replace again announce renounce

is there some other way to say the pulse and flash of ache aspire envelope (verb that is not noun) the Om-infused encompassing?

can you even mark the or tiptoe the or circumambulate the

words to be, thoughts to be avoided

Inisuch a serious seminar-place?

lest you be smirk-smitten, cliché-cajoled?

suspicious syllables such as soul, yearn, the-Viennese-whipped-cream-way-too-glucose-high-schlag-induced-Mahlerian Sehnsucht?

how tres uncool to dump them on the table

like an untrained puppy pooping on your host’s new Aubusson



in that air

above the table

in that hollow zone of sound which is more than sound not really sound at all more like a particle bit of what? light untouchable

in that space

you are aloft

at rest

and moving too

and not

in that still micro-point

between the magnet poles

aloft

whirring

still

like the anole’s eye

"The Tour Guide"

1. Introibo


let us go into then

the Great Hall of Tickets

and select slim bits for our flypaper postcards

dodging the local

eschewing the quartier and

choosing instead

distant topologies of sight and site


2. Calakmul

the tour Day Two

or perhaps One it depends on

the way that time turns its page

backward or forward

backward goes actually laterally

way over into left field or right

where the pop flies arc bounce and bump against

the ball court at Calakmul

to get there drive way down from Detroit

turn left at Xpuhil

you can’t miss it


3. Rome

Tour Guide: Please don’t touch

please don’t touch the baldacchino

or any of the putti

although they look ethereal

in their gilded mirth

actually they are just posing

taking a break from their heavy duty day job up above

the bamboozling Baedeker comments on the whole shebang

the losing feathered warrior

Pakal’s pawn seed-drugged

fingers numbed

catapults to St. Peter’s dome

let’s follow him closely one by one

do not delay

squeezing through Michelangelo’s shells

up to the lantern all crowded round

you’ll get a great view

looking on the imperial urb

the bedizened warrior tumbles down

falls into a king-sized Serta ™ bed

and cruises to the next port call

at Cefalu


4. Key West

over there, the little shoebox building

smeared grey flaking stucco

you would pass it beer in hand never a glance back

lo it was the home of Ponce de Leon

setting foot on the Isle of Bones his minions crafted

this small palace set among the palms

golden plates adorned the roof

scaring the pelicans not to mention the F16s vaulting overhead


5. Nag Hammadi

look

that postage stamp parchment shred

lying in the garage mechanic’s toolshed

of the Nag Hammadi Auto Repair Shop

the faint upside down angled zigzag T

it is the middle name of



would you have known if I had not told you it was so?

"Beyond Balance"

the Uxmal dwarf piled


one block on top of another up and up vertiginously up

and standing on the top tip toe

painted his fingernail silver

trimmed it thin

and tossed it up into the black sky



Luz my neighbor painted her house

with shards beads broken glass

palm fronds udjat star and wave

I see them on her wall when I walk my dog

sometimes at night I walk myself

and fly through her wall to the moon

"On Awaiting the Death of a Friend"

the museum book

page 71

shows the right stone foot

of Apollo Alaios at Krimisa



just above the ankle

it stops

just a chunk a carved foot fragment

each noble toe so perfectly

carved

toe-knuckles ripple the cuticles curve

so regular and fine



and at the foot’s flat level top

a square hole lacks its metal dowel

linking the lower leg of wood

ago

good marble being scarce

in these parts of Magna Graecia

hence the need

to hew good wood instead

hew it into necks and legs and such

doweling them to the outer marble bits



these middle parts are long since gone

back to earth

a trope we know so well

the marble head yet fixes us

the sockets lacking ivory eyes

still shine sufficient Rilkean force

to bind our impatient gaze

just one moment maybe two

before we turn the page

"Maybe You Know Enough"

maybe you know enough now

maybe you know how the Greeks

actually wrote 5678

starting with pi or maybe gamma

adding a squiggle to signify a quantity

and etas after that and more and more



or you know

maybe

whether the rivets were actually cast

incorrectly

so that when the hull was built

there was no way that it could withstand

that icy crash

almost at midnight 14 April 1912



but

if you lived your life correctly

would you really care

if you could calculate

all by yourself

the actual speed of light?