Hughlings Himwich

There are no words

Daisy, be still!
You talk too much.
Words are not what we lack,
though there are some
that cast their spell against
the storm and turn its winds
to wine. I drink to you tonight
and what no tomorrow can ever be
but now. Another day
a stranger may share your bed
Or some god.
There are no words for that.

What's left to say

He was watching the parade
The clowns, the words, the trumpeteers
And in his dream he was awake
Or he was awake and dreaming.
He closed his eyes.
No matter, he heard the drums.
He opened his eyes a second time
And saw himself marching
Now to a different tune
A martial cha-cha-cha
And wet his pants.
There is little more to tell.
The daily Tribune records
That during the St. Jude Day Celebration
Saturday passed and a forgotten man
Had died, shouting blessings
Upon one and all. 

The Sound that Wind Makes

(for Maya)

I want words to breathe like I do, weep when I do, and bruise easily.

I want words to dream and remember those dreams that first set me on this path.

I want words to grow old with me and become like the lines in my face and tell me
      old stories that keep my stumbling spirit from falling and new ones that tell of
      love forever young and freely given.
I want words of no regret even for the sorry waste of all I have left undone, unsaid.

I want words to hold up a mirror and see there all who at some time have gone hand
      in hand with me through this life.

O what a wondrously crowded reflection that would be, all of them in the morning
     of their lives, young and old alike.  

O that words would fall like these tears and mark the page in silver and gold, the true
colors of night, that these words would live on in their hearts and find some rest there,
though I myself be nothing but the sound the restless wind makes on a cold night,
the wind that sweeps down the mountainside and past all the houses in which loved ones
have died and gathers up all those lost souls and scatters what is but dust and ash
through the deep space of time. 

Call Parra Neruda

Call Parra Neruda and see how he likes it

He has a fine wife who does what she pleases

I see

Call Parra Neruda and see how he likes it

Love’s cornered the market on health and disease

I see

Call Parra Neruda and see how he likes it

Piss off at three, we’re shooting the breeze

I see

Call Parra Neruda and see how he likes it

We die so often we forget how to breathe

Being Blue

(for my students)

Just remember the orange
Is not in the orange.

It is always you
Like a thumb in the eye.

The blue sky
So glorious today

Is also you.
Be beautiful!

Either I am half-crazy or I am a non sequitur

(Disclaimer: This ‘poem’ refers
to no one living or dead
or otherwise not breathing
.)

Not sure what this is,
antipoetry or just
bad poetry, if
even that.

That’s what friends are for –
to bang the pot
and make it sound
like all is lost
or time for bed.

Surely, you will like this not!
Or else, I’m doomed,
though Daisy knows
there’s room enough
for two to brood.
(You know the tune.)

A rose is a rose
and nothing else
will do, she says.
A worm would settle
for nothing less. You,

you bitch and moan, then dance,
hand to hoof and hoof to hand,
dressed in nothing more
than you. You beg,
Bring down the moon!

But all I do is cough
and pee in bed
and call stray cats like you
a sin.

    . . . . . .

Be well! Or if it is too
late, make the best
of a sorry fate,

Or slam the door
in what was a face
so much like yours

It must be fake.

(Myself? I can’t stop lying.
It means the world to me.)

(What is the sound of a door
already shut? A blue, blue sky
or a wish to die. Or not.)

(What do you know for sure?
Cogito,
ergo cogito.) No more.

Actually, I could go on
but Daisy says it’s time for bed,
time for love is what she means.
You know, hand in hoof or hoof in hand.
Whatever. Sin or hate.
We'll not go quiet in the night.
That’s for sure!
In the name of father
mother orphan child,
let it be so. 

Vision Quest

He was losing his grip on everyday realities. Location and time became but a wandering tide, as if the sea had forgotten how to breathe. Then it happens. A skyless bird dives into song, his wingéd heart soars and he dies again and again until he is one, no one, nowhere, whole, nothing, lifted by the love of beauty that sustains all things, bird and air and light but a single note, the silent pulse of a cosmic drum.

As you once were

Set out beneath the stars
on a solitary raft
that drifts along the shore
on a current
that will bring you
out to sea and sky
beyond all imagining

as you once were
as you will be again.

If you speak

This silence wants not your word

unless it be like wind to flower

raising its hallelujah to the bloom

of sky, unknowing as morning

kisses are to lovers not knowing

what else to say or do but sigh:

if you speak, I will surely die. 

Nighttime in the Lyceum

Before the light changed and I forgot

the rules for how to see things as they are,

day was day and night was hidden in my heart.

The Scarecrow

Some say I am wise.
O what a joke!
Nothing like So-crates,
Not even a pose.
Silence is gilded
Or so the rhyme goes.
-- Damn it!
I do nothing but
Sing with the crows.

 

Ἅιδης

Persephone
demands you

Love all
Suffer all
and fall away

See yourself
in a flower
she tells you

you are beautiful
and you too
will die

over and over
and over

until you know
what she knows:

She is your bride.

Storytelling

To begin, all that is necessary
Is to close your eyes
To the darkness around you
Like you did last night when you looked at me
And forgot my name.

Let's begin again to tell stories
Of the train station and lost luggage 
Of all those lost souls on the prowl
Like tigers hiding
Like me, a

Shadow sighing
For a name or a destination
Somewhere near the sea
Where I can hear your heart beating --
O how I wanted you then!

Surely you know me now.
Surely you know I am love.

Lacrimae Rerum

Here where every sound
is a lama lama sabachthani
echoing in the brain

Where even silence
is a fairy tale
like that girl
who pulls my beard
and laughs
to make these gray hairs
roll on like waves

Here are the tears
of things that yet
break like thunder
on the shore.

Night

It is always night,
otherwise we wouldn't need
light.   -- Thelonious Monk

                  *.    *.  .  

Night is lost time, all time, no time,
our time.

                  *

When night opens like your lips
and stars come out of dark longing
like flowers out of the earth,
then do I close my eyes
and see. 

                  *                  

There are no true poems about night.
Night never fails us.

                  .

If I must lose you,
then let me see
through your eyes
And close out the night

 

What she came to say

Though he is dying and lost in time,
She will not permit the truth be spoken
Or any other game be played
Until she says what she came to say
To one who knows her wilder ways.

(The sun and moon now count the time;
The trees and shadows bend his mind.)

She, undressing on the forest floor,
All green and gold and shimmering song,
Takes him to ground and shapes his soul:
You will not die and never know
What it is to love and be alone.  

(She holds him in a last embrace
And turns his eyes to see her face.)

Man

What goes
like a wolf
in the morning
like the sea
in the afternoon
and the wind
at night?

The wolf is desire.
The sea is the journey.
The wind is what remains.

The answer is always man.

All that blue

Your beautiful head, rich in curls and gold,

Lopped off here at my feet, drools, smiles

Makes this day and every day more lovely

For all the horror the world brings to you

As a gift for all that sky and all that blue.

now east now west

 

now east now west

the road has a mind of its own

and my feet obey

 

the rest of me stays behind
treelike

 

above

the sky grows gentle

 

MY HEART OPENS

the road goes on

as if not knowing

which way is best

What is not there

Though I am known to God
As Hughlings, my friends call me
Hugh and leave it at that --
Grace takes care of the rest.

Though I do not believe
In anything or have any Jesus,
Yet I retain a kind of genius
For harmless lies.

It is as if during the day
I can still see the stars
Blazing out of the night
And truly see what is

not there. Some say
it is a harmless madness --
My friends though look deep
Into what were once my eyes

And all they see is night.

Turn the page

Turn the page and you will find
The emptiness you have been searching for:
A blank page is waiting for you,
Alone now for the last time,
Yearning for all that is not there,
Each word you write so full of life
You'll never want to turn the page again.
The sun will spin and the moon will weave
Itself into the mystery of the night
Where now you find yourself
As you truly are: not really there at all. 
Let the land flourish and be whole,
Let the thunder bring you home.

Out of Time

When they removed the tree they moved the place
Or rather the place became a barren field
Where light through the green, still moving shade
No longer marks the ground like rain. 
And yet here I am with you,
Your face bent over mine the air
rippling with laughter the tree
covering us in its bright shadow the earth
yielding as we fall out of time. Out of time?
What is left but song?
Listen! the ringing in the air, this rain
These tears hammering out the tune, time and place.
He, she, and all you love, draw near. 

 

Summer Rain

If it would only rain my words would pour forth like girls and boys too young to know shame O they are bold as I would be the rain falls I am young again dance touch while the music plays so falls the rain O she is here there are tears of joy tears songs of praise for the beauty of the day earth yields up its flowers to her hand turns to gentle thunder her body lifts and holds her laughter makes the night shudder unbinds her hair and falls to me now here now there like summer rain

Night Birds

Black stone white rain
Blue smoke soft pain.

Night comes. I do not sleep
Yet dream of birds climbing
The sky to find the sea.
I fall like fire and sing

To strange boys and girls
Who close their eyes and turn
Toward the sea and hear

The birds singing like rain. 

When they wake, they will dream. 

 

Surprise

Suddenly
this morning
I knew the rainbow
to be a bird

of my soul
taking flight 
and vanishing
into cloud and sky

as I am bound 
to do, shimmering
not with color
but surprise

to be at last
not here. 

NO SPOONING ALLOWED ON CAMPUS

So young folks

have only soup

and are always

hungry.

a dead-wall reverie

Ibidom. Is no thinking thing here but the peepinghouse round it goes is there nothing there from sea to rounda coda no knowing no browbeating to hoedown the adamses and damses looking roundaway the wailing goes awagginawaning about the off wall but there shebares all to what is not there the museymusik makes you trot and drop so rainruns and her lastofall. There!

Oranges

He was determined this time not to cut his fingers as he sliced the oranges.  He would focus and keep his fingers well away from the blade.   He remembered all too well how previously his blood had flowed onto the oranges and pooled on the plate.  He knew it wasn’t just because he was getting old, fading into memory and the lure of the trees and his first kiss.  She had been as nervous as he and had closed her eyes.  Now all he could think of was feeding her oranges and the taste on her lips.  And suddenly, she had bitten his lip, making it bleed. And then, more softly, she was feeding him. She was delicious and he . . . . he was lost in the trees.  He put the knife down and wept.  

Leaf Fall

Follow the path
of leaf fall,
the short cut home
twixt sky and dream.

When you arrive,
you will be right here,
safe with me. 

Moon walk

Walking through days
I have walked through
long ago, same
step and stride, same
heart wanting something

more; yet today
is the only day
I can’t remember you
Walking through the years
to find me standing

here alone, longing
for the moon,
Its light buried
in my heart of hearts:

Be with you soon.  

Some

 

For Emily

It's but a drop of rain -
However slight its sum -
It will dissolve the sky
and swallow up the sun
              . . . . .

What can lift the fallen soul
And make it feel its toes?
Don’t hold your breath
That is the key
And be it but the air
You’ll light upon a wayward word
And turning -- dancing there

 

She

She unraveled
at my feet
like the sea

like the sea
She rose and wept
and called to me

Now I call to you
with a thousand voices
of a thousand seas.

 

What soft tune

What soft tune
Turns the moon 
Through its stations?

No lover's art 
Shapes the night
And makes it move

Only the note
Of a dying bird
In its dark nest

Sings it round 
The earth
And calls it home.

 

To be wholly there

If we were wholly open
To earth, tree and flower,
There would be no poems
Only the chattering silence
Of wind, hoofbeat, and rain.
For to be wholly there
Is to die 10.000 times,
Each sight and sound
A thread that binds us close
and makes us whole.

5 Pieces

                   1

What you see is not the flower --

Lo, the flower unfolds itself

Within you and Behold! You

Are there as though one apart

from the blossoming of your soul. 

                  2

Were I young once only


I would not know now


how to walk with trees


or fly south with the geese.

                  3

Would you know yourself

If you were to see the beauty

Of your eyes in mine

Or would you see the mountains

Rise up and kiss the sky?

                  4

The journey

makes this rock

a place to rest --

so too the moon.

                  5

Be still.

Even the wind may rest.

 

 

 

Some More

Sewing

Is it possible to love
and be alone? he asks,
but she, worrying at buttons,
just mutters, Some days,
my love, are better than others.

 

Nothing but wind

I’ve stopped dying and breathing,
But you, my love, fall upon me like skin,
Like rain that streams through my veins,
And you teach me to breathe again
And how to die again and again
Until I become nothing but wind.

 

What is not there

Though I am known to God
As Hughlings, my friends call me
Hugh and leave it at that --
Grace takes care of the rest.

Though I do not believe
In anything or have any Jesus,
Yet I retain a kind of genius
For harmless lies.

It is as if during the day
I can still see the stars
Blazing out of the night
And truly see what is

not there. Some say
it is a harmless madness --
My friends though look deep
Into what were once my eyes

And all they see is night.

 

Getting it up with Shakespeare

Love, friends, is deadly.  You may wonder,
Am I suffering from a broken heart
Or has love, freely given,
Not been returned? To which I say,
Yes, O Yes, Yes!
Beat the drums and let the bagpipes play
And I will march ripe into that narrow patch
Of mind and sand and play, She loves me
She loves me not, and haply saw
My soul in two.
I shall send her flowers,
Long purples that prickly boys
Call a grosser name, 
But she will say as maidens do, 
"How could you be so lame?" 

 

Buttons

Smoke rising burnt orange then down around the edge until the tenderness binding flung into the night curving endlessly, her gift her fire dying in my arms her body rising until nothing but the bloom of sighing herself to sleep tight as the moon and flying.

(untitled)

You will come to the end
of your high story,
your body broken,
your spirit weak and alone,
the goal still distant,
yet on your lips a song
of no regret as you
set out a final time
on a ship unrigged,
your self the wind
and sky and sea.

 

Kiss and Tell

 
Who but a god

Could look at you

Sweetly laughing

And not die


For a kiss, dying

Again and again

Like gods of spring

that never truly


Die. Your lips

Like night

hold back the day

And close my eyes . . .

Awake! Awake!

You are no god

To kiss and tell

Of life and death.

 

Oracle

For far too long
I’ve been hostage
To the fates.
No more.
I will not play.
Do what you will,
I will not obey.

Of course, you will.
So runs the wind.
It's the air you breathe,
the song you sing.
So stirs the day,
You hear it still.
You will obey.

River Notes

As I sit here writing tonight at my desk I am on the river and see myself in the flow of all things . . . the sounds of water, bird and wind are my voice, and all my senses are alive as though the stars were at elbow and foot . . . I breathe in the night and orion, aldebaran, and procyon come closer, and there you are again, musa, luna puella, your body curving and folding in the current, laughing and inviting me to dive with you beneath the rippling and lose myself at last, these words nothing but the falling rain.

The Fall

 

He fell (he was always falling)

Or rather, he jumped, missing the water

That would have taken him, leaving his remains

to flow in the rhythms of his speech,

Washed clean like one hoping to please

Instead of what was, a silent heap,

Though there was heard from a nearby street

What some would call a melodious scream.

By lamplight

There is before me in my room
An old lamp that burns
With no bulb screwed in.
It gets its light from years ago
When my father would read to me
Of little mice who ruled the house
And left my room a fearful sight,
My toys and clothes all here and there --
He smiled his smile, as I do mine,
Beneath this lamp and its brief light.   

Poetry Stinks / Antipoem

This poem has elicited the dreaded no comment except from one good friend who did me the kindness of asking about the word ‘gimble'. Nevertheless, I continue to enjoy the poem as if it were written by someone else for whom poetry brings into view such beauty that we but suffer the more for its absence. It is a backward way of praising poetry.  That’s what I think antipoetry is doing. Anyway, here is the worthless little bit of a stinker in its final ode-rous form. Hold your nose . . . . .   

    Poetry Stinks

    Poetry gives us just enough of what is real

    to make us howl and gimble in the night,

    too far from moon and what is our fate

    To make it right.  It stinks a lot!

 

A shot in the dark

Fault these eyes prying out the pain a bargain this time but next in line a drowning or sketching this day or night like any other point the shortest distance is dying is such a drag who were shot out of the dark and would go on bitching and so here we stand or suffer for what praying is to breathing and sometimes bark and other times bite like fire and god knows where you're bleeding

Song for Richard

You spoke the only true word I know
And that word became an open wound
They cleaned with lye, not knowing
Your pain, your tears were like wine
That would save their shining souls.  

Pick up the rifle, son
No you said
That’s no SIR, son
Pick up the damn gun!
No you said. 

They called the captain
They called the priest
They called the doctor
Are you crazy, son?

No no no

Come with us!
You walked away.

I see you now forty years later
alone on that far thundering shore
    “I will not fight your fucking war!”
You are carving a face out of driftwood
the face behind the face of everyone I meet
I have it still and think of you.

You came back. True to your word.
And they sent you to Leavenworth
Where your bruises became sores
Your sores gaping wounds
Your screams the blessing
That saves our sorry souls. 

Memorial

This tree grows to the stars

in remembrance of the dead

lost to all memory, its root

the earth upon which I stand

searching through the night,

its leaves leaping into fire

giving to each lost soul

a home in the deathless dark. 

Fragmentum cordis fracti

Quae me amat magis quam fas est

Neminem magis quam Bubonium amat.

                  . . . . .

She who loves me more than she should

Loves no one more than Bubonius.

Long before things began

Amidst all these colors, dark red, dark green, deep and eternal blue

Comes that which never dies and gives life its form and motion –

So it is, time and time again at the beginning of things,

Each new hour of each new day of each new life,

We make a world of light and shadow

In which all the colors cavort like children,

Where all may dream and then away. 

Out of ocean's stream

Out of ocean's stream
Comes mind
Form and flower
Comes this body
The soft full curve
Of her breast rising
Like the moon
Comes joy
Comes our story
And knowledge
Of its end:
It opens wholly
Into the pluraplenty
And the leaping beat
of the poluploisboios sea.

 

The Secret of Oceans

We carry within us

the secret of oceans

swims in our

night, the deep

sky of our lust

for life, tongue

mouth kiss

skin breast

we rise

crying out

for the shore

to be born. 

She fell upon the stone like glass

She fell upon the stone
like glass and so remains to me
a mirror into which I gaze
though there is no face to see,

but catching light I catch
her look -- as though she looks at me!
and know myself am in her eye --
prepared at last to die.  

 

Ad Fabullum Confabulatum

Come, dear friend, and dine with me
and bring with you what I have not:
wine to wet our lips and wit to laugh
at what I do not say. Bring dinner too
and all the cupids you can catch
and any venus who’s gone astray.
Do all this, I say, Fabúllus, and you
will dine well with me tonight, 
though you may blush, you handsome man, 
to see yourself chopped up in verse,
just the thing to please the gods
and that saucy girl, who stays at home
and, as I've learned, not alone.
So, Fabúllus, dine with me tonight.

*   *   *   *   *

This poem began as a translation of Catullus XIII, a witty invitation to his friend Fabullus, promising that if Fabullus brings the wine, dinner and good cheer, he – Catullus—will provide an unguentum, a perfume, that will make Fabullus beg the gods to make him totum nasum, all nose.  It’s a poem with priapic possibilities.  My original intent was simply to do a playful translation that was true to the original. Somehow I got the idea in my head that Catullus was inviting his friend to dinner because he had learned that the reason his girlfriend, the notorious Lesbia, was not able to come to his dinner party was that she was having one of her own, a tete-a-tete with this same Fabullus, a perhaps too handsome man.  There are such. The invitation in my version becomes a clever way of telling his good friend Fabullus that he knows what is going on.  Is this in the original? Not obviously, but there are intimations, especially since Lesbia, more disparagingly known as the quadrantaria Clytemnestra and Palatina Media (her real name was Clodia Metelli, herself of distinguished though promiscuous breed), had lost interest in our besotted poet (see Catullus VIII, At tū, Catulle, dēstinātus obdūrā). Who is that candida puella in line 4 and who is being referred to in line 11 as meae puellae? Are they the same? Just what sort of sacculus, purse, is it that is full of cobwebs? Is Catullus asking Fabullus to bring Lesbia along, whom Catullus hopes to enchant with his verse about Fabullus and win her back? I could go on, but it would amount to little more than a satyrical leer and would be in any case too unseemly, though it can perhaps be said that Catullus hopes to have his cena and sniff the unguentum too. Few folks are going to appreciate the classical background or possess the requisite prurience or even be able to read the original in Latin, so I am hoping that the poem will stand on its own hind legs.  

    Below is the original Latin poem and a literal translation in full undress:

Catullus XIII

Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle, apud me                 You will dine well, my Fabullus, at my house
paucis, si tibi di favent, diebus,                        in a few days, if the gods favor you,
si tecum attuleris bonam atque magnam          if you will have brought with you a good & large
cenam, non sine candida puella                       dinner, not without a sparkling girl
et vino et sale et omnibus cachinnis.                and wine and wit and every sort of laughter.
Haec si, inquam, attuleris, venuste noster,       If these things, I say, you will have brought, 
                                                                                you charming man,
cenabis bene; nam tui Catulli                           you will dine well; for your Catullus’s
plenus sacculus est aranearum.                        purse is full of cobwebs.
Sed contra accipies meros amores,                  But in return you will receive pure love
seu quid suavius elegantiusve est:                   or if there is anything more sweet or refined;
nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae       for I will give you a perfume, which to my girl      
donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque;                     Venuses and Cupids have given;
quod tu cum olfacies, deos rogabis                  which when you smell, you will ask the gods
totum ut te faciant, Fabulle, nasum.                 to make you, Fabullus, all nose.