the night has promised
an unearthly tenderness
the sorrow of her cheek
warm on my chest
I have outlived the wars I won
a hollow victory
washed ashore
friendless and alone
my crew, my ship
drowned with the toppled citadels
and fallen towers
the golden spoils of Troy
glitter and tumble
in the shining surf
Ye Gods, what more have you to fear
from me
were I to spend the last years
after lost years
with Penelope?
I've tried trying
and now
I'm not trying
not-trying
I'm just not trying
in the corridors of my brain
snow falls on new york city
drift after drift
old bricks breathe music
streets lead to memory
the needful's what we breed
we doubt it
in the second of one
the doubtful takes the lead
the needful-doubtful ever
is the key
be careful to start
each second line with 'd'
this is the inner life of poetry
I have no opinions
I need a passport to reality
the air's so full of straw
can't tell which way the wind blows
I need to mutate
be transformed, transfigured
selected naturally
what memories swim
in this flood of dreams?
what ghosts of past sorrows?
Ishmael, how you've grown
you could be president
this is all Sarah's fault.
desert your temples
burn the ancient books
and intermarry
intermarry till each person in the world's
ten billionth Jew
then we'll be everywhere and nowhere
like God
how easily the old lose track of time
and time of them.
my zeitgeist is indeed
a wind-grieved ghost
my sins, an angry mob
howl me toward death
like Orpheus or Lot's wife
I must look back
lose love
and caramelize
still looking back
where failures are a trail of smoking ruins
I shall, when all my vices are rehearsed
and fiery witness to damnation prove
remain a prodigy forever cursed
still searching for the ultimate romance
who loved the dancers past the bounds of love
but could not dance
how beautiful were the ones
we destroyed
agon of remembrance
what was won by courage
and lost through cowardice
between the months
when summer seguès
into rainy fall
petals in foglight
floating downstream
detained by ice
with twigs, leaves
air bubbles and loam
gripped between the frozen
banks and rocks
suspended days
the temporary world of hurricane
showering shreds of houses
on shells of houses
of flood
floating houses downstream
of fire
smoke-veiled assassin
of tornado
plowing farms into the soil
crash of comet or economy
ice-age, ice-caps
germ war, web-war, nano-war
poised on the edge of cataclysm
a thousand temporary worlds
knowing we can vanish
like the foam on a wave
what are we holding on to?
what's holding on to us?
she called him the 'little green man'
he gave her one dollar a day
green of dollar was his color
she made him so mad
he threw her seal fur coat
into a bathtub full of water
I saw it swim away
I
at time's end
there is no romance
at time's end
also ends the dance
II
so brief the gods their blessings send
so slow the hour so swift the lark
after you leave I nurse the spark
what life divides no scar can mend
after the afterglow
the dark
Idolatry
a Cincinnati suburb
drenched in real daylight
circa 1948
a boy of ten
who has not seen his father in six weeks
sits on a pillar
at the entrance to a small playground
he has waited
three hours already
and will wait
two more
I once pulled women out of context
and romanced them
briefly
now I think
if there is to be a woman
she will have to be
in context
I forbid you
to hold my funeral
I forbid you
to remember me
as I did not exist in life
let me not exist in death
let me rush from oblivion
to oblivion
unnoticed
silently
reservoir of memory
has no shape
I can remember
of landscapes...
buildings in sunlight
streets, plazas, parks
(empty
unpeopled)
I can say only
I was there
funnel of memory and remorse
sorrow and situation
somebody loves me
in the strangest of ways
cruelest of ways
mirror of moment
ancient of days
All my life.
as real as charles dodgson
in an oxford meadow
reading to young girls
as real as yeats
sailing artificial swans in byzantium
or van gogh's stars and sunflowers
bursting from the canvas
or the slow movement
of mozart's flute and harp
molly malone
clementine
or she who stole sunshine
from the red river valley
as real as rain in montauk
baseball in kansas city
or breakers at big sur
and all we take with us
into the unreal world
thinking back on it
a movie of mistakes
of fractured spasms
epileptic lunges
frames scorched
stripped, ripped
by a broken projector
film sprocketing, turning brown
as autumn leaves
holes opening
edged in flame
did I shun every post
fleeing the spotlight
a guilty ghost?
did the prompter withold my lines
derange my cues?
did I, ashamed to win
arrange to lose...
did I trash every take
flubbing my speeches
a fumbling fake
all I had wanted most
dumped in my wake?
i
A rower glides
in tunnels of foliage
prow ruffling
painted reflections
parting the real world
from its liquid mirror.
ii
Churning the surface
commotion of oars
disperses
the memory of calm.
An Apology...
For Sue Barker
...for the interruption of
our conversation.
God, the magician
Sent Tim,
A clamoring distraction,
Behind which you vanished
Like a palmed coin
In flying fingers
Before I could say
How beautiful and eternal
In star-chaste black
Reciting under floodlights
You appeared.
© Copyright 2-2-97 Martin A. Abramson. All rights reserved.