Poetry from the New England Conservatory

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Life and World, pt. 1


They didn’t choose to lift
Up the lead feet or legs,
Weighed down by life and
Stumbling towards
Unavoidable fate with a slow,
Beating reason echoing the heart.

Truth was a smoky blanket
Implicit in the rules of nature,
But not to be touched by one
Who could do no better
Than to catch quick glimpses
Of dancing shadows raising
Their soft claws to elemental
Gods as their corporeal
Selves, hidden behind
Tightly packed rows of trees
With twisted and barbed branches,
Feasted on warm flesh.

The men with blank faces could
Sleep peacefully with no eyes to see,
Ears to hear, noses to smell, or mouths
To scream dull, echoing prayers
At the endless black.
But the aberrations born with a
Knowledge beyond themselves were
Forced to look inward to
Soft, supple parts that if touched
Could crumble and turn in,
Filled with the venom of years gone
By and tears cried only in the silence
Of hearts – Tears collecting in shallow,
Reflecting pools where nine of ten
Who wade in for solace or conquest
Sink as a stone and
Are silenced.

here nor there
neither


nowhere
how


where



near

Dear,

Help me that I may stop pretending and get on with living. It’s been nearly 24 years on
this earth and where can I locate a bathroom or a savings bank in which to store memory?
You are always as far as possible, the thick distance constantly fattening. Then, as if
speaking to oneself weren’t enough, these garbage cans in the back of the foyer give me
headaches, an announcement of my conscience arriving. Please write me back; there are
soon no more shortbread cookie tins to send as a parting gift. Then they sang the
Halleluiah Chorus while taking mescaline. The holiday concert was simply a disaster. I
miss your bunches of flesh rolling over on the couch with the dog and the children and
the in-laws. We then could consider the logic behind our crossword habit and pretend t o
care about children in Afghanistan. You are missed, which has become your function.

Love,

SOME DREAM
Watched the out
side from far
away, it would
seem. Had a
hazy feeling, or
was it foggy
mist on windows.


Like Last Night,
sheets in wind:
this morning fell
ill. And felt the
body raging,
silently
as it does.


Compounded, as
with a fog. A
cloudy crazed.
The feeling
of a question
mark as it is
made tangible. Turning


like the wheel
on old barrow.
This sickness
The steadiest I've felt.

you've got little eyes she said little little brown eyes
peering steeply down your knows and look those ears they're
quite small and queer you little queer chuckling to
yourself don't the rest hear what's so simply evoking
about this mush in the street that bread that you eat
long for a bit more rich and snuffed with delight at the
chance to bust out they said it was this way for a long time
tested rang true study your way out but you'll never undo
the wrought bars of strength you're too tiny underweight
underpaid wrong array of features we look for today
change your face soak yourself in media sauce you don't
know that your age surely too late

and there they were not walking or having avoided a moment to regroup their thoughts were sincerely misled hoping for less fortunate behavior than a glimpse of God could not provide resolution from doubting your self worth if only he was better equipped to instruct the guidelines to our people remind me of different ambitions set forth from guidelines that avoid intervention and then they try and invent a new purpose for falling out of each other’s bad graces of themselves that one day they will not recount towards their grandchildren and away from uninitiated future generations haven not set a thought forth away from the time being stained on my shirt that tells you to venture near at all costs coming further backwards to when your grandparents had first imagined death and you had already lived in our hearts for generations to come back so as not to regress without the unusual reiterations that should be helplessly avoided as the plague has been gone now for out thousands of decades forward with stops accordingly manifesting their inner nature as large as particles of hair relinquished from nervous scalps that can no longer hold on to secret thoughts and instead opt to think no more knowing that we have already imagined such things even outside of our own dreams of reality could possibly cease to teach us to practice enjoyment of her fruits or of his labors lingering just to disprove that unobtainable point that I wish only you could know and instruct others along with ourselves more reluctant young years draw near and our lives are over and over and over and over there we spot our perceptions swinging by the fence beyond the gate which has long since rusted shut like a love trap full of emotions gone sour leaving them to cower in fear and possibly even question self worth is deserving of my full attention is not on the matter at hand but on all that does not matter is it a pure substance guided planning on avoiding waste would be unmentionably tragic beginnings of self serving endings when it has yet to become quite apparent from the onset that there is a goal to reach to fill it with as much emptiness as can not possibly even be imagined reluctantly so as to increase their self awareness is constantly fluctuating as gills cling to breath in a squeeze box when it is inappropriate to laugh but do not know if that would not be the least honest reaction would possibly be to hesitate explaining what one looks for in characterizing their own mistakes are the hardest chances they might ever take care to be cautious but as with the wind chance is unavoidable possibly encouraging in retrospect uncanny circumspection as comfortable as the least painful circumcision is a given when avoiding one’s own faith on the path her father has set out for the children to march on home from work with promises kept lingering till they are forgotten sex is usually the best on nerves that choose to way thin like the rack worn thin line divides pages of reinvigorated manuscripts mixing blood and semen that could make only them proud like a mothers triumphant return to school now blind learning to invent a wheel worth passing on to future generations that regard sight as a curse when it is best to taste what you want first and foremost mostly residual and appropriately deserving like the singling out of the sexes and the impolite let downs of previous generations of French peasants that want nothing less than potatoes or starvation could possibly not be a better option when a thin line divides successes and failures usually win out in the end

Glancing beyond the frosted glass,
Through the small spines of blustery cold,
Ventures a grating mind,
Which tumbles upon a bittersweet truth.

Blades of loss protrude from steely voids
Touched by an icy sword among the granite stones.
To pierce through the blissful tier,
And glide through the ravaging veil.

Buried deep alongside the bruise,
No longer can the happiness delude.
Grasping the fallen faith within,
One composed moment of pure illusion.

Our dusty, hi-fi speakers
warned me about you.
I didn't listen, but I should have known
because the watch that you gave me broke
a long time ago.

Existence


It makes me cringe and
nervous, unimportant.
anxious. it's horrible and
i panic.


sucked in so i suffer; suffering that
refuses to leave my shoulder side
so i give up guessing.
i tell Rapunzul to stop trying,
my hopes are cremated,
dried up pain
crumbles to dust.


my shadow is too overbearing
to hold back.

One way blind
spot back
seats pass in-
jure rear view

Mere, or da river
Piss don't run cup holder

Glove cum art meant
we eels win. Though,
da ash bored on stars. Tearing,
we'll drive her seat

Ex-hoss to pipe stick
shift petal break oil
Tan keyholes clutch leather.
Uphold story, win.
Shield why?

Don't they already
show themselves
when a thin mist
surrounds the
deep grass and
leaves
when it is
time to go.

Missing Tooth


The missing piece
The gap in confidence
The hole that pulls
Yanks into a well of despair
A little lacking
The big loss
It isn't there
Do they wonder?
The empty cavity filled with weakness
The hollow happiness

Rain rises
against roily spray,
hissing on a faded sea.
Somewhere.

Seabirds scream,
winging over icy shapes
drenched in greyish light
somewhere distant.

Sitting still
with life left over,
the solitary tune
still lilting somewhere.

Fall criers fly
far in the raw wind,
brimming with the burn of failure
somewhere in the west.

Fat flakes drift softly down,
a seabird sails straight south,
a Fall Crier in winter's teeth.
Somewhere I'm afraid.

untitled


darkness exempt from classical fits of kindness, watching riots erupt far and near.
blades dragged on asphalt, the risk of love, a threatening peace of mind, aber waves of the mind rustling in the slow mind waking its way to tomorrow.
another distraction, smokers coughing in harmony. hung over of lies blooming from reduced reaction.
I love you, hung over, asking about roots ruptured and turning blind eyes.

The loom



When the stagnating swell

trickled to stillness

waning, and sought

rhythm of smallness –



emotion – a motion

in fullness

was a clot –



suspending the run

of the loom loosely strung,

was a stun,

was a sting

in the movement of string.

untitled


a flaunt of splintered scapes illuminates this fluid bid of shape fallen straight upon faults of winter.

The House at Grisslinge

Years have worn her faded figure
into a regal, elegant old woman

humbly sitting on the hill
with wrinkled bright eyes fixed on the sea.

around her nature's omnipresence murmurs
misted sleepless dreams,

intoxicating sunlit reveries
to send night retreating into obscurity.

Grisslinge holds in her hands
stillness. without interruption

and embodies the profound mystery
of a Swedish Summer.

[      ]

i do's what i did       so go on and does what you do
We all does what was             never satisfied because
36.     33.     Thirty four.    It was, were, did.
Now I does what you did, with you over there
And you ds what I want        without a care 37.     34.     One-Oh-One.o

Gazes as from mirrors are painted with
The everlasting tears of a million Children
A grief so endless
It’s almost ordinary
Still barricaded
By letterheads and follow-ups
And nine to five
Through smoke and waste
The Earth’s most precious gifts
Young hands and eyes
So used to dust
And scarred by need Confess
We haven’t heard

Hopskotch

When I was six

I sketched on cracked asphalt
A lopsided blue rectangle
And I cut it
In lopsided blue squares,
Trying to break down the imperfection.

I put my buckled shoe
Through each box,
Walked across disfigured
Quadrilateral country,
And hop-skipped
Over the border where
Blue men in blue berets
Control-patrolled blue line

From state to state
Hop-skipped
My illegal left foot, and I
Without a visa,
Not citizen of broken blue nation,
This frantically homeless foreigner
Unhad by rectangular realm deception.

Your Canadian accent
is fodder for me,
but I enjoy it a lot.

Ice cream is better
when alone
and in tears.

m peeling the walls
with my teeth,
like leather from a hide

Could I blow my nose
with your sweater?

The newborn thing
is my favorite. EVER.

Untitled

Make the stew
      on the Sun that carries
           the lives in the palm
                 of its hands

                   The stew shall boil
                      condensing the mixtures,
                        each spice its own story.

                           Once they have been told
                            they are released into the sky,
                           and we are left with the traces
                         of life from before

                    The things that we remember
                are not who they are,
            but what they have done.

    The thinker cannot rely
solely on his thoughts.

J-pod


Gliding among wavering
Lights, the surface morphing
In complete fluidity, calm
Creatures are thriving

Ascending, and soaring
Above their world, Extravagant
Cliffs shade joyful
Adventures after a meal

In ancient tradition,
Giants continue to
Roam nurturing waters, at
Home wherever they are

At Home


At home I reveal myself
Blasphemy and More
Even the Cat is
ashamed