Poetry Year August 25th - After reading too much tang poetry in one sitting

Mountains, moons, clouds and birds, – all crumbled in a heap.

Tang poets knew their moment well – wine induced remorse.

They've forgotten what they've forgotten – remembering it so well.

I feel the baroque carriages – bone built palaces there they dwell.

Five characters can contain a world – and excluded a world even wider.

Poetry Year August 25th

The great swan to the sea comes,

the yellow pond cannot hold her interest.

In the cypress tree the kingfisher watches.

From the roof of the wooden treasure he watches.

The beauty of the winged rise, compels the god to be wicked wisely.

I pull an arrow from the trunk, who hunted such a bird?

(after Zhang Jiuling)

Poetry Year August 24th

The ghost of poetry stalks my meter,

a gait that gallops, lame, and halts.

Seized by moments of ecstatic spasm,

and lost by placid splay of rest.

I turn, and find you dressing in the moonlight,

I cry and beg you,

don't go out the door.

The stars that guide you are inscrutable,

burying deep your secret lusts,

That headed monster that I eat,

but that eats my soul,

and snaps my bones into nether shapes

wrapped around it for your reveries.

I straddled you like a horse,

but there is no return to here from here.

There is a swamp we enter,

seeping from your angry eyes.

Don't go out the door.

I witness you rave at the wall,

as your write your questions,

on my skin,

to some heaven.

I will take you through any door,

if only you will leave that one,

closed.

Poetry Year August 23rd

Rise and I sing a new song,

fall and I am a cloud with tears for rain.

Walled by worries, and cares,

I get drunk,

on the scent of liquor,

or the sight of tomorrow.

The mountains are more lonely,

their waters colder,

the years pass unmarked in desolate hamlets,

huddled around the giant's curling toes.

Exile it is among them a spirit,

that settles like the winter clouds.

Walk and recite your favorite rhymes.

On your return, I will play your flute,

and draw from you sounds,

that break the muteness of your habit.

Since ancient times the fall is sorrow,

but these are better than the spring,

because in the green there are false hopes,

while now the harvest is very real.

Call your curses by their colors,

golden flowers, blackened brines,

dragons that lust for other blood.

Rats that eat the votes that are cast,

and shit the votes that will be counted.

But once your gales are truly blown,

their rogue waves crested and carried away,

then settle to the work of plucking,

the fruit that waits, naked, for you.

Here.

(After several Tang poems.)

Poetry Year August 21st

The idylls in the field of flowers, dotted suns

that spread across a sallow green.

I pick one that has turned to tufted seed,

and blow the bright parachutes towards

eager anticipated germination.

My thoughts are with them scattered,

to land in far corners.

Perhaps to grow,

perhaps to sleep

perhaps as an offering by some fey creature,

to a monarch in inhuman keep.

Perhaps to flower,

perhaps to rot,

perhaps pressed in book,

as forget me not.

The strands of our fingers entwined,

about the fragile stem of nature's vase,

support a shivering of a wind more sublime

than the the one enfolding seed in its embrace.

The contact shivers,

and my bones are rattled

by the front of coming storm.

That in my eye I see beyond this day

beyond this field

beyond this moment,

when to your seed I yield.