Two New Poems

FOR NO ONE IN PARTICULAR

rain, thunder, hail, wind

car brakes screech at construction workers

open O’hara poems

splash comedic brilliance

all over your pouting face,

you probably dream of only Baudelaire

drinking dark wines under ancient rainy skies

always under a destructive spell

was it Poe who said, ‘opium thy transcendence away

in each sip of the pools of defective affection,

inhaling knives of discord…’

well I probably made that quote up,

this is an urban city I live in

two hundred years or so later

here life is each step

taken away from crushed cans, needle points,

spitting old Chinese women

songs of grit

gutters reflecting some chorus of neon

with thrashy smiles to boot…

REMEMBRANCE

listening to the University of Pennsylvania’s poetry archives

I hear the forever voices of dead-Bishop, Koch, and others

photos of Isherwood and Auden lie on my desk, I’ve stopped listening,

they look out from a train before Journey to a War

Is this moment a rope around my waist?

pulling me back to yesterdays or do I pull forward?

rain falls on my San Francisco as I type

rope pulls, and pulls words out of my bones

where are these poets now?

is heaven a place of laughter, couplets, and blank musings?

freeing them to versify and jab at the clouds

I’ve picked up their trail, bits of clouds fell on my head

I look at the trail down many back roads

I call reading and thinking

for now photos with recordings are my string

linking these passing invitations

asking dark clouds to turn the rain back on

turn it on and on and on…