Rain, Somewhere Falling
I sit
sipping coffee
fresh and warm,
quiet morning
around me,
and I think of the sea
and then the rain
falling somewhere silently,
falling somewhere other than here
full of daydreams
empty streets
lonely mountain tops
wistful memories
and things we forget
I've been working on my PhD proposal the last 8 months so poetry had to take a back seat, I've written lines and fragments but no substantial poem in a while. One of the books I am re-reading for my PhD is The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of The New York School of Poets by David Lehmann, in it he quotes from a late 1940s early 1950s memoir by Anatole Broyard about his time in Greenwich Village titled: Kafka was the Rage. Broyard mentions how all the poets wrote furiously in little notepads as if they were writing "postcards to literature," I thought it was such a great line that it inspired me to write a handful of poems, I may shoot for a sequence of 10 postcards. Here is a rough draft of number 3.
Postcard Three
Somewhere in this world
It’s raining and a short haired girl
sits and smokes on a wet fire escape,
glass of wine next to her,
open book filled with inner monologues
whisper the story, it rains, it rains,
she sips her wine, smoke floating upwards…
MONK
Invite yourself to silence
count the clouds
count the stars
count the hours
saying nothing between breaths
Autumn morning cold
no thoughts, no noise,
Waiting for morning
with the solitude of January
with the open journal page
Inviting hope in,
looking out to a dark lake
and memories of love.
Jack Kerouac wrote "Pop Haikus..."
ONE
Washington Heights Memory
Back deck view
Rain falling
TWO
London Memory
Small park
People watching
THREE
Childhood Memory
Winter waves
Diving under them
FOUR
Santa Barbara Memory
Modern art museum steps
You said goodbye
FIVE
San Francisco Memory
Fire-escapes
Cigarette smoke floating upwards
SIX
Berlin Memory
Electronic music
Midnight rooftop bar chats
SEVEN
Portland Memory
Pacific Northwest snow
Lonely streets
EIGHT
Jack Kerouac
Wrote pop haikus
On lonely look-outs.
Washington D.C. Poem
Winter morning,
twenty-degrees of cold and grey,
outside there’s no snow, only silence,
in here I drink bad coffee
with quick sleepy thoughts
in a warm bed,
out there in the world
men and women walk to work already
looking for everything or just a meal,
many missed by no one
or forgotten or wanting to be forgotten,
and I’m here in the East Coast
writing this, reading Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara,
laughing at these wistful nothings…
A poem inspired by my reading of the great Scottish poet Norman MacCaig
Ignorance
I remember standing quietly on winter rocks
looking out to the Pacific,
a child
in El Salvador
near La Libertad, the port of liberty,
where I was had sandy beaches in summer
but winter brought a stretch of rocks
and silence,
Standing there
that morning, watching birds
I couldn't name
playing and diving
Into the blue playground
I smiled at my ignorance.
OXFORD
Sitting on a bench
several leaves fall
one by one
expressing great disdain
for this cold Oxford summer’s day,
the smell of rain comes
and I write
between the taste of coffee
and the loneliness of trees.
THE SCARS OF POETRY
Empty shot glass left on the bar
whiskey gone
and now for the silence
that will walk me home,
maybe I’ll hum some old tune
or quote some poems,
perhaps it will be Edward Thomas
meeting his destiny at the “borders of sleep,”
or Stephen Spender will chat with me
about "The very great,”
I’m sure I’ll pause to ask the night questions
about the clouds above me, or memories of Frank O’Hara
may come as well, his parties and a New York City poetry long asleep,
maybe I’ll hear the sound of a pretty voice
coming down from an apartment high above,
filled with the cadence of love and beginnings,
or maybe an old line I’d forgotten
might remind me to collect my yesterdays,
regardless of all that I’ll have company
but not the kind that leaves lipstick on my cheek
and shirt but just scars across the heart.
Untitled
Morning hour
deepens the communion
with silence,
no raindrop
no wind
here,
no face
no voice
to chat with,
just clouds
and winter dreams.
FOR KIM
(After Frank O’Hara)
I would write you a letter, yes old school,
if
I knew your address
in the darkness of sadness,
but
You left only a date
in my journals, a wistful dismissive
ending
So, I’ll write that letter on this sidewalk,
among the dirt and grit of loneliness…
ABSTRACTION
I sit alone with the memory of love
and rain falling outside,
it could be an abstraction of something deeper
something that Camus might have written
reflections along the fences of memory
and suffering
on a page
on a word
on a face,
But that too is nothing, there’s just this silence
with a long line still unwritten
but thoughts try to find their moorings
without tears,
seconds passing
to more rain
to hot coffee.
STEVE
“Hello young man”
you would begin our conversations
sitting inside Caffe Trieste or outside,
under bright stars or spring sunsets,
then you would weave a story into our evenings
adding quips, jokes, observations, remembrances, and
reading “statements” kept in a small notepad, I believe
you had hundred of those filled with words describing
friends, talks, a meal, a book, walks, or thousands
of daily occurrences recorded in tiny, neat, precise handwriting.
A poet friend called our group the lost poets,
now you, Alan, and Perry have joined forces
in another dimension, one we all will cross in time
in time, this is where you would quote T.S. Eliot or
perhaps one of your heroes: James Joyce,
then I would counter with a thought or counter point,
maybe mention Spender, Auden, or MacNeice,
and the night would go back and forth
until we parted ways or Alan, Owen, Perry, Buford, and Mark came by
and poems were read round the table, laughing, listening,
and being lost poets again and again.
I know you would suggest I use another word than again
or, I imagine, you looking over this rushed poem, and asking
“Do you really want to use the word ‘dimension?’ is it necessary
for this poem to be so long?” I know you would hate this elegy
for you, my saying goodbye in the way we met and kept
a friendship over years…
maybe I will take out the word dimension.
”Good night young man, I will see you later.”
Good night Steve…
Rain Hours
Rain falls for hours
listen, stop, put down
your journal dates
and jots of memories,
slowly open your windows
that look out to your city
past fire-escapes, past
loneliness, yes watch the rain
these hours are enough
for quiet words between
tears and morning.
COFFEE
Silence sits and smokes
across from this window,
her legs dangling from a rusty fire-escape
smoke and ash rising up to the clouds above,
she doesn't care, she’s a runt, a deceiver,
a philosopher, a debater, questioning all with a stare,
this city is her journal, her work of art in red and blue
filled with codes, notes, poverty, dirt, noise, and strange doodles,
and my window remains open to her, to the breeze
scattered journals and papers say this life is mine!
the steaming coffee mug set on the table
also waits for company and the morning to move along.
URBAN LONELINESS
Loneliness is not cigarette
smoke outside a bar,
or an empty cocktail glass
reflecting rain falling,
it’s a bit more like the wind
on an autumn night
with voices echoing
down empty streets.
GIRL FROM SAN ANTONIO
Written in 2010
revised: 22nd.april.2022
‘let me tell you about art’
she whispered
between
coffee, stars,
lonely highway cigarettes,
dropped words
on wet streets,
peel away hours,
two brown cups
tipped
milk foam mustaches
then laughter from wine
drunk on floors of wet paint,
tubes squeezed
oozing blue-greens
oils on paper forget-me-nots,
‘yes tell me’
you place a hand on my heart
pocketed sighs
canvases waiting,
‘let’s begin…
THE LIGHTHOUSE
Third cup of coffee
between rain, wind, and fog
friends forever coming to gather
under December clouds, and I’m still sleepy
like some lighthouse keeper
left alone for the winter months,
looking out to the grey silent Atlantic
full of daydreams, thinking of her voice
once near, oh so near,
waking to her night whispers
talking in her sleep again and again,
a memory in a journal, dated and put aside,
now
searching for mysteries in the waves
crashing below, foam coming and going
to darker depths, and the coffee is strong
time to walk, letting the sea rain cover me
in good mornings after such dreams.
CITY DAYDREAM ONE
Car alarms
bottles rolling
wake up my dream
spoon fed words tumble
out on journals,
do words tumble?
well, I tumble out of bed
to my open windows
morning coming in waves
first the fog, then bird songs,
finally the sun,
Coffee, hot and dark
memories, strong and dark
then quiet
then sighs
then smiles
daydreaming
