Vestment (Poem)

I'm taking the lazy route today and posting one of the poem's I've been working on. Okay, maybe not lazy, but I just haven't pinned down another poet for today. So you get me. Yay for you...

This is from a sequence (tentatively called "Cloudfire and a Bowl of Kauri Leaves: Poems To a Former Self") I've been working on in response to the time I spent in New Zealand.

Enjoy.

* * * *

Vestment

And he that sat on the cloud
thrust in his sickle on the earth;
and the earth was reaped.

-Revelation 14:16

Enclosed find your copy of the long white cloud,
its golden crown buffed, spires (sickle-like) curved
and ready to reap. Consider it your airline ticket; your

liahona; your bicycle; your box of 8-10 white shirts, wash
and wear, wrinkle-free; 2 suits, traditional style and cut,
conservative, black, dark gray, blue, or brown, no baggy

or pegged pants (even though they’re making a comeback, I
know); 3 pairs of slacks, not extreme or faddish or casual,
not baggy or pegged; a few belts with buckles and 5-6 ties

and 12 pairs of socks and 3 pairs of shoes that all say, I’m
conservative, a vested representative of God. I know
what James says about God’s liberal touch; but that will come

if you’ll start with your fingers like the fingers of Doré’s sun,
peeking from behind the cloud, reaching to sift
the uncertain harvest of a foreign world until they feel soil

part, feel the fern press its head through mist then flatten
against sudden emptiness; until you can roam the lumpy terrain
without tripping on the hem of your righteousness, can

cloak the world in light without singeing every shadow to ash,
without blinding yourself as you trace the cloudfire to dusk.

Wayplace (Poem)

To end National Poetry Month (and because I've been wacking away at another seminar paper and am too tired and slammed to find a poem by someone else), I'm giving you another one from "Cloudfire and a Bowl of Kauri Leaves."

Enjoy. And, as always, feedback is welcome.

* * * *

Wayplace

at the city’s limit,
straddling the hill
Elder Chris could

barely manage
without getting off
to walk. Not tourist.

Not sea-veined kiwi.
Something between.
Though standing

ten years distant
from this photo, I’d
call you foreign. Alien.

Vagrant from a self
Time surreptitiously
forgot. It’s not

the slacks, the tie,
the shirt sleeves. Not
the name badge, words

white on black on white,
or the bag straps heavy
as a parachute harness

on your shoulders.
Not even your unnatural
lean against the pole’s

lean, legs cropped at
the knee by the photo’s
edge, or the gestures

you’ve twisted around
each hand: right arm
square to the abdomen,

pinkie and thumb hung
loose from your fist,
left hand timid toward sky,

index finger raised, set
to hook God’s bowels
from the Give Way sign

overhead. But how your
smile of a pose says
anything but content. How

your paper-thin passions
betray the burn
of breaking in new skin.

How you carved “Body +
Pushbike” in the pole then
took off chasing cloudfire

until it seared the veins like
apocalypse. Immersed you
in the cistern of God’s

mystery. Clarified your eyes
to white stones palmed smooth
by the smoldering lust of the sea.

Vestment Redux (Poem)

I posted an earlier version of this poem on April 11th, but after posting, I went back to the drawing board because just the act of taking it public made me rethink what I'd done. I don't know if this is really much better, but I tried to tie the images together more, to make it, maybe, a little more accessible.

So after much ado about nothing...

* * * *

Vestment

And he that sat on the cloud
thrust in his sickle on the earth;
and the earth was reaped.

-Revelation 14:16

Enclosed find your copy of the long white cloud, its golden crown buffed, spires (sickle-like) curved and ready to reap. Consider it your airline ticket; your liahona; your bicycle. Dress it how you will, though cumulus fit best in white shirts (wash and wear, wrinkle-free) and a suit (traditional style and cut, conservative, black, dark gray, blue, or brown, no baggy or pegged pants) or slacks (not extreme or faddish or casual, not baggy or pegged), girdled with a belt to keep adolescent winds from pantsing it, from dumping a peep show in the world’s cup of tea. Add a tie (no extreme or faddish patterns), dark socks, and dress shoes. Now knead yourself into ether, your fingers like the fingers of Doré’s sun, sifting marrow until they feel soil part, feel the fern press its head through mist then flatten against sudden emptiness; until you can roam the sky without tripping on the hem of your righteousness, can cloak the world in light without singeing every shadow to ash, without blinding yourself as you trace the cloudfire to dusk.

Wayplace: Take Two

In April, I posted an earlier version of this poem and got some feedback that prompted this revision. The biggest difference, you'll see if you compare the two poems, comes beginning in stanza twelve where I've softened the image of hooking God's bowels from the sign (as in version one) to punctuating the sign, though I've left the type of punctuation ambiguous---period? comma? exclamation point? hyphen? question mark?---implying that this phrase, this choice point, could take me anywhere.

Anyway. Feedback welcome. (And just because this is a later version of the poem, that doesn't mean I've closed the door on revisions. I'm always looking for better ways to say...)

* * * *

Wayplace

at the city’s limit,
straddling the hill
Elder Chris could

barely manage
without getting off
to walk. Not tourist.

Not sea-veined kiwi.
Something between.
Though standing

ten years distant
from this photo, I’d
call you foreign. Alien.

Vagrant from a self
Time surreptitiously
forgot. It’s not

the slacks, the tie,
the shirt sleeves. Not
the name badge, words

white on black on white,
or the bag straps heavy
as a parachute harness

on your shoulders.
Not even your unnatural
lean against the pole’s

lean, legs cropped at
the knee by the photo’s
edge, or the gestures

you’ve twisted around
each hand: right arm
square to the abdomen,

pinkie and thumb hung
loose from your fist,
left hand timid toward

sky, index finger raised,
set to punctuate
the Give Way sign overhead.

But how your smile of a pose
says anything but content.
How your paper-thin passions

betray the burn
of breaking in new skin.
How you eventually

carved “Body + Pushbike”
in the pole then pedaled
after cloudfire

until it seared your veins
like the opening phrase
of apocalypse.

Rua: An Elegy in Holes (Poem)

Here's another one from my "Cloudfire" sequence.

Feedcrack welcome (if you lurkers and RSS readers please).

* * * *

Rua*: An Elegy in Holes

My journal propped to the day you fell around the earth, dropped to a point I can only approximate anymore with a secondhand map, some tacks, and a string to slice away the pudding skin of memory, I prop these skin-thin proofs in my aperture casement, watch you drop through my hunger by layers like when we excavated the neighbor’s sandbox, made the hole so deep we could map every sheet of clay, stand tip-toed, arms raised against the grave, voice leveled into soil, and still hide from the world, though Mom still managed to find us, conjugating our name in the breeze—she must have mapped our desire from the womb, known we’d eventually start digging holes to contain the fire licking our bones, the lust that’s propped me in the window of your first Auckland flat to watch you unpack—shirts, slacks, socks, shoes, suits, the nightly routine you’ve worn so long it’s threadbare at the knees—to air the ethereal between us with a length of mist, foreign soil, and mid-summer breeze, the line you’ll hang memories on after rain until they're dry enough to take notes on, to slide into your billfold beside NZ dollars creased in thirds, ridges grimy with the island’s fingerprints, like my camera lens, blurred by the hands of Māori kids who’ve dropped into the hole we dug and propped themselves against the walls, their fingers plugging the dike of memory to keep me from wrapping the world in spools of secondhand wind.

*Māori: (noun) hole, pit, burrow, chasm, grave, store (for provisions), abyss.

Hokianga: February-March 2000 (Poem)

From Cloudfire and a Bowl of Kauri Leaves. Because I haven't posted a poem in bit. All the same rules apply: feedback, etc.

* * * *

Hokianga: February-March 2000

crimson-honey sky
across the Hokianga*
crimson-honey tide
but no waka to pierce
the bay’s narrow hips

*

crimson-honey sand
across the Hokianga
crimson-honey sky
but only one cumulus
to lick the bay’s narrow tongue

*

crimson-honey night
across the Hokianga
two harvest moons
walk empty shores
lap cups of crimson-honey tea

* * * *

*If you enlarge that map, you'll see Opononi and Omapere near the coastal edge of the harbor. The flat I lived in was---probably still is---somewhere between the two towns.

Te Kore (Poem)

Here's another one from Cloudfire and a Bowl of Kauri Leaves. You may leave feedback if you wish. I'll allow it...

* * * *

Te Kore

Haere mai:
              I’ve anticipated your soul-deep
craw. Stewed pork bones and potatoes
to tender verging on cream. Sent the kids,
brown bodies sliding between the breeze,
to gather more puha from the fenceline.
Sonchus oleraceus: slides from the tongue
into the boil just long enough to soften
the cellulose, give the broth enough bite
to open the palate, throw windows wide
on sense. To bathe you in steam thick
as the threshold we cross between words.

E noho:
              I see hunger squirm beneath
your skin. Break bread. Dip it in butter
heavy as afterbirth. Let the excess glide
across your tongue, drop
into the well of appetite, filled with milk
fresh from the coupled Void. Sidle toward
the breast. Press between her skin and his.
Join the sextuplet gods waiting to suckle,
mouths wide against emptiness,
hunger sliding between lips chapped
from too long in the womb—

ora mate ora mate ora
                                  Ply your flesh
in this orgy of mythologies. Mix spittle
with the grammar of desire
shorn from Adam’s side. Slip on
this red clay like spirit slips on nakedness.
An infant its mother’s breast. Meaning,
the itch always just out of reach. Slide
from this amniotic tide into the metaphor
christened body. Meaning movement.
Meaning legion. Meaning drink
from this cup and we’ll help you forget to

breathe.