The Ginkgo

Pages, pages

all around

my courtyard fall

without a sound.

 

Yet, full of sage

advice, this tree

might hold a book,

dog-eared, like me:

 

a paperback,

spine cracked and dry,

shedding leaves

and leaving sky.

The Loon

I know it sounds crazy, but—like you—I might be a tenure-track catamite today, instead of a virtuous poet working temp jobs that I detest: if only Fred had selected a slightly tighter pair of pants that evening—our first date. 

Our dinner was fine. French. Bouillabaisse. His conversation and his choice of wine, thoughtful and excellent. We discussed my possible future—the famous men and women (and others) that I might meet at cocktail parties with his help.

After coffee and crème de menthe, we took a stroll. He waxed poetic, rattling off bits of Bishop and Merrill by the light of a waning moon. It was a beautiful autumn night. The sky was clear. The air was crisp. Three or four stars sparkled above Manhattan. I doubt that we would have lived happily ever after, but we might have enjoyed a few evenings of strip-poker in his apartment, or, at the very least, a healthy hand of Old Maid.

It was not to be. I was his student, you see, and a former gymnast, as I had just demonstrated on the horizontal bar in a little park near his apartment.

Fred Roland was here on a special Visa: a visiting professor of poetry at the university. And he wore baggy khakis.

I looked down at his face. I kind of admired the man for attempting to defy time as well as gravity: turning purple, eyes-bulging, hanging upside down in Washington Heights—keys, credit cards, condoms, and a handful of change cascading from his pockets. I realized with sadness that cards were probably no longer in the cards for us. Not even Old Maid.

So much for my career.

I lifted my eyes toward Heaven, and I sighed, “Don’t kill yourself, dear.”

He consented to live, with a grunt, after a painful attempt at something more spectacular—some kind of spin—before he dismounted, with stinging soles, upon the Earth.

Fred staggered over to a nearby slide and sat on its steely lip, to catch his breath and balance. I crouched to collect the scattered contents of his khakis, chattering about how I had once crushed my nuts in junior high attempting a similar move.

He said nothing.

When I thought I had collected everything, I handed the stuff back to him. He sorted it. He counted the change. He looked at me quizzically. And then he looked around. He squinted and he said, a touch tersely it seemed to me, “I think you missed something.” He winced, “over there.”

He pointed to a derelict disk shining in the dark.

I followed his shaking finger and walked over to where he was pointing, to see for myself.

He was right.

I had missed something.

I picked it up.

Even in the dim orange light under the swings, I could tell it was a coin. A newly minted dollar. A lost Canadian Loon.

The Man Inside

Goose-stepping down a model

Tokyo street, picture a man

half-dressed in a Gojira suit

preparing to stomp around Japan.

Suspended by suspenders, his

lower parts are all reptile—

rubber ones, I grant you—fake.

All is fake except his smile

The smile is real. He loves his job:

crushing cars, burning towns, killing.

Monsters have more fun than us.

They know it's far more thrilling

to revel in monstrosity

than be a good man for forever,

lying in a foreign field

nobody will visit. Never.

Dawn

Fall mornings like this

conjure up the hand

of Helios. I see

the great sun god himself,

patting the flanks of his horses

with affectionate fire,

offering one last word

of advice to Phaëton,

before the eager boy

takes off in his chariot,

and loses control of the day,

the night, the entire sky.

The Iliad

For J.M.

Death changes nothing. Priam still is king.

Horses run. Fresh flowers—lilac, rose—

still lift the spirit out of time to sing

an everlasting song. No heroes

here. Only towers made of sound. The wind

sweeps across their breastworks like a hand

across a harp: a vortex twisting in

agony across a devastated land—

a land hard to define. A voice. Not

one in particular: the voice of dust,

one speck among millions; an arrow shot

into your throat; remains of a man who lost

his life in a long-silted river, drowned,

as a great battle raged all around.

Lux Fiat

Sitting by the Hudson,

reading Borges, I

removed my Ray-Bans,

looking up from my book,

risking a little blindness.

I wanted to let the light

fill my empty eyes.

I wanted to be Borges.

I wanted to hear that

immortal Latin phrase,

spoken from nowhere,

the first day of Creation.

Arch

Dear Martial, may I

borrow a vertebrae?

I need a keystone

to cap an epigram

to glorify our age—

this golden age of poetry.

My name is Eric. Yes,

I know you don’t know me.

I’m an American poet.

I have no spine to speak of;

apart from one eyebrow

(see) lifted in irony.

Gulls

If it weren’t for that

horrible screech, I might

begin to envy gulls:

their tiny brains, clear eyes,

those feathers of ash, and those

hollow bones; that flesh

so rich in fat it floats

effortlessly in water,

air, above fires; the way

they twist and turn around

the local siroccos rising

flames create for them.

If only they’d shut up.

I really do admire

their special spiral flight

pattern (patterned after

Yeats’s infamous

gyres, I suppose)

sustained by next to nothing—

the minimum of toil—

pure buoyancy—like music—

the sweetest morsel of

humanity; nourishment

picked up on the sly from some

colossal black barge

passing out to sea,

full of rotting garbage.

A Roman Portrait

Who is this young man
with dark and curly hair
found buried in Egypt?
Is he still aware

how handsome he is?
How senusous his lips?
How, looking at him now,
his picture quietly slips

into another one:
another pair of eyes
buried in my brain.
Both still so alive.

August 2nd, 2013

A man with glasses reads about

The battle of El Alamein

In A Brief History of the World

Stuck on the lucky 7-train.