On a Dreamed Report of Death

We await those who die in wires,
tolled at midnight with little bells.

A dead face is an injected wax
or unbelieved victim of murder.

Yes, I knew him. Long ago. He is dead?
Only dead again? And only now?

A remarked absence. Emotion vacancy.
Oh, a vague perhaps, perhaps. Regret

for the loss of intelligent laughter.
But the wonder of our being is faded.

I know the color of my blood is blue,
see it through the crepe of my wrist.

I can’t imagine his now gone red,
a blue jay turned to cardinal overnight,

then to crow, scribbled with white words,
living on again in description.

Death, an appendage of memory,
a wireworm on the body of a fish

we try to grasp, releases its host
to test our flesh with constriction.

We wrench ourselves to be free of it,
and when we are, think only of our pain.

All recollection is a form of lie.
Here, in this city block of wild sand,

the mounds in the yard are my old friends;
only the man I am may tend them.

They sleep beneath the scratching of my rake,
dance into gardens only in my sleep.

I wish him long life beneath the sun.
Perhaps he thinks of me now and then.

The House

My parents and six siblings and I lived in this house on Sr.

Officers Row at Warren Air Force Base. My dad was a colonel.

The house in dreams is always the same,
Though its rooms, like lungs, bulge and contract
And sometimes the rain
Bends ceilings and bursts through in cataracts,
Frightening as spitting your teeth down the drain.
Dad’s gone, and that house will never be the same.

The old trees, too, are still the same.
We rake and burn leaves in the driveway
And recall legendary Claire,
Who caught fire leaping on a dare, they say,
Whose ghost still turns on the faucet upstairs.
Mom’s gone, and that house will never be the same.

The stairway in the front hall is the same.
I find my mail stacked on the newel post,
Though I don’t live here.
Though I am still alive, I am a ghost
The others cannot touch or see or hear.
Dad’s gone, and that house will never be the same.

The ways we use each room are still the same,
But the television is black and white
And the kitchen is a mess.
We feel no urgency, no physical delight
In being where there is no light, no darkness.
Mom’s gone, and that house will never be the same.

The river runs through our backyard just the same.
Memories of trysts and laughter, beneath the willows,
Though vivid, never intrude.
The river is a dark chalice threatening to overflow,
Or frozen as stone, dead, supine, nude.
Dad’s gone, and that house will never be the same.

My bedroom and closet still seem the same.
While the window no longer looks out on the trains
On the trestle beneath the moon,
The closet door mirror no longer refrains
From showing me what has come only too soon.
Mom’s gone, and that house will never be the same.

The attic and the basement are both the same.
We hide in one or the other with our fear—
Of life, or of death—
The attic when all that we hold dear
Disappears; in the basement holding our breath.
They’re gone, and that house will never be the same.

Construct, Sonnet #614

A dreamed-of tern feathered bright tin,

With feet of forks and spoons, and eyes

Of rapidly blinking buttons

Flapping in a nacreous sky . . .

So briefly, yet half-remembered.

Is it different than sand hill cranes

Flying tight skeins, or tiny birds

Fighting at your feeder, insane,

Almost: hungry, or is it greed?

All is constructed by what feeds

The integers of counting we’s,

Assembled — one, one — instantly,

As we try to comprehend dreams —

And all else— as more than just seen.

Dreaming

Dreaming isn’t thinking,

That hypnogogic sinking

Into the unblind unblinking.

Its images are un-clocked

Memories, mostly mocked

Distortions of what we are now,

Hurt children crying “Ow!”

We meet there the half known,

Not projected but shown

Us for no intelligible reason,

A fifth, black and white, season,

If wish fulfillment, unfilled,

Or a silent movie unbilled.

Though occasional nightmares

Will scare us with dead stares,

Only awake will we, screaming,

Take for real the seeming,

Mistake the dream for meaning.

Bang!, Terzata #43

I slept as the doorbell rang.

When I rose they were gone.

A sweet earworm sang and sang.

Was it really no one?

The day raced by as days will,

A bullet from a rubber gun

With only duration to kill.

If I can’t remember dreams,

What I forget of life are dreams until

Remembered (when they seem

Like hammers and bangs).

But most often they gleam

Afar — frozen gilded boomerangs.

Evening: The Red Tree (Piet Mondrian), Sonnet #513

I have never dreamed of the tree,

Though I believe it dreams of me.

Leafless, as if empty of thought,

It blushes in the setting sun,

Emotionally overwrought,

Blossoming caught out of season.

It’s inner branches, clotted, dark,

Hide the almost asleep catbird,

(Inventor of the millionth word),

Whose claws are locked on ragged bark.

The red tree stretches to the sky.

Beneath, I sleep and dream of love,

Or old battles — sometimes I fly

Under the sun, sometimes above.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:

My Human Disguise.

Strong Dream (Paul Klee), Sonnets #471 and #472

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:
My Human Disguise.

















#471

I ask myself, who dreams the dream?

In real time “I” experience

Oddities and “life.” Like a beam

Flashed along a picket fence,

“I” find in each gap an event —

From where inside me was it sent?

“I” play a game of pool and lose.

“I” feel the loss, see the table.

Who changes the scene? “I” didn’t choose.

Now “I’m” gliding as if on a cable.

There is another I in the “I” —

Stage manager and audience.

It’s stronger than “I.” This dreaming eye

Sees “me” seeing the picket fence.

#472

He dreamed the sun devoured by the moon.

He dreamed the moon deflowered by the sun.

The stars blinked their tiny eyes at the ruin.

His slinging guitar became a shotgun

And with one blast picked off every star

Then turned back into a slinging guitar.

He took off his wings when he went to sleep.

They kept him as warm as the woolen sheep

Of old counting — that didn’t work at all.

So warm his feet and face had turned brick red,

He rode into a lukewarm waterfall

On a black mule, back as wide as a bed.

I saw all this through his closed eyes, not mine,

Yet he wrote this goggling, every line.

The Punishment of Luxury (Giovanni Segantini), Sonnet #439

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:
My Human Disguise.

Inured to wind or rain, the women rest

On a bed of air, draped in silken sheets,

Sated on honeyed wine and creamy sweets,

Their flaxen tresses framing each bared breast.

Though their eyes are closed, we can’t be sure

They’re sleeping, if they are dreamt or dreaming.

They throw dim shadows from a star beaming

Dimly distant and reluctantly pure.

It’s late winter and the snow starts to thin.

Even the mountains’ snowcap is shrinking.

We can’t know what the women are thinking.

Perhaps they hope that spring vanquishes sin.

Dear ones, where are the men? They sin as well.

Is your punishment their heaven or hell?

The Sleeping Venus (Delvaux)

#50

Sleeping Venus does not dream of men.
She is made of love she cannot share,
Love being just another form of flesh
Only memory can touch again and again.
Like the sickle moon, vicious and fair,
She is unimaginably distant light and ash.
Her five handmaidens gyrate and moan,
Beseech the night for clothes of their own.
The well-dressed Madame, Venus' tool,
Mistakes a skeleton for a love-struck fool.
Bleak and meager dreams for a goddess,
Yet how peacefully she seems to sleep.
Though her realm is all stone and distress,
We will now invade her sacred keep.