Foul Poetry

[Worm of Despite]

AWAKE

A lay sleeps,
Cozened by ephemeral fears
They glaze the night, wring
Long the beating heart, and tears
Bring their wetness, beat
This pulse to such a pitch

Now gasp, now strangle
Preach—do naught!
Fumble with the oratory
As one gambles

But all your ardor
Will bring no glory
Nor shall you breach
Or expulse a breath
Immortal

[Worm of Despite]

JOY

I have accompanied this earth
When trees of shadow widened every gap,
Did teach me complacent music, lacking
Tuning

Now eyes ignore the present sorrow,
Accompany a string past point, cracking
Age, o’erstaying stint, wealth—harried,
The dream knows a fear, spent
All feverous on hearth once sweet,
Now lined in dust, colorless; waking
Numb, steering thoughts and ears
To ignite as flesh, complacency

[Worm of Despite]

ONDINE

It lay discordant; lay
As chord unbound,
Firm shoal of empty water
Sore hands accept thee now,
Enjoin fluid and wake
Stirs of thousands, rills
Of belief, hearts rending
As one orison, one muscle
Beaten dry by discourse,
Footprints wavering, sand
For the small hours to waste
And seconds to dither smooth
As piano’s glissando, even
And never turbid; never
Asking, all accepting; its heart
Flowing, falling now
As many and it is one.

O, shore; shore; shore in
Upon that wake, belief
Plod as key but never chord
As one sea of sound, one line
That one may follow, accept
And in thee know

Paint with diffident strokes
Upon canvas unimaginable
Tread with me in succinct words
On things no voice can explain

Force with this mortal hand
Explain the remains; mend that
Which tastes and pleases, requires
No thought or feeling; only gestation
From one solemn point to infinite
Fortune—a smooth space that
Must end in largess, intimate
Discourse that is primed on, guessed
At, never quite ending; hands only
Now, evade your question; place
A shore, a movement fleeting and
With you I direct your arms
To find sands at shoal’s bottom
And beyond that sandbars

Uncounted space
Ne’er takes or pleases; distance
But spills a landless clime,
A fruit drenched, centered
Dreamless changeling,
Nymph of water by dry bench,
Telling nameless meaning
Of its light; how God fools, falls
As darts as swords on tapestry

Let words flout,
Reek vitriol and confess—
Not to change but to accept
That there is no sound but what
Man shall hear; no yearning
But the barring of the word
No lay but those discordant
Chords unbound by firm shoal
In empty water, its notes
A thousand-fold

[Worm of Despite]

COME

Age reckons with it
The night, bedizened

A thousand fruits have we peeled
A thousand long, forgotten pasts
Infirm depths, trawling who we are
Plucked like reason, a line too short
A bob, cast;

It is the Saint, the flowing out
The constituting of a name
The one within and without

I too have walked; I too have seen space:
Panels that reflect a face, transparent,
Often beautiful—but true
And according to each mirror
To each slant or hue of light

I am but each moment a newborn
I am every light in someone else
I am my idea of me and in someone else’s
Eyes I am them

Ceaseless redress; pain of life
The skill, the block-mallet; the falling
As I try with pain and energy; to entice, to control
One’s yarn, to let it slip out: their ideas, yours; our words
Chip and form the whole, and in that self, that want
We come as one, collect what shall never be

[Worm of Despite]

Jerusalem

Elysium’s lip—not heaven, thy desire
Thy shared learning; recalcitrant faith
Deemed empty brushstroke;
Thy bath a cube, lying open
As steam embodying smoke

Imp, pale and dancing
Skin quite real and vivid
It’s smooth; we felt, and in we fell—
A credit more to the fire that did intake
We chalked the cliffs, our bodies wrung,
Screech higher than leaning bones:
More yearly than did His augur pave; His might
More resplendent than the gorget’s shine,
Each gage patterned to His chime.

Who would lap; name the stones, “Jerusalem!”
The one spied but never seen; that loose foliation
On each tongue

[Worm of Despite]

SHIP

The capsule split at its half, the day dredging up
In chords, his brother’s laugh the only memory
Charitable, he strides beyond that starting point,
The hall entering his mind, sinuous and curving
Leaving his mind, the hallway now barely
Black breath, remembrance--of pill and water;
The semaphore shuttered, light bare, now
On grass, running between signs, keeping
It still, thought, and was back inside, pushing
Pill inside water, shell falling inside.

Cursing, he drank it anyway, walls too narrow
Keep it still, he thought, and was back inside,
Pill pushing itself in water, the shell falling inside
Cursing, he drank it anyway, walls too narrow,

II.
He walked by the Chrysler Building,
Its long shadow waking him,
A shot of light on sidewalk, the body
Within its compass, without ever having
Watched its emptiness, its newness; bodies
Were made to walk on it before its birth
Sears and Robuck receded, became dross

He knew not how;
Its low glare ever watched, empty windows
Of the building

The door opened
“Hello.”
“You’re Mr. Uncle Matter?”
“Undoubtedly?”

They thrusted through a room, unsheathing
Speech, looking at each other’s lap pets,
Talking about how they might grow pets
For laps, and breath fanning between words
“You’re new here!”
“I’m an employee!”
“Excellent, take this paper!”

And the door opened and he swallowed

“But?” she said
You forget the cat’s divergence
From this thread of self-awareness,
You piquant wanderer, you

I’m sorry, we have to let you go.

IV.
He left the Chrysler building, holding his check
The people did not want him anymore
Cats were very intangible, but he saw one now on the wall,
No doubt its eyes planning his next failure
The same one that kept his pace in check, everyday,
Like a green objective marker at the edge of a video game
You can’t tell if it doesn’t tell back, he said; just ignore it

Don’t give in!
There were but eight years left, but the craft
Shuttered, quietening as light flickered
Faintly in the hold, a man looked
Intently upon the mouth, a beard laughing
He sat on the corner, eating yogurt
Asking people not to say a word to him

Sweet mercy!
I was all the rage, he said, before the cat degenerated
My sense of music and certainty! And now we’re going—
But I reiterate! Wondrous city, so nice and livid,
With its obsequies and pointed implications staring
Long at metal plate and eating food from dispensers.
Oh, joy! To hear every day my mayor speak, often
Replacing my name with the important matters
Just to feel chills.

But you can’t be a prancing dandy.
So they sent me on this ship.
And why are you here?

PART TWO: THE PARK

Wake up; stride the air
Sigh, lacking life, the most beauteous
Reason here; it the part between
All sea and empty knowledge

Awake, weary arriver;
Brush off the cords, the dust-robe
And sit and wax in effigy
Until you find the skin once lost,
The blood that so cooled
Your smile, brought thy breath
Closer to mine

Force perforce; a beseeching wind,
Now the thrush that moves,
Now the voice of men
Now God hiding, laughing
In our breath, as hot as birth
Sun-baked, moist as rivers
Rocks and stream, tickling
Wax brown in apogee

The thrush’s call inside your name
Beautiful leaning, it dithers
Slips and runs as sun, and the way
Is forced on you, your steps plaiting,
Rising fast, then slowing; and we cut
The path on trespassed solitude;
Flocks bent, smiles waning; tears
Do enjoin the clouds, and we
Rise, effervescent, as motes

The hill waves, struck
As iron and fire; the brush
Its pulls; its need—waits—
On maps, signed traps; agreeing
What may happen, already is
And what of self

‘It rhymes of its own appeal’
‘If you spoke, it would hurt.’
‘Beauty is the measure before the stab
And the wait before the plunge’

PART THREE: EFFIGY

Crazed man! Lay down!
No, I must finish my yogurt!
You are so unrepentant.
I am unsold; a riddle; I am waiting
For some touch or last-minute bargain
Before I die; I am pinching
This tit-for-tat and flicking
It at you

I am grousing over melodies,
Changing notes and unhinging
All tune

I am pick and plow; broth and drink;
Swirling steam, undulating frost
People who think they know a thing
Just by applying eyes, its name
And keep its worth, its idea
Teamed in chains upon a plow,
Pulling now, digging dirt

And someone exclaims
‘This is great art is great work; is great
Essay and birth and he died fine.’
Everything in its compass, he digging
Yogurt, pooling white into mouth; soaring
The taste of blueberries quite cold, and he snoring
On the park bench, getting old

The pace about his bench slowed, shoppers
Looking down at him, the small enjoyable
Little man, who lay nestled by the can
Of blueberries and white cream, emptied
And sprayed about him, his mouth, belly

Nearby a man drinking beer, picnic checkerboard
On the grass, saying something in
Its old pattern, the force of words above
Quite apparent; overly forced, as if Eskimos
Believed the seller was selling ice
Were angry!

The man woke from his dream of the North Pole,
Stood yawning, the yogurt stains not enviable.
He whistled, walking the “cool walk,” people
Nodding to him, checking their watches, looking
Down, he asking each time for money, and the next
Moment he was treading the crack, trying
Not to break his mother’s back, the next pace
Too much, the foot touching the crack, somewhere
A mother howling

You think that’s funny?
Some many threw suddenly
An ice cream sandwich at the beggar,
He running, forgetting his name,
A whistle blowing shrill over the park

He had to leave!

PART FOUR: BEGGING

He lay against a wall,
A high, hot summer wall, gin
Sloshing in the space of a hand,
A small, half-starved Chihuahua
Laying in his knees, pawing
Looking up, always

The dog needed tetanus shots,
He told passersby; he said this,
Forty times, waiting, forty times;
No reply

Coins came, at last—scant; and he walked
To the McDonalds, asking for
A whopper with cheese; he, sinking teeth inside
Began to cry.

He sat on the edge of the parking lot,
Chihuahua happy, eating lettuce, summer
Hot and high, gin on his mind, bottle
Empty, he throwing it at the night
Hearing it scatter as rain in his mind,

Trees beyond the pavement, seeming
Always seeming

He startled, awake, college students
Throwing tacos at him, screaming
Where do I hide, he crawling in a garbage can,
Fingers small and lean and closing the lid

They laughed, picking up the can,
Carrying him up a hill, he
Bobbing inside, feeling like a shrunken soul,
The tatters now twining to a knot,
He wrung the air, prayed as if they were
Taking him up the Sinai, suddenly
Laughter stopping, he slapping the dull road,
Rolling hard, painful—laces, bumps, womps
He threw up at the end, crawling out

He gasping, walking slowly,
Howling inside, night scrolling on and on
The trees were there, promising
Yet now smiling with jagged teeth, seemed to him

HEY ASSHOLE!

The kids were coming at him again.
He ran hard down the road, open
In the sidewalk, yelling; a girl laughed
She was wearing clothes from her work,
He noticed her face, thinking, she thinks
This is funny? And the boys, their
Sweaters from their colleges, grey
Caught up, dragging him back, saying
He needed to eat, and he was begging
For his life; asking to be let out; let go
And they kept their hands tight on him,
Saying a ride was just what he ordered.

PART FIVE: MUDDING

He woke in waves of darkness,
The first moment his last,
Knowing the old fear was encroaching
That he might have to answer for someone else,
Asking for a raise or a better check—and then
He remembered—the cats! Yes, the cats
Think they have the better.

THEY THINK I AM A FOOL?
The truck’s top opened, he seeing light
THINK I AM A FOOL? He jumped up,
Swung at the first kid, planting firmly a fist,
Yanking his sweater over his head, jumping
Over the side of the truck, running

Darting past mud, branches, the
Absence of trees, wind hard, hot
Truck revving, breath scant,
Clothes ragged, wet; vehicle nearly shining,
Chrome behind him, brilliant loud,
The wheel mowing up the hill, college
Students whooping loud!

Good times, someone yelled
And the beggar nearly slipped

The truck smashed into a tree,
Its metal guard taking no damage,
He running from tree to tree, they
Firing BB guns, taking small cigarettes—
Some of them real, others candy—
And chewing the fat of conversation
As the beggar made a useless dash

2
They had their fun, dropped him

He watched, later, a change machine;
A patron fed the bills, change upon change
Spilling out, he watching the dimes, the nickels
Filter: silver, glinting for a moment then
Landing cool and vacant in the pile, the man
Sifting his hands through them, laughing
Looking quite pleased he had converted

Then he walked to the vegetable isle,
Pulling out ice around the cabbage, chew it
Until a man saw him and asked him to leave
He sidled quickly to the shopping carts, pulling
One as he left, pushing its wheels down the lot

The man kept asking him to leave, and they
Played tug of war with the cart, the sun
Hot and he gritting his teeth between
A beard he’d forgot

3
He lay, tired as a bony animal
That had no more meat left to carve
And he sat chewing on the fat of the road,
Baking in asphalt, the gas waves rippling
In the haze, splashing
His mind as neon light, the town’s night
Small and woody, far off as the city;
How could he get home?

The place he had attempted to arrive at
The arrival; the dismissal; cats
He simmered, thinking of cats

Past, he thought; past, dead; he
Wept and cried, and wrung it until
The last moment did not but burn again
And he yelled, yelled at the night
And the seething neon light, green
From the broken-down gas station
Creeping toward it, chewing the air with curses;
He barking, clattering; throwing an empty bucket,
Bouncing soundless on the door, he stalking
Away; chewing the idea that he was clean
For the first time clean. He was mad; dumb
But clean.

He rubbed his finger between the thumb,
They not shaking, clean; the eyes thought
Freely, the mind smooth, connections made,
The trees tall, the fear effaced; the suffering
Of recent had erased the poverty; had made
A forgetful slumber awake—that of living
Without streets; without dime-food and dime-begging
And he wished to come back to the place
He had gone from, even if it mean
Placing pill in water, waiting for it to dissolve
Holding to mouth, the walls tightening, short
And the cursory glances becoming long stares,
Pale stars glistening on the night’s first frost

‘GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!’

A large man with a broom slammed the handle
Into his chest, he unable to breathe
He fell, the handle seeming to impale, his hands
Thin strands around, the night wheeling on
Diffident, pitiful chords, planting their
Sounds on random strains, pulling
In orbs about him in tiny places
Keep it, he thought, keep it in
Feel, he said, pill inside water
Breaking seal, dissolving, staying in cup
Drink it anyway

He smiled, broom handle in chest
And smiled; and I’ll kill you! Pill
Inside cup, sloshing, and he drank it
And the walls tightened, narrowed
And he

Was back home.

4
He sat in the front of his yard,
The semaphore shuttering, the
Large holes no longer there; the signs
Apparent, he running through them,
The tiny waves and heat of light
Not so hot on his back; but one day
He might again have to answer the call

[Worm of Despite]

Plaiting Gyre

Snakes of skyscrapers of concrete on tiny lips,
Striding walls, piercing up and in with curves,
Black streets paved, sucking earth and smoke from perforations,
Warped slats of light and tiny lips in holes of warped-black
Steel, streets plastered in themselves as holding children,
Clawed at others, cots of nothing; randomized, chaotic
And perfect in being; planned, arranged to law,
Edged commingling in ooze of base metal

Flame strike,
Washed steel, heat stroke incubating thought;
Smooth glass, polished yearning; foot hits puddle,
Clear and black and bent as night, soaring
Gale lifted, glancing and you see again

Its balance, stagger
Its margins clear in every ledger
A treeless being of rushing plains,
A murmuring in every turning
Smoothness so dense
You’d mistake it for mud

The opposite way
Opposite way
All this time you had been going wrong

[Worm of Despite]

Every Child Wakes to Arise

He folded a jacket, ash poured on
Bleeding hands and followed a map
And looked on land—forty miles;
There! Gale lifted and he saw a plain
In the middle, going up and down; there
Sand smooth, old and rugged; had gone
The opposite way; needed to go around
The city;

Brochure in pocket, flipping open
Read aloud: John Bradley Foundation
Today the Walrus is our latest Specimen;
Featured in the rotunda; clear a path
And let him flap his flippers!

Pocketed brochure, briefly eyeing
Faded, square picture of walrus
In mid-clap, flippers just about to touch

The walrus had big tusks.

II.

Wind rumbled, ash on head
Awoke in treeless trunks, saw
Tower stripped and black, without
End, replacing sight and waking dreams
Shut lids and saw as if light
Impressions from the sun; struggled in
Position, curled in sea of specs and
Dust, heaving at mass, dry skin revealed
From waves of ash he stood; wind warm
And cooling on his back; half-cold

Kicking in round trundles

The trees about the bed shot from earth
In tired randomness; thin and without branches
Hands taller than himself; grey trafficking
Between fingers, sniffing acrid heat
Of day, wind eschewing; blew mouth, filtered
Ash; sucked nose and ducked his head,

Hills moving more and more in layers
Armless trees carried on; fall or worse
Burning forest—burnt terra? Ventured it
Was that time of year; this had to be
The fall

Valley's belly black
And leaning on burnt city's flakes
Racing on the wind, lacing
At his feet in rock, brushing skree
Heat of air, thoughts of day
Smoothing to a glossed, crackling world
Pop--! This one, foot puddles again; disparate
Flame-trails raked all to one

It rose in terms unknown to thought
Or origins or speech or time
Without ire or insides; into
His eyes none could dwell; sinuous
Ridges that stride in darkening lines
Of waifs of ash or clout of cloud;
Sulfur hanging on gray line, carbon-white
As fire strobes, blinding ball of towers
So black and wide his eyes
Could not unlock; could not unlock
Emotional ire and without insides

III.

Fish-things dance in caves
The thought and constancy
This world seemed

Composed of

Not quite fish themselves
But implications—water beneath
Projected lines and runlets
Of light on rock wall; your mind
Might say "Were I to see it in life
I would know it intimately," but within
Mind is never the same, an image, clasped
Drops out of constancy, such that
The next grain of rock or small curvature
Have changed beyond recall

Peace beyond reckoning
Will beyond light
Can you tell a book from words?
Can you tell words from you?

Every child wakes to arise
Every child wakes to arise
I dreamt so long that life
Became the dream; I dreamt so long
That we have breathed long the fumes
Of a world that does not exist

[Worm of Despite]

A lesson learnt from disuse, fragrant
Song no longer there, notes prescient
In pieces beyond redress, grace
Waxing loud as effigy; steel
From scabbard, hand on hilt, playing wind
Grating tin and mind; lovely trespass through cloud
And cold; satin and redress; blood so lovely
It curls mortal sound it brings, the man’s form
The first image into sweeter things.

[Worm of Despite]

White Detritus

Adorn this crown, O growing reason
Do not breathe, breath so sylvan
Dew my earth to growing thew and sea;

Demand all nations’ warm embrasures,
Sundered rock and brick and layers
Shifting as the withered eye in dreams

Growing particles in loss, withered drifting
Out in frost, a life half sundered before it’s lost
Inside

A winter’s chase, breath we’ll walk, gentle space
Contained and sewn we’ll walk
And know our love; receive your mind and breathe inside
Your love

[Worm of Despite]

Reticence

In reticence we share a past
And never speak of our conjoining
Dripping as water from hills, that treasure
Is shared in water of the same age, in our eyes
And were I to see you again, I would fill
With such threnody and tell you things
That knew our hearts, in tandem with their swing
Grey pillared specters clash inside your breath
And in their labyrinth my heart’s devotions
Creased the makers’ cloying hands
And built fair Jerusalem and all that stands
As worth within my soul

II.
Ghostly waif, organ’s traipse
Gone through field, shorn
Of wealth is rattled there, shattered years
In heat of breath; open eyes; recognize
That wind was there before you’re born;
Was still through weal and loss, movement and time;
Death and resurrection, inside your bed and balancing
Inside your eye; recognize the shattered hand, hand in hand
With mine

[Worm of Despite]

Unfinished

Sylph coigned in transient granite,
Did you betake yourself upon your flaws
Of stone and frieze; did your face hang
Forever smirched of island’s graze
In mist dissident as tones, arms open
And lack of pupils’ atonal stare through planes
Beyond our ken?

Did you know before you took that form
The mist that enfolds your glare;
The island that waves in details,
Changing, as you never dare?

Did you breathe a breath immortal
Or fancy some forgotten love
Before the stone lowered you
To its embrace

[Worm of Despite]

I Will Arise

I will arise, for this earth
Has lost its bonds in transience,
And its moments burst with syllables, flowing
Rivers of blood and time, their banks holding
No more causality than I fared in life.

I will arise. There beats the note’s preponderance,
There the music’s center and longing in the song, bartering
For another day of peace, one more stay with might
Or turn of head; I will arise; the note has passed

In dark it retracts, sundered
No more; I will arise, like core signals
Of bleached day in long cants of blue sky
That passed and cannot touch me, for I am beyond
Them and they are not me.

[Worm of Despite]

Mere Skeletons

White bled the stones of Tyre
As they lay in the marsh and dark tones of sea,
Rested on planks of wood, belly uplifted
To rain of waves and wind; voices as the sea
Itself, drying throats applying to stench of brine;
Hours long-parted in long-stirred water of the coarse,
Flat sweat of backs, baiting them to rest;
Forms they had become, scrunched in tears
And leathered skin; felt hands bearing the marks
Of oars, tightening prayers in placation of searching
Mass—wealth longed for but hands empty as the dark
And the vessel turning on itself in sands of wind;
The only song they could endure

On the eve they proffered with spirits made
Of salt and wind and long spires of white
Sand reaching up to heaven; eyes, strobed of
White afflicted lower spheres of higher planes;
Eyes drowning as throats, hands no longer hands
But brown webbing afflicting oars, holding
Them up and down to course of sea, falling
Heady pierce of sea swinging and appellations
Of rain swaddling their wood craft as they slept
And tried not to drift

On eve they proffered with spirits made
Of salt and wind and long spires of white
Sand reaching up to heaven, eyes strobed of
White afflicted lower planes of higher spheres, eyes
Drowning as throats, hands no longer hands but
Brown webbing afflicting oars, holding them
Up and down to course of sea, falling heady
Pierce of sea swinging in appellations of rain
Swaddling their wood craft as they slept
And tried not to drift

The bite of brine gagged, beach
A long thumb print, blinding sphere or smear
Of blood-white in the most distant hopes
They could attain; a threnody to hearts;
More singing than the wind, that crescent-shape
Of earth sticking like bedewed tears in throats;
In more pure salt than white waves themselves
As they strode on the beach, mere skeletons

[Vraith]

There's an aweful lot of really good stuff here. Stride and Ship II have something extra; at first glance I'd say because of the way they step between the ordinary/concrete and the imagistic/abstract.
Very nice.

[Worm of Despite]

There's an aweful lot of really good stuff here. Stride and Ship II have something extra; at first glance I'd say because of the way they step between the ordinary/concrete and the imagistic/abstract.
Very nice.

Thanks. I feel sorry for the poor beggar in it. I have a bad history of writing hobos and itinerant beggars into tight spots... I look at the entire poem as my Diabelli Variations, with the last stanza coming back to a calm serenity (like the last variation).

Also: Ship is the last poem of my fifth poetry volume, Sounds of Man's Dominion. The poems after (some out of order) begin my new volume, Every Child Wakes to Arise.

[Wyldewode]

Aparently I don't spend enough time in the Hall of Gifts. Nice work, Foul.

[Fire Daughter]

Awesome stuff, LF! Your writing reminds me of my Uncle's. Fantastic!

[Worm of Despite]

Thanks, Furls Jr. I've enjoyed Stephen's writings and never saw the connection, but now I'm flattered. I hope your mom lets you read my novella one day.

[Fire Daughter]

Oh yes! I've read it already! It's awesome. I'll be the first in line to buy one of your books when you get published.

Your dedication to Uncle Steve and Uncle Isaiah made me cry. Thank you so much for that.