Kevin's Watch

Just finished my latest volume of poetry, AIR, and will be continuing my newest (and 8th volume) here. Not sure of its name yet, and this may not even be the first poem, but this is what I've got for the time being. Enjoy!


Tracery

The steam of my heart
Evaporates

Faster than smoke
All that I am
Ignore me

I.
Not the leaning of the morning
Or the brushing of a shadow
Shall remind

I am lustrous
Honest; proud
Honor’s platitudes
Invite me most

II.
A shot pierces night
Nothing moves

Traceries of a world
We live and can’t ignore

Someone told me to write in new places
Yet I’m everywhere

Hands, frigid
Pierced by desire
Lay me in a purity
Where words converge
And language means nothing

Where the memory of home
Is but a memory
And the return
Takes a lifetime

III.
The fullness of my life elapses.

No one knows me
Not even I

Truth and truth
And truth
Begetting beauty
Cloaked in death

So numb the hands can barely write
Where words were barely seen

Amazing as always...

Where the memory of home
Is but a memory
And the return
Takes a lifetime

Love that...

Thanks, Daughter of Furls. Are you allowed to have two husbands? (Just giving you a hard time!)

I don't think Myles wants to share.

A Thought While Leaving Wal-Mart

Creatures stride this earth
Who speak in tongues
And look with eyes
They erect symbols
Against the towering mists
And neon lines
Span and retreat

Their minds erect the ground and earth
Their loves like sloughing clatter
Passing as smoke
As dew to eyes

They brand and print
Hope and sigh
Erect mist in rain
For perfect frames
Or moving reels

Never for a moment
Looking up

Fantastic, man. Although now I'm more depressed than usual about having to go to work in my supermarket today.

Cambo wrote:Fantastic, man. Although now I'm more depressed than usual about having to go to work in my supermarket today.

I was actually thinking of the poem's lines while waiting for my grandfather's car to pull up in the rain as I held groceries outside the store's door. To be fair, lampooning Wal-Mart would be too easy, so the poem's about humanity in general.

Awesome

Altitude Depth

The wind between the rocks
the wind
Between the trees

Sun
Harsh
And enlivening

The waters speak to me
I drink of the water

I am the first Byzantine
Or Holy Roman Empire
Neither Holy, Roman or an empire

I am merely a man
Awash in sound
In infinite regression and cessation
Of words

II.
Where does my love reside
In what memory the pleasant wind
I see her standing
Form without face
The docks are bathed in dew
The ripple of the hyacinths
Leaning up to dawn

III.
The day
The day
Which day
Is it the grey-kissed day
A cloud-swept sun
The clearest day
Or one of leaves

Is it that day
Which you hold inside
Despite the phases of the earth

Plates clatter
Forks face down
Her smile from a long ago
Lists in sea-tones
Or according to
The hue or shape of your heart

Who knows the length of you
In what high plane
In what windowless room
Do you attend
These words are for you
This breath; this beat

Eight Dialogues

There are some things
Beyond all thought or passion
Some deep seat
Beyond the halls of you and I

A blurring path
Curling o'er the heart
Raining love
And degradation

II.
The sun is at its zenith
Across the sky-kissed earth
And all that was and ever is
Comes falling
In a wind

The shadows of the forest
Come stealing 'cross the road
The wax that built the faces
The cement between the stones
So beautifully exposed
So beautifully exposed

A song of light and expansion
A bloom of deepest rose

III.
Perhaps my heart
Is burning
And the fire is enlivening
Perhaps
The cinders bring me
Closer to death's glare

There is a tune
By a shallow pool
In the wannest light
And ideas of the water
And its light
Evaporate

A body
Rising in the glare

IV.

EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA!

The money shot
That killed the President
Recorded! For all to see
Put a quarter in
To watch the footage
As the limousine speeds up

Look!
As a man's life
Becomes an image

This is the head of the man
This is his haircut
This, the grassy knoll

Examine each and every pixel
The symmetry of the plaza
Sound forensics
35mm negative
Gunshot--pop pop pop

Thank you, thank you

V.
The wagon wheel
Running in the rain
Crushed in the mud
Just the image of a wagon wheel
Rolling up the mud

VI.
Fractures of an image
In a world that does not respond

Sweet spring in February
On the day I wrote this poem
I saw a leaf dance down a hill
The wind played so long
That no music could contain

VII.
Sick
With lust
She lay
In the most enticing lines.

Her wealth
Higher than summer's apex
Bubbling over to spring
In future; self
Past

Renewal

VIII.

Wigwam
Patio
Pouring rain
Pouring down the portico

Herodotus or Thucydides
Which dead Grecian
In my heart resides?
From who else’s dust
Am I to fashion my world
From what long list
Of someone else’s words
Am I to read
Until my death or time of bleeding
How many chimps--advanced, psychotic
Must I hear parading

How many shovels must strike the soil
How many ribbons cut
Long nights; vast days
Appointments; apprehension
Nervousness; must come crashing
Apologies; men dancing
Before someone says
We have arrived, we have arrived
By the great glory of Providence
The city on the hill
We have arrived

You can make it bleed
You can make it rain
You can create tears and screams
That fill a world
You can hear it smash
Against a cliff tumbling down the void

You can write of terrible love
Ancient rage; history without memory
War without thought; peace beyond reason
Will beyond light

Can you tell a book from words
Can you tell words from you
Every child; wakes; every
Child wakes; to arise; each
Child—waking—wake now
To arise

This is a great passage:
The shadows of the forest
Come stealing 'cross the road
The wax that built the faces
The cement between the stones
So beautifully exposed
So beautifully exposed

This reminds me of Neil Young's songwriting for some reason:
The wagon wheel
Running in the rain
Crushed in the mud
Just the image of a wagon wheel
Rolling up the mud

Good job beginning the 'rain back in near the end...nice tie ins...

Thanks for sharing, this is one many things beginning to inspire me lately and leading me towards a new mantra: "The more I see the big picture the smaller people become..."

Notice!

My poems "AIR", "A Thought While Leaving Wal-Mart", and "Altitude Depth" will be in my college's literary magazine.

I will get to read them on May 1 at the release party. So excited!

Congrats! They should all be in it.

Fire Daughter wrote:Congrats! They should all be in it.

Thanks Fiery Daughter Last year I had four poems in the magazine. I'm just happy to read "Altitude Depth". I think it's said as much or more than any of my poems in the past, and with less ornamentation. I'm glad I wrote it but gladder I'll have an audience soon.

Wind-Tones

When at last
The leaves lay brown
The stalks cut
The dry and weeping earth
Expulsed with stone

The portraiture of the moon
Forging shadow as one

One hears—wind
And the infinite beginning

And I am become a scion
Of the earth
My bones
Of highest faith
Flowing sanctity
And time

I.

Now that I know You
The earth may consume me
And I may bleed a little more
For the halls of my mind
Are filled with Thy light
And the constant renewal
Of Thy warming hymn

Bless Thee, O Lord!
Just, You Are
Wrathful, nae cloying
Duty and Filial Promise
Couches thy banks
And spreads as sea, verdant green

The highest song and word!

Together We
Of the Aetherial Plane
Shall see below
As if one moment; terrifying and hymnal
The passion, crushing
Sun; bright; unending
Without time; I

Praise; thee; I; and thou
Praise; the blood of martyrs
Flowing a thousand years
The tinctures of these letters
Curling bright and clear

Frailty; rain
Past; rain
O; rain
Down

II.
If only I had known
The passion, the nothingness
That seals you
I would have broken all
To reach you

As Mom would say "sweet mercy". David...this was absolutely amazing. You are such a gifted wordsmith.

Now that I know You
The earth may consume me
And I may bleed a little more
For the halls of my mind
Are filled with Thy light
And the constant renewal
Of Thy warming hymn

Beautiful!

And this...

If only I had known
The passion, the nothingness
That seals you
I would have broken all
To reach you

...breaks my heart.

Awash

Dust motes
And light

Leave from me
Constantly

All that I am
Born anew

The ocean—
Still stirs
Now and then

II.
And the halls
Of proceeding time
Like a man, broken
It goes one way
Cries out
Receive me, Lord
Day and night

The statues bleach
The winds call

Day and night
Clattering; in
The halls
Like rain; or steam
So many; cling
Who; the images
Of procession of time
The fracturing

Nothings
Nothings
We fade
My love; fade

Excellent...as always.

Always kind, Fire Daughter. I may edit it some.

I'm thinking the title of this volume (all the poems in this particular topic) will be titled I Am the Earth.

Previous poetry volume titles (spanning some 140 poems):

Maybe and Perhaps
Etudes upon the Lake
The Ascension (a single poem in 5,000 words)
Before the Impression
Sounds of Man's Dominion
Every Child Wakes to Arise (this volume contains Benediction, which you know)
AIR

Pretty good output in less than 10 years.

All of it awesome!!! I predict you will be a Poet Laurette one of these days. And I will say..."I knew him when..." :D:D:D:D