at least they’re not barking at you

When I was [supposed to be] a student at the University of Montevallo, I took a trip, along with a group of other [more scholarly] students, to England; we sojourned in London for several days then traveled to Canterbury.  One of the day-trips scheduled while in Canterbury was to the White Cliffs of Dover.  Naturally, I signed up and asked to be called when the bus was ready; after all, what self-respecting, aspiring poet would wittingly miss his chance to channel (pun, sadly, intended) Matthew Arnold's lovely lines in the poem"Dover Beach"?  

And so it was unwittingly that I missed the bus because someone, unwittingly [and here unnamed], forgot to call.  The closest I got to the cliffs and the beach was through squinting eyes from halfway up the hill to Dover Castle.  (There is more to this story that involves a persistent petulace on my part which no self-respecting,aspiring adult would care to memorialize.)

Anyway, here is the upshot--a poem I wrote in 2010 some twelve years after the event.  What the poem signifies, I don't know.  Maybe [probably] nothing important.  Probably something small--to do with hindsight not being 20/ 20 but rather squint-slitted against the sun-radiant straits of memory.

At Least They’re Not Barking at You

You still regret the white cliffs, Dover missed

For missing the bus.  From the castle hill

You flew the best you could on eyes

Meant for ogling women.

You ogled women—Canterbury

Pop-rock-hip-hop-and-gyrant dancing ones—

From France.  The yankee songs you left

Back in Alabama.

The Alabama where now you are this

Unkempt laze-monger cursing neighbor dogs.

Retriever—golden, Labrador—

Black, barking loosened hell.

What new hell is this?  What bastard regret?

White cliffs and long-lashed women speaking French.

The beach suggested over beer.

Hung-over in Malden. 

In Malden where the scraggled kitten nudged

Your shin and lunch was shit, you expected

To be wise by then or by now

At the very latest.

But lately, very often, nearly always

The dogs are wild with slather and slaver—

Ado for spandexed joggers juiced

From the sweat of doing. 

  (first published in The Louisville Review No. 72, Fall 2012)

statue/ chimera in niche

Here are two versions of the same idea and therefore this is one of the best extant examples I have of my revision process--an extreme example, at that, as most of my revisions are comparatively minor.  The first poem, "Statue in Niche," was the original version and published in Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry (Volume 4, Issue 2, 2009).  The second poem, "Chimera in Niche," is a slightly more concise rendition that I used in my Master's Thesis. 

Picture, if you will, one of those fancy buildings with sculptured depictions of sundry grotesqueries, and here is one of those statues--sentient and amorous-- lamenting his stuck state.

Statue in Niche

The rain again, the never ending rain.

Unfortunate men, primped in suit and tie,

Attempt to juke the downpour in knee-high

Gazelle leaps with long-lost dexterity.

The raven on the spire might care to leave

When the rusted bells toll the sunless noon,

But for now he’s onyx set in the festooned

And melting cross of Christ--as if to stay.

A woman, lovely in the sort of way

The skyline will be when the air is clean,

Umbrellas her head with a magazine.

She suffers the puddles although they seep

Into her shoes.  From this side of the street,

Where I’m ensconced in Doric colonnade,

She flickers in muted whites and grays

As cabs and double-decker buses splash,

Undaunted by the weather, through the trash-

Filled gutters.  Lovely in the sort of way

That dancers are in callisthenic splays,

She lifts her wrist into the gloom of clouds

To check the time against the ironed shrouds

Of rain.  And I would shout any o’clock

To turn her head, if I could just unlock

My jaws— my plaster lips, my cement tongue.

 

Chimera in Niche

The rain again, the never ending rain.

As cabs and double-decker buses splash,

Undaunted by the weather, through the trash-

Filled gutters, she flickers in lovely blues

And grays beneath the gargoyle’s flooded flues.

Meanwhile I cower in concave façade

Sandwiched between one melting cross of God

And one ionic pillar.  Doomed to spread

My wings in vain, to stand flatfoot instead

Of flying,  I must wait for her to look,

To put down her make-shift umbrella book.

Wait . . . she’s lifting her wrist to the clouds

To check the time against the ironed shrouds

Of rain.  Damn me, I’d screech any o’clock

To turn her head if I could just unlock

These plastered lips and quit this age-old snarl. 

death be not incarnate

Here starts some posts in which I share previously published poems which have only appeared in print until now.

Death Be Not Incarnate

Death be not incarnate.  Be proud as you will

But not with puffed chest or fanned plumage.

Carry no sickle across the threshold, be no

Pestering crow.  Death do not assume

A shadowy form.  Do not even reek of anything—

Neither pleasant nor foul.  Be terrifying

As you will, but be so invisibly.  Silently.

Odorless as the soul.  To come in the flesh

Would be obnoxiously rude.  To mock the systems

Of solid biology.  You are circulatory already,

Digestive enough as things are.  Leave endocrine

And arteries alone.  Leave us our defecations.

Breathe not icy breath.  Whisper not dooms,

Tickling ears.  Slink and steal, as you will—

Leave a wake of carnage but be not incarnate.

You have emissaries aplenty.  Ambassadors

Wrought of real stuff.  They are the flatline

On the vitals screen, the blooming celosia

On the shirt of the bullet-shot.  They are the chalk

Outlines of defenestrated discontents,

They are cross and chair and needle.

So Death be proud—you’ve earned your laurel,

Outpaced our pumping organs.  Only spare us

Your hooded robe.  Leave us our carbon copies.

 (first published in The Louisville Review No. 72, Fall 2012)