Idealist
who sees the world without rags
without imperfection
taking a kind farewell to sad news
who is rich already
with what he saves in sorrow
Contemplative poems
Contemplative poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
Proverbial (14)
A heart put in a closet
is a loss of great concern,
but a heart in the prison of sex
will find too little to grieve for.
Ruin is our ointment.
The other is a match to any pain.
Eye to Eye
In the story of my childhood I am
usually elsewhere, a thin presence to myself,
mumbling from a script of my own devising.
It never occurs to me to wonder
how my opposite number the hero
might really feel: Hey, it’s hot up here!
I’m tired of coming to the rescue of girls
you’re too scared to say one word to.
And how can you call yourself a pacifist
& expect me to avenge all wrongs
with my infallible fists?
Of unscripted moments, I remember few.
I wreck every kite I ever try to fly
in the mountaintop’s sideways wind.
Late summer of my 40th year, I catch
an echo of my childhood in the nightly
On the road, again
the road grows with us
the road is lost
though going the same way
the road is master to the clock
but not to clouds
Bucolic
my half-acre—
enough land to admit
a quarter moon
Parts unknown
I am an ordinary person
ingenuity is better than thinking
the puppet-plays I act in give me new parts
a late foot a head full of order
that absence of joy I perceive as art
though I contrive to have no room for it
Water water
water is a book
full of tautologies
weary to the ear
I wake in the night
on my waterbed
weary journal
Ennui (2)
I lie till noon
and dine till nine at night
examining the miscarriage
of satisfaction
Self-preservation
My accounts own me
all afternoon
and lie at night
like amber
keeping the heart.
Inquire within
a rogue as unquiet
as a rose
never a book read
in never a church
the mind I found
in my mind
Minimalist
my hat is gone
that I might see
more night
the room
pulled down
to make more night
art cannot wait
upon hat or lodging
Ahistorical
Time as thin as pain,
yesterday lessened
and pretty,
we invent a bespoke
weather of the hour
and find things
to own and talk to.
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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