A few new poems from my class.

Hello friends.
It's been a while. I wish I've been posting here more, but I've been very busy. I promise I will have a more proper update sometime in the near future, but for now, a few poems from my most recent class.

I want to believe this is a silent scene,

(on Bergwald by Albert Müller, 1925)

but it’s not. Rarely is anything silent.

And over there, it’s all noise and laughter and talk

—and I’m drowning sometimes.

I’m lost, I think, but then I find myself here

and I feel a little better. A fire paints one section

of trees a light flickering green while the surrounding

forest continues to soak up dark like purple ink.

These are tall, skinny pines like we’d find

out west if we went up into the Rockies.

(Away from the mountains, it’s flat

and I’m almost crushed

by vacant sky.)

It is my camp, but I’ve snuck off and notice

the glow of light and sound coming together.

When I need to be no one and try

to remember what it is not to speak,

I come out here and feel the pleasing scrape

of pen on paper—not even writing for the words,

but for the sound words make when they’re scratched

out. If that were the only sound, there would be no need.

This is hyperbole. There need to be other sounds—

one in particular:

any moment of quiet is made all the more

still by your steady breathing.

But you are not at the camp

or in the woods.

Upon waking up

as if you have, for the last indefinite

amount of time, been dangled head-

first over the edge of a cliff,

which for all you knew could crash

into Hell itself,

but with no memory of the ordeal.

Only anxious sweat

and a thumb print above

your left ankle.

Thirty Pieces of Silver

(Inspired by Thirty Pieces of Silver (1988-89), an installation piece in the Tate Modern by Cornelia Parker)

“I resurrect things that have been killed off... My work is all about the potential of materials - even when it looks like they've lost all possibilities.” -Cornelia Parker

She scoured yard sales and thrift stores for silver

things, rented a steam roller, and produced

thirty clusters: large, more or less round groups

suspended inches, moments above the floor.

A shadow anticipates each object’s

descent, but also gawks at the surreal

levitation, a fragile détente between

floating and falling.

Fancy forks and platters

Spoons, teapots,

and candelabra,

A trombone, the bell

like a pressed flower pulled

from a yellowed book,

A trophy—to whom,

and for what, precisely

unimportant.

Keeping Time

(on a metal statue named Maurizio that rings the clock bells at Piazza del Duomo)

They cast Maurizio, dignified, skinny and small

To stand atop the tower, mallet in hand,

And wait in stoic stillness for the hour’s command

To hammer every measure of the daily song.

Envying the power his hands held to compel

A man, one moment resting, to retreat,

They thought, if life is an ever-undulating rhythm

That taps out time through crescendos and troughs,

What better job than to count the cadence

And watch men scatter, leaving trash for the pigeons?

But the deep wound of time seeped

through and slowed the gears that swung

his arms, until the bronze man knew nothing

more about the present turning hour.

A lonely ritardando in a choir of steady

Ticking clocks, Maurizio now stands, a street-side

Prophet with apocalypse on his tongue but crazy in his eyes,

Tolling two-sixteen with eight convicted

Notes. But if life is an ever-undulating rhythm

That taps out time through crescendos and troughs,

What better job than mocking every

Measured moment—showing each as slow

And fast, trilling first and fading last?

On the Separation of My Parents

(inspired by a piece of student art)

This is a chair

that once sat up

right in a (slow

burn of a) home.

Now it hangs

crooked in ash mostly

shadow among the wreck

age of a place may

be never alive, now sure

ly long

gone.

A Hillside I Vividly Remember, But Never by Name

Two hills, connected by a patch

of unkempt, wild trees

and bushes. I used to go sledding

here years ago, but now

a new thrill—some sort of kite

so big it pulls us clear off

the ground for a second or two, more

if we’re not careful.

It’s a cloudy holiday, and some friends

invited us out here to try. But Nick

stands a little off from the group,

pushing and pulling at nothing,

his eyes glinting with intensity, teeth

bared, brow bent inward. Out of breath

and elated, I beg him to try. I have

no need for a medium, he smiles,

to harness the wind. I control it.

As we slide around on the long,

wet grass, struggling to hold

onto air and earth all

at once, he laughs triumphantly

and tells us we should thank him

for dragging the wind over

this hillside so we could enjoy

flight for just one moment.

Here when I was much younger,

I felt the same: a second of lightness

punctuated by fear and impact—

But then, I had not yet learned

how to name schizophrenia,

nor known my brother

to wrestle with the wind.