I Hate That Song

Painting by Selina Fenech


i hate that song


. . . what else brassing bones . . .

doorway of a hand

lean over a hawk’s hunger
falling thru the faceless heights

a pose in vertiginous consciousness

breathless voices plunging without fetters
of syntax

her brevity holds its own

Socrates in a bear cave studying naked verbs

if Picasso speared the night
laughing like drunken fish
stitch any hole with the skin
of its own necessity

draw the strange remains of new rivers

how wisdom walks in circles

an algorithm of absences

. . . empty, pull the hat into the rabbit;

Bullwinkle subjugates a noun: pissing on Plato

* * *

i hate that song: the one that goes
turn around turn around
turn around & she’s
a young girl
going out
on her
own

my father always said
i’ll see you in
the stars

at the door to Huff’s
hospital room i
stood said i’ll
see you in
the stars
& left
he
died
within
an hour

a young woman in a bright yellow shirt
& black black hair walks past
goes into the HEB
does it matter
what she
buys

i lean against my white car
smoking a cigarette
last one of
the day

the sun going down
behind gray
clouds
the moon
nearly full
behind my back

i mowed the lawn
after the reading
it was good
everyone
at ease
sold
a book
she said
it was more
an exhortation

my daughter is stoned
somewhere in an apartment
in South Austin & her mother
reads women’s magazines in bed

Deltina works alone into the night
how did we all get so very lonely

he drops the cigarette onto the pavement
crushes it with the sole
of his steel-toed
boot &

Gary is dying of leukemia
my mother sleeps in
my dead father’s
reclining chair

some woman in Singapore
feeds imaginary animals
imaginary food
imagining
it will
bring
her

real love

i used to say there is no such thing
as artificial joy that any joy
is joy & i believe i was
right: it is just a
matter of
scale

these things happened in
a sequence belonging
to the way we
experience
time

memory is not linear
& what is time but memory

Rob has gout Gilmore is pinned
to the walls of his wife’s madness
like a sad Russian with rheumy eyes
John is filming porn his belly sewn up
Judith weeps & Stephanie circles deep seas
Craig knows more & pushes it back like heaven

is simply seeing whatever
we can make shine
right here

nobody knows
we all know

i hate that song;

stars are memory (ask them)

* * *

they visit
(do they)

half formed
(distance carries us)

can you trace what leaves

(what is not taken
remembers)

who enters &
who a guest

(the edge dearer for any light)

name the cuts they bear
sewn with absence

a startled regret
birds! fire!

(still) they abide (still) do they not;

the cave in the blinded eye

* * *

slice of a dark corner

do you remember
he taught you
the Spanish
for knife

a French philosopher
nested in the eye
of each stitch

secrets in coils

thin veins &
dry rivers
a round
cough

girl burns baskets
copper & tin
machines

flawed she says

light seams
widen into nets
wiggling strands of
what she lost to holding

windows fronting
empty hills &
red voices

carry the horizons to their last cradle

do you believe in the inherency of sorrow
in the wedding of the absent groom
to the bride
the tale of parted waters swallowing
the fires of loss
what corner hides the child
who never called your name

her hands tremble again as he takes her
a first refusal she cannot mend
her body the anvil cracked;

the place of being turned

* * *

yellow lamp light
hands float
waiting

her leg draped
in morning
pink

the piano
a ghost
dog

running
a night
wall

wet grass
pearls
loose

were you
always
here

the train
broken
down

lost in
a blue
haze

she turns to
to answer what
she cannot wake

the white noise
of pulled curtains
were you ever there;

the passage of a memory

* * *

come to the wedding
they are already dancing
come to the wedding;

haiku for Kabir

* * *

mysterious light
a dead man
in a panic

is it dawn
already
dawn

blood & honey
spreading spoiling
spurting shots of gall

black blood devil’s nails
the women with their mouths
sewn shut stitched silences of men

how plain any cloud
holes clinging to
emptiness

to sip a watery soup
avert those eyes
a poormouth

he has lied again
& she chops
each point

the root of a word
misery or miser
myst menses

what do you hold
too close, love
flowing out

breakfast served
24-7 & death
& birth

dreams or
wanting
moons

she cannot
finger the star
he waits behind

wandering as he does
line to line asking
is it the light

dead fathers
dead loves
dead time

the music of
cafeterias
a cook

counts
the lost hours
in the smoke of birds

& this is the miracle of dead
men stumbling still alive & the women
gesturing with forks & knives & burning scars;

slaughtered dreams: among red initiates: O

* * *

she tears tortilla jagged
flour & water hard
as iron bark

spit of ghosts

this terrible urge
to be taken
in fire

claw screech

spontaneous
mouthing
gods

squeezed seething

fist the knife
slashing at
the honey

ooze

smash smash smash
as if light were
boiled teeth

exploding

she wants to shake god
loose of recipes
spill the salt

ravage coy secrets

she is tired of perfume
spices & week long marinade
creation explodes from a dragon’s mouth

she will cook in a cave
with bones & bloody legs still running;

the evidence is not conducive to the belief
in a milky unguent streaming softly
from the breasts of a blue white maiden


Richard Lance Williams

Posted over on More Poetry