old classifieds were quotidian enough to surprise

"ex-green beret will do anything legal for cash"
--from the san francisco chronicle, a long time ago

...

all the old gods have been buried
in starkling fields of ellipses

you were born in a small boat in the middle of the ocean
and never made it to shore
no one knows which ocean

and now the seas have lost their given names
and i’ve beached myself on some northern strand

this isn’t where we were going
this isn’t even like that
i can remember when
one thing came after the other
like it was yesterday

and when i woke up this morning
i was impossibly sober

russian poets, a new everyman's pocket anthology, part 3/1

'up in the hay one evening, darkling' by afanasy fet (translated by a. myers)

up in the hay one evening, darkling,
with face toward the heavens i lay,
while choirs of stars alive and sparkling
lay strewn along the milky way.

the earth, a fitful dream, insensate,
receded swiftly out of sight,
and i, of paradise first inmate [?],
there face to face beheld the night.

was i then swept through midnight's chasm,
or did the star swarm sweeep toward me?
it seemed a mighty hand in spasm [?]
had grasped and held me, dangling free.

with mind in disarray, heart-sickened,
i measured with my eye the fall
down which with every passing second
i drowned and drowned beyond recall.
.
.
.
'a field' by afanasy fet (translated by me)

upon a haystack, on a southern night
i lay down, head swimming in firmity
while a choir trembled o’er the lea
all around me, quick and light

the earth, unseeming as a dream
spinning aimless past infinity
and i, as if adam in Paradise
was first to look into the changing face of night

did the vast midnight rebates that shape the dark
with stars fall down on me or i rise up agin them?
or did He hold me in his strong hands
o’er the chasm?

i measured the unfathomable expanse
sky and abyss confused in a mortal glance
into which i am eternally, irreparably drowning
or rising, never to come down again

(note--the two strange abuses myers commits in the name of rhyme)

by way of apology, for words i'm not actually willing to take back

to p.n. and k.k.

ranking poets is a dirty business, but sometimes it's necessary to a thought process. review is a thought process, not a conviction. i'm a man with many thoughts and no convictions, and sometimes things get said that don't mean anything, but that are necessary to say and can't be taken back nevertheless.

mea culpa is the sine qua non of my codex of logics.

upcoming reading in brookline, mass.

narcissus of the americas

the american spine twists pole to pole
a people who can't stand straight

we piss on our own knee
because we're lost
and don't know
where to turn

we spit and cum
all over ourselves
like maples
in augustan majesty

our islands are awash
in coldsweats and fire
and lepers know something
of our contiguous identity

how every knuckle
has its own insulation
every limb a foreign tongue
to interpret the single fault

pumping blood
to the extremities
the music of oil in the ligaments
and birds rushing out to sea