A Scatter clutch of new year “I’m in Indiana” poems
“Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what’s in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been the text, but there’s always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many”
- Fernando Pessoa
Bare Tree/Hunted Sky New Year
“bare ruined choirs”
spare ruining chores
daily done
My Horizon
affectionate irony
is what i’d liketo hear from the sons
and daughters of my prideto know what i’m about
to say as wise as irony:“yes but you have no idea
what use that will be to usthat get home free
day of your demise”
Supper in Los Crisis
have I tousled
the salad days’
shimmering little leaves
or not
Grace Under Pleasure
humanism’s warmth:
holding one’s hands
to one’s other’s fire
In the Children’s Hospital
the grown-ups occupy
single rooms with no viewside-step like pigeons
to turn south from north
and back north againall time in the world
cannot save them
Shadow Box [untitled]
“ – My Blue Peninsula – “
- Emily DickinsonJoe
do you mind
if I call youJoe
Clarice Lispector
Impregnable:
“I cannot
explain.“I refuse
To explain.“There is
nothing
to explain.”
Nocturnal Reading Notes: “The Ambassadors”
“a monotony of fine weather”
“extravagant curve of the globe”stranded
each
on a far shoreno community of shipwreck
the way the light glides off
with smoothness into an
other’s light
Hopper Paintings Poem
a bright blank bank
luminous landscape luminouswhat a cow in the sun sees
in clouds piling updo they remember each touch
before they touch in turnare you in her inner room
a hair on her head caught in her doorhere in my littered thought
my situated human view
Winter sparrow/summer song
imawintersparrow.org
butsingasummersong.com
Unknown at This Address
the usual suspicions
retain a memory linked to
sensations of cold turning colder
and no letting upon the grounds of the Shrine
of Our Lady of General Necessitypear ripe falling bruised
at the thought
“unknown to this address”
*Joseph Cornell box, Untitled (Snow Maiden), circa 1933


January 1st, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Another of my favorites:
“Her bouquet cleaved his hardened shell
And fondled his muscled heart.
He imbibed her glistening spell
Just before the other shoe fell.”
It’s a Newman.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:56 am
o man o man o man… caught in several eddies, and not even sequential ones… gracias…
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Pretty Ballerina
I had a date with a pretty ballerina
Her hair so brilliant that it hurt my eyes
I asked her for this dance
and then she obliged me
Was I surprised, yeah
Was I surprised
no not at all
January 4th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
As the father of an 11- and a 14-year-old, I love “My Horizon” (I believe the 30-year-old has achieved this state). Love the shadow box. And my wife is pleased with the notes from “The Ambassadors.” (I am too.)