Upon This Wide Water, For Staten Island Ferry, circa 1985, Manhattan
.
'On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross,
returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are
more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.'
- Walt Whitman, from 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry'
1
Upon this wide water, Whitman's bay, wandering
outward toward Eastward windings -
Upon this white-starred charted bay we ride
gray with midnight leaning toward the Towers**
distant growing, stalking, yellow and glowing,
mimicing the stars -
Our eyes stare tearing,
seawind pushes lids to slits.
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Found Poem After News From One Roaming Alaskan Wilderness
.
for Andy
far flung from
Black Mountain,
Charles Olson
in mind, quoth -
'I come back to the geography of it...
An American is a complex of occasions,
themselves a geometry
of spatial nature.' - from 'Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27'
*
You lost
again,
poor boy,
in way out
places.
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Hard Days On In At The Rehab For Drunken Poets, An Opera Of Sorts, circa 1981
They can't all be like these, I guess.
The days are good, though, when they are.
The formula is simple really -
We take our ragged bones out of rented rooms for long walks.
You point out between bricks the rainbows in windows, the dirt
now become your dirt, your genius for transformations.
I ram my own by now trite and hackneyed points
home over and over, but it works on days like these.
Reprise. Then cold beer in the dying light of
a gray bar. The stage is set. Laughter over the
wear on those other faces as we shudder behind
our own, the usual exchange of wind.
Full darkness mutes the swarm and it begins.
Curtain up.
Back inside our rooms, last castrati on the radio.
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Turning Thighs to Diamonds - Alchemical Passes For Father and Son
.
Or what man is there among you, of whom if his son
shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone? - Matthew 7: 9
*
No blame shall stain us now, father.
The heavy ball you hit to me is never caught.
A floppy glove always falls from a hesitant hand.
Mars in you still storms the makeshift diamond.
Each base of cardboard weighted with stone is still our house.
A bat, a ball, a mitt, hard rules of the game,
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Are You Hungry? A Poem For Departure
for Karthik, departing
'Who has twisted us like this, so that -
no matter what we do - we have the bearing
of a man going away...so we live,
forever saying farewell.' - Rainer Maria Rilke
out of hearing
the last sense
to go
sing to me now
before ears take
leave and I shall
have no more need
for words, sounds,
even these my sighs
heard as I hear you
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Because They Rhyme They Live, Not I
'O Poesy! for thee I grasp my pen
That am not yet a glorious denizen
Of thy wide heaven; yet, to my ardent prayer,
Yield from thy sanctuary some clear air,
Smoothed for intoxication by the breath
Of flowering bays, that I may die a death...'
- John Keats, 'Sleep and Poetry
I suppose it is the late, or soon to be, poet's lot to jot one
for daffodils. At least one. This is mine, a last will to verse.
But first, I take a pill before dying, I mean,
its meager meal, yellow sun on a jaundiced plate.
'Consumption' is the word I want. I've got that,
and few breaths left and a flat voice to tell it in.
'The daffodils were yellow as the sun.'
So lay down thy pen. Ungrasp! I say.
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Amir, Prince Of Treetops, Now Sleeps In His Bright Yellow Room
perhaps you are
a bee sleeping in
the heart of a flower
the stone of your
head softening
sweetly upon a pillow
your little hands
opening into bestowal
while you sleep
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Harlem Palimpsest - What Is Seen And Overheard At Six A.M., West 142nd Street, August 1984
.
for Wonsook Kim
Palimpsest =
1: writing material (as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased
2: something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface
Latin palimpsestus, from Greek palimpsē stos scraped again,
from palin + psē n to rub, scrape; akin to Sanskrit psā ti, babhasti
he chews
'Oye! Garcia Lorca who chews still
Harlem's the better for your shade
once and still there'
Old women
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Of Bells Anatomy There Is Much
of bells
anatomy there
is much to
say
of the
elements,
zinc, copper,
tin, & more
while not for-
getting brass
more commonly
used
of infusion
into cuppolas
the beating
the shaping
heat also to
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Uses For Wings - Variations From 'We Can Be Broken' & Other Discarded Poems
.
'It means so much that we can be broken.' - from an early poem,1978
For Tien Ho, departed,
and Michael R.
carving the empty space
of her leaving still
*
Here is a Presence beyond
illicit fires bearing witness
to evidence, remains of flight,
contrived escapes blocked by panes,
walls striped in ramming panic,
of ritual and a broken neck,
petrified wings placed in open
spaces they once could range.
*
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!