This poem was retrieved from old stuff. From 2005.
It is raining
I can hear your drops preaching to me
Falling from upper realm to lower realm
Drops wrapped around all your messages
When one splashes I stop to listen
It is raining but not hard
Can I stop now?
Where is my ground now?
Under me or up ahead
Feeling my feet thumping
I am rounding second
With one eye on the ball
One on third one on home
As quick as an insult
Can I stop now?
It is thundering
You shudder my lungs clean of soot
I breathe it in and shake it loose
By stamping feet or howling
When I can but when I cannot
You thunder me.
Wind is whipping
I have to keep on moving
Me among the millions
Of disrupted scraps of spirit
All directions in their turn
No lighting on sill or porch
No peeking in lit windows
In my ecstatic eddy
The wind whips me silly.
Can I stop now?
Swinging from tree to tree
One eye on each horizon
Dodging every furry fear
Noise enough to hide inside
Can I stop now?
Stars are falling
From the sky you and I recall
Like the change from old to new
All around us orbs of snow alight
Like leaves drifting out of season
All stars fall now.
Now I can stop.
Art Man who will you paint?
anyone out there who looks clenched
are the eyes as cold as you want?
or would you like them screaming
like cold breath in a cold car
on a frozen beach thinking
passion and hell where are they?
Writer Man will you bring out
out from the real that is six inches
deep everywhere all over our country
half a foot frozen in resting
and you need to dig it up to get
what your page sits so still for
deliberate steps turned into Reasons.
Music Man in a basement full of
started pieces and partially redone
pieces in boxes stacks in liquor boxes
never sung outside of your mouth
verses far far too too many to play
dragged out all over the country
hanging in the air frosty.
Picnic
Step from new from
picked peeled baked
from honeyed spiced
and half-swallowed
to paper-thin secrets.
I need to be
at that beyondish
tree you see tower
inside your mind
as a new poem
pulls your trigger.
Like going out
from cooped up
from steel light
to a hole in the head
from grape to wine
and back again.
Did what I was told
couldn't do it without
a mast of fascination
a hull full of hesitations
a cabin where eyelids
could not be sealed.
Falling into that place
where short-sighted
meets far-sighted
it went by before
many times actually
was that supposed to be?
Who is the fisher
of the bare-chested facts
the bottom-feeding hints
who is baiting the hook
that will pull me forward?
Far from death as possible
will you bet your life
bet on our mistake
too impractical to stay
going to take a break.
Miles between nostrils
a glancing blow
the mouthful of babes
hair all chopped off
between ears notes.
In quietude of picnic
I took all the clothes I ever wore
burned them in a dumpster
sacrificial mathematical
what's left is whistling.
Mucha gente se pregunta: ¿Quiénes son los Judíos Mesiánicos? ¿Qué creen? ¿Cómo viven? Este es un reportaje acerca de cómo viven los judíos Mesiánicos en Israel.
Roberto Ayala
Barnstorming
balance requiring lobed silence
taking off greed left apexless
between strings left echoing
my folly
waking and tossing out a dare
day's end before full rising
interestingly tugging at the ear
hysterically
like blossoms in the dark days
shortening and concentrating good
dried and potent in our centers
insensitivity
hymns too fast and too loudly
overwhelmed by piano and organ
amplified in frantic answers
assuredly
firm and artfully thoughtless
the beams in the walls and roof
of the day's sanctuary of conscience
commonly
standing in the doing of holding
heartful conquering of an angry
purpose dug into even hands
dug into even more even heels.
If what I said
was what you expected
then there is no fun
for either of us is there
and we might as well
sing.
This day more than others tired
did not grasp the swinging door
entrance and exit nose to belly
tried as hard as a door can try.
Can't breathe for a moment floored
the cook sweeps the broken dish
I am the cashier forcing a smile
another bowl of pasta on a new tray.
Can a whole deck be lost in a card
a meatball lost in interest
can the actors act so silly
the play is done behind a curtain?
Our pot as yet unglazed unfired
will not be shaped by any past
pair of hands on any past wheel
but is a future form of learning clay.
20 November 2009
Hyannis
we thought
doubt not.
not finished
list the hours of the day left unlucky left
famished.
can't start
squinting more us than the moon being missing
in the dark.
and not
whose cold bed is this anyway mine or
the cat's?
will live
the title of a book we both will write someday
is Give.
oxygen
for the length of a traffic light we were both
there again.
20 November 2009
West Barnstable
Beautiful with just a few
shifted shims and erasures
pretty much excellent
fill in a wrinkle find a rhyme
right unto another direction
push aside need for return
bettering the nearly.
Very specific as to gender
security crew picking up
the carryable with rings
and braceleted grin transmitting
bitter bare possibility
but only one she's afraid
it's plaintive like his.
Tracking a sewn streak
truthseeker bending down
digging it up out of the dirt
of the infield got it
know what to do with it
then as quick as a window
it's bobbled.
Be eager to measure
ratchet up with clicking
accuracy the tongue can't
stand up to or argue with
swell up statements
dressed to kill
gut the eel.
Perfect the instant
try and patch it up
make consistent corrections
make the endless fix
make more fixes than decisions
for every action both hands full
of bettering the nearly.
North Attleboro, MA
24 October 2009
and
SLC, UT
30 October 2009
and
Brewster, MA
1 November 2009
