s w i f t



Swift as the elk they pour along the plain;
Swift as the flying clouds distilling rain.
Swift as the boundings of the youthful row,
They course around, and lengthen as they go.

—Thomas Chatterton

going

we say that we ”hop aboard” a plane,
most often though, more like we wait and wait and wait
then sullen and slow-tempo, we walk on the deck like
schoolkids off to lunch. it is still though, travel—
the giant wings and thundering jet engine that
spirit us into a sea-like sky via the growing loud and
powerful din akin to a chord change in the middle
of pop remix: this is the sight and sound of flight.

it’s a modern thing, a boyhood thing, I still want for a
scramjet, certainly, supersonic combustion below wings
carrying the massive plane at Mach 6 like some very
errant rocket yet in control so sublime, landing lights
blinking like a thousand fresh little kitten eyes in this
mighty spectrum of sky.

to where do we fly? —everywhere. the plane’s stolen
thunder not only from sailing-ship but also map.

nowhere is far anymore:
we’re everywhere now.

***

being

Truckee though hides from planes:
it’s a California that isn’t SF(O) or LA(X),
far away and covered in the most pure snow
ever, white perfect, as soft as fur, as crystal as
lovely glasses on the posh bar of the Empire Hotel.
But we are far from a New York, a London—this is
the other lands, the places not filmed or written so much
as this is wild places that have still brought in human interest, the touch of soft skin to rough land.
we go right over the top, we fly corsair over the snow.

I’m up, this is morning
and all around me is a devil of a landscape,
a perfect bowl like the one my grandmother had
Jordan almonds in, a sinister slope like the side of
an architect’s drafting triangle. Teeeeeeeeeeeeeerik:
I brought you up with me ’cause Ohio boys do know
their snow. only geography can ever get the best of me.

we fly.
this is ours. and we fly.

this is what I do best in life—
I am sorry it's not big money it's not history
it's not adroit nor the well of words at cocktail parties
but this is what I do best in life we do this as our love.

* — these words were scribbled in a description of gravestones at a cemetery I read.

low night

(With Halloween on its way, I am writing some poetry inspired by traditional Irish and Welsh verse that tells tales of the little people, dark nights, and other spectral things)




Giodh dubhach ataoisi anocht : fog here
and hardly is the moon-light upon the weeds,
foul tall growth in ithloinges, loss of corn
and wanton vines in the hedgerows by far
fields, stone wall leading to small gate,
and it’s corpse-ways all from there on—
tainted places, gloomy moor, fog shadow
of no sound, nearly no sign but wet air
oh, but no bellow of the bull, the calves
on the far hill at bed for the night, owls
in their nocturnal flight, calling insects
now all but still in the Autumnal chill.

Gormfhlait, she knew it, pitied like a ghost,
a castle could inspire vain desires and longing
yet without him there, it's just an empty place.
blank as a field, gone like the corn, lutharnach
of forest untamed and cold like winter named
even in October’s warmest of early nights she
draws the cloak shoulder to shoulder and cries.

Ionmhuin,

I warn you thus, all that is, a sword can take
and all that was a book can forget, and all
you will ever be, another wishes to steal
from thee. God gives us not even a moon-beam
on a shivering night like this, and you gaze out
over the wall and fear to see the steel of a brand.

no moon I see in sky, unseasonable frost I feel,
and iron tools I place about the house, save us
from the Unseelie, a foot in the otherworld on so
vast a night.

boyfriends


the agape as re-imagined at fourteen,
summer slowly coming, yet coming on strong,
school-year nearly out and frogs, bugs chime
like small festival bands from their ditches —
makeshift streams in the flow of thunderstorm
rains — this is where we begin, this is a sudden
door open unknown to the wealth of a spectrum,
the fits and starts of pure hearts towards a lofty sky.

in dreams, I seek so many things unsaid,
permission from your deceased ancestors
to say our love is sure, made of an ore robust
and clean like white linens — clean like how rain
washes the sand into awaiting river, the fair
dust dissolves into some untasted salt-flavor
as fish dip into the black warm passivity
of grace around them — as to quell the lust
between us.

keñvroad, keñvroiz: these are friends,
the prior literatures, the sightless trails
of love-concepts in words and sounds, mirth
of arcane letters and drawings make the
most supple language out of unknown
motions between two in the space of
this time.

***

some boy in France wrote these words
before me, someone in a rural town in
Texas did too, and some kid in Russia,
perhaps in Tomsk—in some place far—I
know he also penned such words, in loopy
Cyrillic in a worn black notebook as snow
drifted down past his window. for this is
nothing new. young love is a tale so old by
the fireside and lust-carved into the pines
. . .
bonfire lust and towering pines brace
against cold autumn winds
. . .
bonfire of maple leaves and sounds
of forest creatures moving in the woods
nearby

we move from summer further fall
to places where we speak of love, all.