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A collection of poems by Gerald Duffy. Copyright 2009.
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This chapbook of poetry is published by Garlic Press
44 Lookout Lane Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Copyright © Gerald Duffy 2009
Motley World
Motley Poems
Poetry by Gerald Duffy
T here was a man who lost his way. He wandered for years, but wherever he went, no place seemed just right.
The weather was either too hot, too cold, or too rainy. The people were either too surly or too friendly and superficial. The landscape and towns were either too boring or relent-lessly picturesque. The cost of medical insurance was either exorbitant or the free doctors were completely incompetent. One day, he wrote his first poem. That too was unsatisfac-tory, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter. So he wrote an-other and another and another and before he knew it, he had enough poems to fill a book, unsatisfactory to be sure, but nevertheless populated with his deepest longings and filled with enough nourishment to make him love every single unsatisfactory day.
Also by the author: “Spiral of Second Chances” 2009
First Edition: 2007 Second Edition: 2009
Published by Garlic Press 44 Lookout Lane,
Portsmouth, New Hampshire Copyright © Gerald Duffy 2009
43
and the pond, steady shimmering, the moon etches
a promise on her body, on the water, humbles
the male heart, signs an epitaph to daylight
and the serenade fades.
42
Turning Down the Volume for Carl Haarer
Once upon a green evening in the twilight bar
I made small talk with an Hawaiian shirt.
Like yours, I said, my life is a brass band, calls
attention to itself in golden, blaring ecstasy
cherubs on every trumpet, but secretly I thought
we men are just roosters, strutting, puffing things
loud and vulnerable to the table-drumming of bored
fingers and every slow blink of a lizard’s eye.
I dream of chameleon skies over the cemetery
where the finest days become a mantle of grief
and the darkest hours with their slanting rain
can sprout new grass. And who stole the angel
from Frank Jone’s tomb? Maybe the black-clad
bikers rapping in the shadows or the madcap poet
who poses his beauty, skin smooth and brown
just out of high school. Light falls across her face
Table of Contents
1. E-World 2. Balancing Act
4. My Unusual Love Affairs 6. What Nature Is Really Like – Part I
7. What Nature Is Really Like – Part I I 8. Der Panther (by Rainer Maria Rilke)
9. The Panther (translation) 10. Ten Voices
12. Adult Education 13. Quiver
15. Geography Master 17. Calabria
18. Humber Collage 22. Blessing of the Dog
24. Beech Grove – Germany 25. Plan B
32. Parish of St. Dymphna 34. Monarch of the Fields
35. Three Haikus 36. Sabbatical 38. New Year
40. Land by the Sea 41. The Twelfth Croissant
42. Turning Down the Volume
For Effie and Sam with love.
41
The Twelfth Croissant
For Mekeel McBride
This is the twelfth croissant of the baker
who refused to believe in thirteen and rabbits’
feet hanging from his slender chain of luck.
Who closed the oven before the word surplus
made his lips pucker with the promise of profit.
It was okay for a loaf to fail and for banana peels
to send ordinary bakers like him into the air
like acrobats and brief falling stars.
He would take his chances with the vagaries
of yeast and the impenetrable wonders of heat
and rising dough. He could believe his fingers
when they told him that he had the lightest touch.
40
Land by the Sea
People who live atop great cliffs
know that rolling surf gathers a song.
The old women attend to their needles.
My mother was one of them.
If her finger bled, she licked it.
I still hear the voices of blackberries
behind our dense cottage garden.
The ocean whirs as it has always done,
its abutments home to nesting birds.
I was born here and I never left.
I was born here many times.
How jealously we guard our secrets.
E-World
Because he was the century’s child
Because the world is filament
Because signals fill Indra’s Cosmic Net
Because holographic tendrils reach for light
Because even the static is dynamic
Because the blogs are holy diaries
Because the venom seeps away
Because salutations and sign-offs copulate
Because his death blazed through the ether
Because the news of it spun lightning fast
Because his fingers touched continents
Because he was happy and sang
Because there is so much to celebrate
Because love finds a million orbits
Because the tender places are here
Because the tender places are there
Because grief can be encompassed
Because we pray in solemn fonts
Because it is because it is.
1
2
Balancing Act
For Sam Duffy, Age 12
When the demolition gang
swings by with handy sticks,
the stones tumble to the base.
My son and his friends
upset the rocks I balanced
on a granite post.
No rebukes, I always restack
because I want them to see
how we can bounce back
from destruction, from vandal
mischief, from almost everything.
And then, their wild-boy yells
call me back to that age
I think: bite your lip, just let it go.
A future cairn will hold its own
when my son’s absence leaves us
with a calm not entirely wanted.
39
in my mind, a tattoo
on rachel’s thigh
Cea celtic cross, blue
no bigger than a quarter
the half darkness arc
of rachel’s back soft.
beads of love-sweat
salty, traveling slow
a web of acts and promise
last year ends
the first we had.
38
New Year
city park, our place
by winter’s river
bird’s curve of her throat
echoes of rachel’s mouth.
saturday night was upbeat
fireworks finale pounded
the sky’s taut skin
crystal rain fell
beyond the trees.
hands on her hips now
her rant taxes the hour
joins morning’s melody
with wrong notes.
I try to tune them out
watch a pair of swans
slip the current
coast in slack water
double themselves
in the river’s mirror.
3
These young animators of stones
must soon assemble their own
loose elements from the world’s
turbulence, rebuild towers
leave their mark on peaks,
bury their friends, listen to words
they may not want to hear:
the caution of shifting moments,
the sudden squalls, the need
to fashion a bespoke passage.
This is one day, this is the work,
correction is the wrong voice.
After all, the damage is small
and reasonable: they are boys
and stones to them were never
meant to sleep out their days
undisturbed.
4
My Unusual Love Affairs
My first love was an armadillo
She hardly spoke upon the pillow
That dead-pan look, the panzer skin
She never really let me in.
My second love, a platypus
Our courtship stirred up quite a fuss
But many times we were ecstatic
Myself and that duck-billed aquatic.
My third love was a three-toed sloth
She hung loose all day, love pleased us both
Though finally such flings must end
Her scratching drove me round the bend.
My fourth love was a manatee
Her fleshiness was bliss to me
She loved to swim, a natural leader
She broke my heart, that bottom-feeder.
37
placed for separate friends,
him, him, and her. Tonight
the shades are open,
whorls of light measure
the spacing of stars,
steamed potatoes scent the air.
Sleep-starved in my cot one night
my heart turned to face its age.
In the distance, a wild bird called.
36
Sabbatical
This year I prefer to stave off
complexity, company grown tiresome,
the flat hype of industry.
I reside with the oxen.
Mail is an hour’s drive distant,
the usual powers are not present.
Natives here are known
for their cuts in the hair’s domain,
chestnut eyes, chants laced
with the deeper tones of sex
and wisdom about the habits
of sows and the fuss of bees.
The impassive face of night
is rising again. I can report
three lanterns on my porch
5
My fifth love was a pangolin
Her parents frowned (we lived in sin)
Her taste for bugs made our love tricky
Her tongue didn’t help, so long and sticky.
My last love is a pigmy shrew
And people say: a fine howdy-do
But I bend, she rises, when we’re kissing
For height is all my sweetheart’s missing.
6
What Nature Is Really Like – Part I
An old crow whittles a branch
in the shape of a tuning fork,
humming a ballad he once heard.
The poor oak doesn’t know how
to complain about this visitor,
is thankful crows can’t dig.
A nearby sullen squirrel studies
the newspaper a tourist left behind.
Nothing about nuts: squirrel yawns.
Worms assemble for a town meeting
but it’s always the same story,
one old worm hogging the mike.
A farmer is asleep on a haystack
dreaming of beheading the hills.
A barnyard rooster spreads the word.
The cows move towards the oak
because people expect it of them
when storm clouds threaten.
35
Three Haikus
my father at rest
arguments fallen away
like spent old clothes.
~
live dangerously! file taxes after deadline without extension.
~
SPAM of my childhood you root me out even here on the Internet.
34
Monarch of the Fields
I am the monarch of wheat
presiding over the cereal ear’s
awns and glumes.
Life dances in my realm
and I pay with gold coins.
Vigorous, my rule provides
the full goodness of soil.
I exact no tax of tears
and still my subjects suffer.
The dry August blazes now
ruffled with coral clouds.
Bears search for edible roots
tougher than flesh.
Insects jostle for their favorite buds.
The black sores beetles leave
I forgive with the verdicts
tolerant and bright
I have repeated for centuries.
7
What Nature Is Really Like – Part II
The rabbit wears a crimson cowl
blesses a muttering vole, tells him
to pray, rise and avoid television.
In the dense weeds by the river
a frog blows his polished bugle.
Many other frogs are already deaf.
Starlings play chicken over the field
while a fox hopes for a head-on crash.
The store is closed, he’s feeling peckish.
Badger delivers a lecture to his fans.
Weasels who under cover of dark
come to exchange philosophies.
Even the weevils can’t resist the ride
high on the windblown corn stalks
with no attendants collecting money.
A freight train hoots beyond the hills.
That big rude bird, the swallows say
and go back to their poker hands.
8
Der Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris
Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
so müd geworden, dass er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.
Der weiche Gang geschmiedig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein grosser Wille steht.
Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf -. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille -
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.
33
I passed a room of infants, their bawling muted
by the thick transparency of unstained glass. I found you
Franz Wright and we strode together down the main aisle
to make our offerings and breathe wisps of terebinth
and the sweetness of the Lord.
Where are we going, Franz Wright? This mass
will soon end. Which songs will you sing tonight?
(I carry your book as a talisman). Will we stroll together
in the evening drizzle through alleyways and parks?
The never-far-off night lies ahead. Will we cross sure-footed
the pavements where songs can still rise, dedicated and great?
Ah, my friend, brink-returner, humble deep-voiced believer
your lines displayed for all to see. You say poetry is your cure.
It may be, Brother Wright, you bring news of my destiny.
32
Parish of Saint Dymphna After Alan Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” For Franz Wright
What thoughts I have of you today, Franz Wright
for I slipped again into ash and dark acres, sorrowed
gut churning, confined in the clouded dome of night.
In desperation and scouring for a handhold I turned
and saw a chapel door, recalled your deep confessions
and litanies. What sweet incense! What gilded swirls!
Inside, the faithful stooped in the arc of prayer
pews of silhouettes, families clustered , the single,
the widowed, votive flames, infants disquieted!
I saw you, Franz Wright, kindler of hope, courageous
passing the collection plate, tucking your smile and
blessing the fallen crests of last week’s work. I watched
you lean toward others and whisper your kindnesses:
Know there are more like you!
Your life has retreated into the folds
of your darkest thoughts
but wait, you too can return -
you too may be cured!
9
The Panther
Translation of Der Panther by Rilke
The pacing past the bars, the steady stare,
a tiredness grown so nothing holds him here,
of a thousand iron bars he seems aware,
a thousand bars, no world beyond this sphere.
With supple strength, with soft and gentle mode
he turns in smallest circles about his flank.
It’s like a dance of power around a node,
his great volition standing stunned and blank.
Sometimes his eyelids rise so he can sense
a picture spread across the moment’s chart,
descend through limbs of sinew, silent, tense
and thinning, fading, cease within his heart.
10
Ten Voices one has a voice like the best of milk
the softness of cream freed and seeking
some form like a bowl or a spoon.
two has a voice like a jar of salty peanuts
the lick of ocean when it comes ashore
nodules whose skin gives way to butter.
three – a phone operator from the South
has a voice like pantyhose stretched so tight
the ripping sound is just a call away.
four has a voice like a blue ceramic bowl
filled with crescents of fresh-sliced melon
cool air from the porch beading their moisture.
five – in the tenor section – has a voice
like a pair of Doc Martins polished to a high gloss
I say she can sing any song she pleases.
31
so here’s my idea for what happens next:
you stand up on your wobbly legs, Mr. B
let the bar stool breathe a little
take the dance floor with me, Mr. B
and let’s jump around and cavort
like the dreamy fools we are
I don’t mind your beery breath, Mr. B
I don’t even mind if you step on my toes
for we are blessed indeed.
30
every saint and soldier is alone
and we have this thing in common
we have this thing in common
it is what we amount to.
So we stare at one another
across tables, across pillows and oceans
across streets and dreams
across supermarket checkouts
and we stare across years
we stare at one another in wonderment
and awe and we sing and dance
write poems and watch TV, we fight
work, and sleep, hate, fuck, love and drink
eat and come to celebrate this common thing
that amounts to us.
And maybe we can learn this
and know it – like it knows us
and know it – like it always knew us
oh, Mr. B, we are so blessed.
You served up some great poems
Mr. B, and you earned them all
11
six has a voice like a blue-jay feather
that strokes my eyelids while I sleep
and touches me lightly and so deep.
seven has a voice like a Persian rug
woven with a map of pastel geometries
its stippled imprint on my naked back.
eight has a voice like a veil of flying sand
wind pounds against basilicas of red rock
seeking an opening, a channel for her song.
nine has a voice like marsh grass in November
russet hatching across the last of autumn
the orchards already picked, sleepy for snow.
ten is the voice of another’s percussion
a song I heard before I entered this world
the beat instructs me still, and still, I listen.
12
Adult Education
A man of simple feeling
never
snow bending the spruce
branches, almost to
breaking point
the sight of my mother’s stockinged
thigh, breathing never simple again
how can we stop breaking
before we even know how?
my father in some factory
pressing out mold after mold
I would reach back for him
and bring him to another place
perhaps here
among these trees black against the snow.
29
no, Mr. B, I slip, the me I’ve worn
for decades like a dark suit
and now I slough it off like an old skin
and I am pedaling naked under the stars
just a piece of mind in the mind of all minds
and the limp and scruffy suit I left in the dust
calls after me: “But aren’t you afraid?”
and I say: “No. No need.”
You see, Mr. B, I was far, far from lonely
like a cell dancing with its billion cousins
among the many, just alone
and all my friends are alone
and all my lovers and my brothers
and my sisters are alone
and all the fathers and the mothers are alone
and every soul in a mosque or cathedral is alone
and every swaying kid at a concert is alone
and every child is alone
and every old man and woman
parked in a wheelchair in a nursing home is alone
and every CEO is alone
and every janitor is alone
28
like a hive God the beekeeper tends.
If I tried to be a bar-fly like you, Mr. B
fate would swat me so fast and so hard
you’d barely have time to hear the splat.
So on those mornings when I wake up
and I know nothing about anything, Mr. B
here’s what I do: I pitch my mind back
to early one summer morning in Germany
(the country where you could draw more fans
than a reading by Guenter Grass)
picture me Mr. B, on my bicycle
and it’s still dark because it is still early
and in the fields dew beads up
on tobacco leaves and tall corn stalks
and night has cleared out the clouds
and I ride along a stream past a reservoir
dark round hills crowd the valley
and I can see the amber rim
of the day ahead – and then I slip
and then I slip – not off the bicycle, Mr. B
no, the wheels still hold me vertical and safe
13
Quiver
For the young archer
a dream quiver
of burnished leather
jacket-back rubbed
through a child time
of robinhooding around
marmaduke street or
queens gate terrace
near gobstopper clearing
and the sweet shop
with its aniseed balls
licorice etcetera
the arrows cut from
best-we-could-do bamboo
still, pointed enough
to puncture the sheriff
of cholmley street
or prince john from
prince’s avenue
14
too young an incarnation
to sport a goatee
nevertheless evil
through and through
and deserving of arrows
drawn one by one
from an archer’s quiver
deep in the forest.
27
I want so badly to harvest
some goodwill from the lighter side
of my own heart and from
all the good hearts on this planet
and eat the warm bread
that people of goodwill will make.
And tell me, Mr. B, what do you do
on those mornings after those nights
when your moorings come loose
when your senses tangle
and your submerged kinfolk
toss you around all night
like a beach ball?
On those mornings when your blindness
gropes its way to the bathroom
and you’ve forgotten all the passwords
that unlock your toothpaste and coffee maker
and all the codes that would give you
free and happy access to the world
you’d love to join, you’d love to join
the world that starts its daily buzz
26
you two got the paper, you two got the pen
you two got the desk, and then again
you two got barrels full of moxie.
Mr. B, this poem in search of moxie
is bursting from the river under my skin
it’s writing me, Mr. B, and I can’t help it.
Once, I found myself in a bad place, Mr. B
no shady glade in which to recover
not even a naked light bulb to guide me.
Crouched in the basement under the stairs
curled up like some monastic seeker praying
praying for that holy connection
I know is out there with my name on it
praying for that holy connection
I know is out there with my name on it.
I listen, I listen, I listen
I listen, I listen, I listen
Mr. B, I’d welcome anything
to fill a soul-sucking space like this
where the words I swallow burn
and the poems stick in my throat.
15
Geography Master
Before class began and our master entered
the geography room, we’d already found a way
when his hometown rugby team had lost
to taunt him by chalking up the score
on the blackboard. A black-robed lay teacher
of the earth’s wide skin, he didn’t mind our jibes
rarely caned our fingertips.
A small area behind our desks, a work table
with rubber rollers, ink and pads
where we ink-rolled paper maps
for every far continent, printed the Great Lakes
the long ribbon of the Mississippi River.
I dreamed of cities, Chicago, Minneapolis
Cincinnati, names with sounds
that belonged in some foreign opera.
He taught us language to conjure
bold topographies: chalk escarpments
16
cuspate forelands, submergent coastlines
pebble spits, and long shore drift.
Years before I ever crossed
Indiana’s summer fields I crudely mapped
the corn belt and saw its rising heat
already part of my imaginary America.
25
Plan B Hey, Mr. Bukowski, I got the paper
I got the pen, I got the desk
but then again: do I have the moxie?
Say, Mr. Bukowski, maybe you got me pegged:
snoozer poems from another insecure asshole
but I got the paper, I got the pen
I got the desk, and then again
I might have some limey asshole moxie.
Watch out, Mr. B, because here comes
my fellow countryman, Bill Shakespeare
the poet you couldn’t/wouldn’t read
and is that a grapefruit in his codpiece
or is he just happy to see you?
He takes you to his local pub, The Golden Nib
so you two can drink from the same goblet
two ballsy genius bards telling jokes
about everything from mad monarchs
to relishing a beer shit and the whores in L.A.
I can hear the sausage-link sentences
of the English language already sizzling.
24
Beech Grove – German Pastorale
Twigs breaking underfoot on sweet woodruff’s dappled mat
the forest floor, an old beech grove and horses bones below.
Long since gone, a country home, its glade and gliding swallows
stamping hooves, bright saddled steeds in neighboring stable stalls.
Who could doubt the cool shade buzz of summer’s sizzling days
soothed armor-weary skin, a Roman soldier’s hideaway, his leave.
Before the Romans, vocal Celts, their song and swirly smoking den
frost and pelts and frozen breath, the ridge where antlers spread.
Now a distant tractor chugs, bee hives in a copse, the trees grown in
a signpost, plaque and picnic place brush older lives aside.
17
Calabria
Our coffee maker is a church bell.
Here, no one ever drinks cappuccino.
Turbid, humming, bittersweet, smoky,
trembling, it calls to me for a visit.
Bernardo and I caroused in Calabria
where everyone drinks cappuccino.
That summer we spent each morning
on the veranda. The town below
had narrow alleyways, the moon made
every stray cat sing. Silvery shoals
streaked the sea, the coast rock solid.
The ferry of dreams carried me away.
Fertile ground helps Bernardo and I
see our tussles through. Stray cats
of course, they rarely sleep. Listen:
con te partiro, con te partiro.
Stray cats seldom sing a phrase just once.
18
Humber Collage
For Matilda Ferguson
Estuary breeze off the North Sea
the shore’s mud flats, shallows
beyond staunch city quays, now home
to docked and rusting trawlers:
sad to see what flourished sidelined.
For want of better pranks
young boys hang fish-heads
from the garden washing line
next to Aunt Sylvia’s bloomers
billowing and snapping in the gusts,
like the sails of a schooner moving
through sheltered waters, kind tides
leading all vessels to the sea.
The wind waves across the lawn
and footings of an old greenhouse
circled by terraced houses— home.
23
the same ball in the
same way with unfailing
enthusiasm more times
than we can understand
or the flushed game birds
across the ochre salt-water
marsh or the tail wagged
with complete surprise
every single evening of
your dog’s life, when
you drag your sad ass
across the threshold,
work satchel stuffed,
sagging and you still
cloaked in fatigue,
seeing the mutt in the
hallway, hearing the
wife and kids in the
TV-room and seeing
God himself on the stairs?
22
Blessing of the Dog After Alicia Ostriker
It’s hard for dyslexics
to make out God from
dog but there’s surely
some of each in each.
Otherwise, how to
account for the
mountain rescues
the best brandy
in a snow drift or
the blind woman
leashed back from
the pungent wheels
of a light-jumping
garbage truck or
the resilient vigil held
near the fallen-ill
master or the absurd
delight in retrieving
19
In the wooden loft in the garden
pigeons puff-strut coo their melodies.
A red homing circle painted high
on the back wall beckons them
each evening through cloud-fissures
silver columns in the scattering dusk.
They spiral down, come back to roost.
Aunt Sylvia is dying in the guest room
her cries from a childhood barn
in Northumbrian heathered hills
spiral around an eternity clock.
Glass-domed, brass workings spin
a muffled mechanical pulse.
On her dresser beside the clock
an armadillo skin latched tail to snout
soft parts now a blue velvet pad
for her pins and sowing needles.
20
In a frame above her bed
a flower garden deep in bloom:
cornflower, rose, lupine, phlox
a woman’s face under the shade
of a broad-brim straw hat.
Things you see while you listen
to stories of explorers and circuses.
By the old gray church the boy’s eye
sights along the barrel of a BB gun
a pellet splits a sparrow’s heart,
paralysis wing over wing slowly
slipping down the dark slate roof.
On this flattened patch of earth
wartime bomb sites are strewn
with empty paint drums, soot piles
like burial mounds, blocks and rubble.
Behind shrubbery under gable ends
young swap looks at private parts
21
girls dream of gowns, boys a touch
of silk and seedling passion
all ears for the life of whispers.
Outside Aunt Sylvia’s window
mist conceals the tucked wings
of patent-leather crows.
Work-day ends, brick dust settles.
She stirs, turns on her pillows
beyond praise now, beyond sounds
of daily homecomings, beyond banter
on the street, the dockworkers’ clogs
striking the pavement and echoing
applause from every flagstone.