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A LOVE POEM FOR ALLEN GINSBERG
pretend i am carl
solomon awhile and you are allen ginsberg and you are standing on a beach
in far rockaway
describing how an ocean
breaks against the rocks of a young man's incessant sexuality.
explain it again allen,
perhaps a little more patiently this time
how many centuries an
ocean can continue to be a thing which resembles an ocean
while ceasing utterly
to be an ocean or never having been an ocean in the first place.
i am in my prison. i
love you, as i should, because you are allen ginsberg and i am carl
solomon.
is love so wrong? tie
my love to your waking pillow, allen ginsberg, listen to me dream awhile.
i love you not because
of you but because i love the world and anyhow i have seen what lies
outside of it.
HOW SHE SLEEPS
there is always
something she has to say to herself first then to him
a precious thing precarious like the small bones in her hand
in the presence of others everything is different
time has a tendency to bend over backwards but this is night
the memory of work molds itself like knitted dough this is night
all day she was a baker in the heart of the world oh her perfect wishes!
the evening was a disappointment again, of course it was him
always engaged in these impossible subtle arguments
there was some statement she was obliged to make
something he should have told her but did not
her whistling bones re-examine everything
his even breathing her even breathing
oh the world, evenly breathing!
yes he is a perfectionist
yes it is all right now
no it is not all right now
there is an hourglass in his dozing smile
there is still water in a glass on the nightstand
it is perched like a cat in a tree
she catches lamplight in the cat's eye
appearing like a bird which unexpectedly appears
her fingers twist a bit of cloth
between her ring finger and her thumb
it is a familiar motion her mother would recognize that motion
soon it will be midnight in the east where her mother lives
that book of his has fallen behind the headboard again
the bedsheets slacken, something is loosening its grip
the cat is preparing to walk out of the room
she begins to imagine birds, how they fly together
she begins to blink her eyes
in time she will stop blinking them
YOU ARE MY RAIN
you are three thousand
miles away
but rain comes from distant places too
and sometimes i can taste you on my lips
like rain or lost love or the smoke of forests burning
or the surprising bitterness of a cup of coffee after dining alone in new
york city
as if there is a message in everything we touch and taste
a warning concerning something terribly important
perhaps it is only the fire in a raindrop
in the heart of a tree that grows in a burning forest when wind flows
through it
like wheat or time or pain or memory or an ocean
like the way i could always feel in the motion of your hair
the motion of the sky at the particular moment
when your imagination caught fire
and you began to love me
these days i am always
sitting in the raging sunlight near the end of summer
when love trembles out of control in the sky like a fledgling bird
or the head of a statue or a shooting star
and someone new is walking out with someone else new
hand in hand into the city and i am sitting alone
imagining a time when redemption was possible
and i can just remember that there was a time
when i could have stepped in front of a city bus
and gotten hit and survived it
because once you turned in my direction
and your voice was a possible raindrop
in the first heart of the world
it is autumn it is new
york city
the fragrant mist of a cooling season is in the air
i watch a stranger playing with a napkin at a corner table
and i realize that even without you, i am possible
the peculiar angle of the sun when colder weather is about to arrive
is your glance at me over cappucino
the first time we looked at each other
and i realized that if i was lost in a forest
i could put my hands to the trunk of a tree
and listen through the gift of my palms
and be able to hear the calm intravenous beating of your blood
and find my way out of the forest
it is autumn it is new
york city sometimes in the middle of the night
when i open my eyes and listen without comment or complaint or
interruption
i can hear the regular breathing of a single flower in your garden three
thousand miles away
i can taste the lithe perfume of your falling raindrops
and touch the stuttering wings of birds in your open field of flight
and taste through an empty patch of sky
your cloud passing through it
it is autumn it is new
york city sometimes i look at the compass of the world
and i think the poles of the earth have gone insane
everybody around here is inventing directions
at another table someone is arguing about politics or money
over there a young woman i have seen on stage
is explaining something to a friend a lover a stranger or her father
something terribly important about meaning or art or love or ambition
it is new york it is
autumn it is a season it is only a season
nothing is terrible nothing is important
i am finally at rest after many gestures and suicides
after many sweet and not so sweet navigations
on the avenue there are taxis
ambulances puddles criminals politicians
tourists traders cadillacs
and i am finally at rest, seated
at a side street cafe in greenwich village
with a tree growing beside it
i want to touch the trunk of that tree
look! it is a healthy gingko with a solid trunk
and it has leaves and the leaves are paddling at the wind
and there are raindrops everywhere and there is cappucino and people
smiling
and everything is everywhere and there is laughter
it is your laughter
you are my rain
Four time New York Press Association Writer of the Year nominee George
Wallace is an award winning poet and journalist living and working on Long
Island. He is publisher of
Poetrybay and has
appeared in performance from New York to Italy to San Francisco, Baltimore
to Battle Creek; and Key West to Maine.
Published in Europe in 2002 and released in the United States in 2003 is
Swimming
Through Water, a 448 page bilingual book of poems translated into
Italian by Anny Ballardini"
Wallace recorded a Gregory Corso Tribute CD in 2001 with David Amram for
Hozomeen Press. In 2002 he recorded two CDs, again with David Amram, one a
collection of his own writings and the second a Jack Kerouac Tribute CD
featuring his work and those of six other writers. |