wb :

Life sucks life from the living
in the living of the life -
a collection of comforts that can't last
(like kites and grades and friends)
and a miscellany of miseries that don't
end, but are surprising in themselves.

Life sucks life
from the eyes that don't shine
and the lungs that fail -
inhale exhale cough choke sputter
repeat -
and the ears that resonate with jarring silence.

Death is kind -
it does its job,
scythes the soul,
gets its due;
and once it's done it doesn't end
and what is eternal doesn't hurt,
doesn't surprise,

doesn't change like life, the salamander,
slipping out of your hands,
writhing free leaving a little pile of warm-

and you can't wash your hands of life
the salamander.

Labels: poetry

18

I
the year could pass like the stirring of soup
or the crying of a cardboard baby
whirring past your earlobes
hissing like animals!
or flirting loosely with the idea of silence







II
it could be the silent ticking of twilight skies
we could stand in a circle and join hands
(here put your hand in mine, fingers
encircling
like mating honeybees or the long-end of the preying mantis moving in for the
kill.
)
here i am Lord take me take this life take this flesh give me something else
here i am encircled on a sliver of bespectacled earth
Lord, I am tired of people. I am besmirched.
it could be the noise of monstrous whirling fleeing eternity fleeting like the buzzing of dragon-flies

III
Tacet.

-adam

Labels: poetry

seems to be preparing
for something
involving the universe

little satellites round
the bends, thoughts weighted
down by apples in a bag with

homework and long bus rides
- spurting from their shoes
the remnants of rain

Labels: poetry

of spinning air from lungs
under heated, hell-bent
sunlight; feverishly, comically
practising an extremely distant
cousin of ballet -

is being rattled, inexorably
in a little bus; watching from
the white fence the others
giving themselves up to the god of running;
hoarse from a sudden typhoon
of knowing -

those days turning into nights,
silhouetted against stadium lights;
compelled by dreams of far-off
drums (those beating now),
heartbeats being propelled forwards
unable to stop.

Labels: poetry

an ode to words unspoken,
for unmade promises, unbroken
to inchoate, inarticulate cries,
unverbalized, unvocalized sighs.
a lament for those laced
into love, those faced
all day; every day, with
its gossamer, undying myth
in the reality of lamplight,
cold and clear hindsight;
one sees in fact
that poetry lies not in this vanishing back.

Labels: poetry