Fire and It's Antecedents

In addition to biting social commentary and satire, The Nightwatchman's mission is to greatly expand general interest in the arts. It's also a convenient way to reel off some of my poetry and hock my bloody wares in the smelly and crowded bazaar of the internet. Here, is a sample of some of my poetry with all of its unabashedly cloyed earnestness and hackneyed splendor. I am compiling all (well, most) of my poetry into a book that I will self-publish some time next year. Without any further ado I give you...

Fire and It's Antecedents

Perhaps I am like the bird.

A glance, a fleetness of

Posture. Always seeing and

Hurtling towards the seen.

Perhaps I am like the bird.

I am afraid.

A fistful of dry grass

And I remember when

The wetness of new grass

Was the sheen of rabbit’s

Fur. “I am with you,”

Was spoken. The rabbit

was the fist of silence.

The night has no grandfather

On the lake’s other side

Rocking, whispering. We

Want for commandment

Censure, approbation

When we have no hill’s

Lean hunter, gamesman,

Or senator to unmake

Such a forest

Of bright little eyes.

As a boy I stood up

In the short stubble, nothing

Else around, maybe juniper,

Tamarisk. My skin white

A blasphemer, my arms

Turning, working themselves.

I thought I was an eminence

A thought like a tall white cloud

Or an invader, omniscient

Like a train.

When I see the moon in its maddest geography

Will my mask be red enough to remind him of me?

As a man its altogether

Too much.

It’s time now. Can you tell?

She has forgotten how brief

All of it has been

And how I am so delicate

To the vapor of peanut

Shells, newspapers, coffee.

I cannot sort

The sudden promenade

Of indisputable life

from the meat of the self

There’s the headaches

The coral profuses

Itself redly against

The stony parts of my head

Corrupting the straighter corners

of their cleanness.

Too much.

Chrysanthemums

Red, blue, forgive me forgive me

My hands are weaker now

My shears unyielding.

I want the white flowers

At the grace of decline

When their frills become partial

Folded, indefinite

Their color richening,

Comprehending the sun

In its blush of death

And then severed, floating

In a cool gray bowl.

I want for them

What I want for myself.