Contents
Small fish in foreign water
Vacuum at the void skin of matter
A quiet whisper in the cold
Night's black mirror
Under the oxide stain of centuries
Like a screaming wire
You want the golden, not the gray
Tension growing in the cloth
Before the slow sled gliding
With crabs and rising wind
And leave us ruddy bones
Cold grows on you like a mold
Orange in a new language
Last bright spark before the
seamless dark
Rain sputters from a flat sky
She drifts, a snowflake drifts
Glass laced with frost soon clears
Steamy August heavy hung
I am the tree screaming
Corn against the green husk
C minor electronic
Spell at the wheel
Pools that fill like a miracle
Flows an icy stream
Home
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Small Fish in Foreign Water
Dried on the floor
They die;
Small fish in foreign water always leap for home,
The next warm pool, when curious children
Slide the covers from their glowing tanks.
But only air and crusty carpets greet their final dive.
Can you cry?
Those that stay behind, who cannot cry,
Stare square into a universe that keeps its secrets
Tightly locked in wooden boxes,
And daily they report in whispers,
Like deacons at the back of the church,
That he, their miracle, dry god with sutured neck,
Stares back, mouth closed.
He leaps too,
This millionth son of fish and toad,
Straight and silver,
When someone cracks his larger, fragile tomb.
Muttering his giddy rules
He springs to the white, to the light,
Only to fall on spiny floors
And wish for gills again.
We face glass walls;
We tap and scratch,
Wondering, hairs raised,
What swims in our next pool,
What strengthened lungs we might require.
A Quiet Whisper In The Cold
Without tested limits,
A manifold of unturned corners,
Untrodden passages,
I join this vacuum treasury
Stepping into cold space
White and frothing at the edges
Slipping quickly now
Past darting fishes, wings spread silver,
Gleaming in the last light before nothing,
Dropping uncontrolled into cavern darknesses
Where all stories, all dreams, find their dreary endings,
Screaming now at the ice in my brain,
The final salt of blood-sea in my throat,
All life's desires run out steaming,
Cracking webs on crystal shells of skin
That softened once the borders of my bones.
I hesitate at the edge of death,
A frozen wraith,
A quiet whisper in the cold.
Night's Black Mirror
Striding a tubed corridor snaking through vacuum
Through the silent, starry cold
I hold heavy eyes against the glass,
Staring into night's black mirror
For a key to the foreign tongue
That rings like hammered silver in my ears.
What a terror it is to lose the knowledge of speech,
To grasp at shapeless, faded memories
Of teachers who knew my language.
Their words curve back out of reach, into gravity.
What perfect parabolas of untouchable wisdom!
I grab handrails with steel gloves
Anxious for stability, for an end
To the flickering, the blinking of the universe.
Where are the planets, the civilizations,
The fertile species, the flowering histories,
In these empty seconds when the brain seizes,
Freezes in short circuit?
You cannot know the dry throat
That breathes an artificial atmosphere.
You cannot know how a ghost feels
Wandering through the blank spaces between worlds,
You cannot know that our frantic travels
Are just a further filling in of the red lines,
Of the grid, of the dead lines
Binding our minds to the end of space,
To the end of time.
Vacuum At The Void Skin Of Matter
How to talk of this tingling like a rock removed,
Ringing from the curious blows of an anxious pick,
This vibration from finger to thigh
That craves the amphibian clasp in a warm bath
All creatures dream of in their marrow,
This vacuum at the void skin of matter
Mad from so much incompletion,
Aimed without restraint of reason
At the having, the possessing, the folding-around,
The all-enclosing enveloping of missing factors
Sought by the empty spaces wandering through our lives,
Lodging eventually in our stomachs,
In our hearts' vacant chambers demanding
Some cessation, some resolution,
Some fulfillment of the long, hollow seconds
That seem to tick so harmlessly into years.
How to talk of it with teeth that only rub,
Tongues that flap like awkward pigeon wings,
Lips that flutter nonsense in many syllables?
Under The Oxide Stain Of Centuries
Under the oxide stain of centuries,
Under the shielding varnish scraped away
By murderous blow after blow
Against the skull, against the cold cement,
Shines a mineral gleam without heat,
The white light of ice that carves lines
Into a killer's face painted frozen
By the hard rays of the rock
That turned his hand to murder.
On the glassy quartz corner tilted at knife's angle
Glows dull the red spot, the accusing drop,
Tiled and reflected in images unending,
Clinical in their alcohol clarity
Across the swept screen of memory
Reviewed again and again,
Those few seconds rubbed clean and smooth
From agonizing replay.
The smell of lightning, of death
Seeps from this weapon, this fallen stone.
You Want The Golden, Not The Gray
Rain makes you feel small.
It falls from such a potent fog
You cannot penetrate that first cloak
That holds you in your dark, shivering rooms.
You stay away from windows trapped
In the dry center of your house.
You want the raining while you sleep,
You want the golden, not the gray.
Tension Growing In The Cloth
Wait patiently for the closing notes,
Don't rush the end of symphonies.
Hold off the climax of the fugal contest,
Avoid the second, final endings,
Stay inside.
Here's life in the embryo developing.
Here's tension growing in the cloth.
Repeat, repeat!
Explore
Until the sunset comes you can't ignore,
Then seize the resolution,
Let it roar!
Shout loud the chord of your last breath!
Now go on! Make more!
Like a Screaming Wire
Tension like a screaming wire
Tight with voltage
Singing wet, copper mysteries
High on the ends of hairs,
Dropping miles and never touching nitrogen,
Ties weightless knots and clogs our yearnings,
Fogs our once bright eyes.
On the muddy soil below,
Muscle moves bone
And feels without feeling
That ghostly poison.
We shiver helpless,
Convulsing in the current.
Oh, the ache!
The groans of icebergs
Grinding at our deepest roots
While plankton watch
Blind in their liquor.
Driven to bite through steel
For some restful moment
That surely must wait
Beyond these rigid, ringing bars,
My teeth shatter.
My lungs no longer fill.
Before The Slow Sled Gliding
Are there really only ten dimensions, Doc?
Or is it twenty-six?
Or maybe only four?
I must know, I must know
Before the coming of the snow,
Before the slow sled gliding
On magnetic, unsympathetic runners
Slides into my present time,
My only true dimension,
And bids me bundle up
For that final journey north.
That sleigh has no bells,
No elves.
I won't be coming back.
I won't be coming back.
The driver beats a drum
To pace the horses,
Blind and black.
Doc, what time is it?
What symmetry divides my breath
From death?
And Leave us Ruddy Bones
Two dogs pass by
Deep in canine business,
Wrapped in certain purpose,
Sharing without speaking
Their decisive mission,
Turning left at just that corner there,
No other.
Such allegiance! Such foresight!
Some humans always run this way,
But most find lonely paths at times,
Where even trees clutch solitary spaces
Rarely crossed by bees or stealthy lizards.
Some soar in crowded clouds, but others
Singly mine the belching bowels of mountains
Or catch in stainless gloves the dust of dying stars.
Some cleanse the ignorance from dogs.
We need time for all this humanity,
Time to sharpen rakes and pencils,
Scrape the frost from windows,
Find our common roads and clear them.
We must find this time
Else dog packs take our flesh
Unsmiling,
And leave us ruddy bones.
Cold Grows On You Like a Mold
When you are old
Cold grows on you like a mold,
Sends patient roots
Through weakened skin.
Like mosquitos
You don't feel the needles
Till blood is drawn and gone.
You warm your hands near fires,
In fires,
And after much too long
You feel the heat,
You smell the heat.
Flesh bubbles, boils out pain.
Underneath that liquid agony
Your bones crack
Like ice cubes in splendid sequence,
And they rattle but they don't melt.
Even when your blackened skin glove leather
Glows red,
Smokes.
Cold grows on you when you're old.
Like a mold you can't get rid of it,
Only climb into the ground
And meet decay's invasion
With the shivering rhythm of loose teeth
And glittering memory.
With Crabs And Rising Wind
Who knows what winter gust might blow
From placid clouds and end this happy season,
Call to early close these sweet and sunny hours?
Who knows what evil heart or blind machine
Might draw the gate that holds back ice and snow
To cover skies with dreary slate?
Some nervous trees drop leaves sooner,
At first hint of fall.
Even now the months could slipping past
Deceive us,
Leave us stranded on damp sand
With crabs and rising wind.
We do not want our last day spent in disbelief.
Let's guard our moments carefully,
Like the final eggs of the birds
That listen to our daily sorrows
And sing to us chirping encouragement.
Orange In A New Language
Just a chip of ice on the dry lips of a man
Who knows the hard scratch of death in the throat,
Just a patch of orange light for the dim room of a man
Who remembers the vague concept of color
But cannot form the blurred words red blue.
He dances in the orange light. He sings
Orange in a new language.
He tastes in the ice on his lips
The orange you brought him,
A reason to breathe,
A description of the next turn
And a hope that the straight road beyond
Will be kind to his feet.
Rain Sputters From A Flat Sky
Rain sputters from a flat sky
Angry hot drops on men already soaked
With sweat with the never ending
Wet season.
These men rise from the mud
Their wings ripped and useless
Their batteries dead
They write their brief biographies
On banana peels
On the damp fungus tablets
Glued soggy to the trunks of drooping trees
All around, all around.
At the jungle's edge beyond the mist
Beyond the constant water
Where sunlight spills beyond the weeping clouds
Women stand golden in sad conversation
They question the fog
They question the long wait
For a dry day
For the end of the old battles.
Here at the moist boundary of indecision
The youngest women rise
Impatient with their sterile studies
And clean their teeth
Clean their weapons
March in single file
To the fuzzy barrier of their mothers' arguments
To the water
To the war.
She Drifts, A Snowflake Drifts
Two on ice
Swimming like swans charmed in a bubble of time,
Easy, elegant muscles so close to the frost that soars them now
Away from their slick mirror in glittering flight,
In spinning glints and chips of fluid prowess,
Then sets them smoothly down again on cold's vast surface,
Small on the rigid, scratched face so quickly old,
Mocking the frosty fingers striving too slowly for their panting heat
They look like gods or statues posed, now lifting, leaping,
Her jewelled hair flows out so young so fragile
He worships it right there, circling in frozen rapture.
Her blades know the ice,
They know the way his legs know the ice.
She drifts, a snowflake drifts through his arms,
The only sound
The scrape of metal on ice their heartbeat for years
Under domes, under stars in the frigid north
They stroke their magic on solid water.
Thrust after silent thrust of thigh and calf
Against the slippery floor without slipping
They fly beyond balance faster than light,
Graceful as expert deer in their windy race,
Flashing past imagination on mere leather and steel,
Compact hurricanes on crystal water.
Now they drop, they bend to kiss the gleaming ice,
The brittle glass on which they etch their delicate suspension.
The world stops breathing in these slow moments.
Last Bright Spark Before The Seamless Dark
He was
Damp and dead in a house that burned up years ago
His life consumed in a slow fire
That turned away for so long the hard smiles
That once glowed gold in the shine of his tools
Warming around him the air, the broken branches in the days
Before he lost his grip on the turning of the sun
Before he lost the sure knowledge of the next morning.
Cold and cramped in the wet December drip
He fell down in the cruel arms of a world
That never forgave his birth
That wore him down as it wears us all down weak and old
Taking one by one his chairs his Sunday shoes
Until he gave up his breath to the winter drizzle
Until he gave up stiff and coughing on his final floor.
His legs did not answer and never again answered,
His eyes gleamed and never again held a light,
The last bright spark before the seamless dark.
Glass Laced With Frost Soon Clears
Get up, sweet child of slumber!
Dawn's light creeps through eastern windows,
Tinting shadows pink with hope and winter birdsong.
Give up your dream-swept vault,
Your warm, grandmother's blanket.
Set your timid feet on frigid tiles
And creak your way downstairs.
The teakettle whistles possibilities!
Glass laced with frost soon clears
And gleams transparent on the future.
Look! Wipe your eyes awake!
Who can sleep while time evaporates?
I Am The Tree Screaming
This lizard of my hardest glassy nightmares
Climbs one scaly foot free at a time
Dry from the jungle steam,
Unhampered by the ropes and vines
That clasp my ankles, stop the run
I do not dare to start,
Climbs in slow, deliberate steps
Around the damp trunk of an impossible tree
To gain a better look at me,
To sample, perhaps, my likely juices.
(I feel I am the tree; I feel the tree's pain
At the touch of the reptile spurs.
I am the tree screaming
Through the million voiceless mouths I suck the sun with;
I am the tree wishing to be
The rain, the river, the leopard, the monkey,
Anything but an easy ladder
For a cold-blooded claw.)
One terrible eye winks lidless at me,
Oddly joined to that sharp head
Remembered by all mothers
Somewhere in the silent rivers
Of their inner, older brains.
I cannot see his other eye,
But sense it rotating, calculating leaps,
Contemplating the skewering of the random insect.
Everything is green:
The tree's bark, the saurian skin,
The fly's complaining buzz,
The air itself, the light,
The sun that once was yellow.
Only one spot defies the green -
The awful black pupil of that lidless eye.
Paralyzed, I am the bird who waits in my trance
Hoping for a new plot.
My friends stroll smiling, ungreen
Through my dream.
They do not notice, do not heed,
The lizard's dry tongue on their knees.
Corn Against The Green Husk
The moon hangs low and yellow, sliced
To lemon size and glowing
Through drapes of vapor piled up
By drones all day tinting faces, buildings,
Cats' whiskers, babies' teeth
Yellow, color of infection and plants
Drooping with disease,
Crippled roots yielding their deep, hidden grip.
Sometimes moons once dipped to meet the sea
Yellow, but yellow of cream,
Sand, new lemons yellow in their acid,
Sun overhead a trillion suns like it
Shining behind in the bright darkness
Hot against the red star, cold against the blue,
Corn against the green husk, northern hair against the snow.
To moons like these we can spill our loosened laughter,
Swing on porches every summer's dusk
And plan the future of this yellow.
Not the yellow of bug lights,
Colored butter, jaundiced latest fashions
Trimmed in bile, mottled hues
Of sickness dragging children off
To sallow hospitals,
Wild, shining tint of terror at the edge
Of the eyes of horses whipped to the ground.
Not that.
The slivered moon we want grows yellow
As it falls beyond our neighbor's hill,
As the wise tusk of an aging elephant
Slowly grows yellow, blemished only by years
Of honest labor.
The silvered moon that once stood small and high
At the top of January's bitter sky
We want to sink down warm and yellow,
A rose that burns our vision with its friendly flame.
Steamy August Heavy Hung
You've known the fear
That numbs the fingers, stings the toes,
Crushes surging heart to sagging basement stairs.
You've twitched the frantic palsy of a rabbit
Trapped and scared,
Sucked the precious air around your lips,
Afraid to make a breeze or whisper prayers.
Like lumber under snow you froze that night,
Though steamy August heavy hung
Outside your open window.
A shadow crept across your bed,
Dragging you in sweat from hard-won dream,
Breaking moonlight's angling vigil
With shape and form
Not cloud or friendly maple's ripple.
You thought it was a dog, maybe,
Or a shrub in the wind's teeth
(There was no wind).
But you knew it wasn't,
Like you knew your own silence,
And how you wished for that,
Unbroken.
C Minor Electronic
In the sharp shadows,
In the dark thunder of C minor
Shorn of all maple sweetness
A string quartet electric
Surrenders its wood to hungry transistors,
Sings youthful, harmonic anguish
Nudged to distortion's painful edge,
Past the last subtle hint of spruce
Placed and painstakingly tuned so delicately shaved
So tenderly mated to maple, to poplar, to ebony.
Carefully laid varnish a century old
Cracks and rains useless dust
Invisible to the new listeners
Awed by the amplifiers, the new sound,
Untouched by any troubled tear of Beethoven.
Tonight the next generation weeps
In C minor electronic.
We have uncoupled our souls from the moist earth.
Our music no longer comes from trees,
From brass, the golden sweat of the soil
We had to leave to reach the stars.
No one will stop the sad march of C minor
From wood and gut to silicon, to the future,
But let us keep always in our music
Human breath and bone,
The fleeting imperfections of lips and fingers.
Pools That Fill Like A Miracle
Running quickly on padded, foaming feet,
Swishing away with the swift, calm grace
Of disappointed teachers, of certain women in crowds,
The once-loved, the nearly-loved,
The hopes that hover in our minds' corners
Cross the coasts of ordinary lives,
Random streams in the sand seeking
Finding in an easy green rush the sea,
The final cleansing bath.
Their fading voices are pools
That fill like a miracle with the tide
And empty like a bad dream.
Can you hear their fleet whispers,
Feel the painful tug of their constant departures?
Flows An Icy Stream
At the end of the touching
Flows an icy stream I hope to never cross,
At the end of the holding
Blows a frigid breeze I hope to never feel,
My face uncovered finally there
In the monstrous glare of that one sunset
That separates the paths of two once
So tightly wound,
Divides them like a prism,
Red to the left, blue to the right,
He to the day, she to the night.
When does the dust become so hard to move?
I hope to never have a thirst
For the water in that cold stream
At the end of the touching.
Spell At The Wheel
A bear coughs in the first shadows of winter,
Calling snow from the sky, from the bent branches,
From the fresh winds.
Stinging moisture scatters like the end of a dream
Across fallow plains sullen from too much sleep.
This is one of those early days
When the snow melts quickly,
When no one heeds the speed of clocks,
When those of us who live longer than the frost
Step easily on last year's crop.
Once in a lifetime
The simple pattern breaks.
The steady rhythm jerks.
A bear coughs. Keys turn in rusty locks.
A tree falls. Moss cracks old, stubborn rocks.
And this is my turn, my spell at the wheel.
What a day for walking with warm coats.
What a moment to shiver with my face in your hair!
Cold rushes at us yawning with a black mouth.
[More to come...]
Tom Vernier
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