Another Attempt at Writing A Poem

I’m thinking too hard again,
& already revising without
the poem a quarter done.
It worries me when I can’t complete
a thought on paper, not follow
through with appealing ideas.
My head is bare new thoughts,
Even the crowds of the
metro or Dupont Circle can’t incite
a spark or flint or whatever
writers have. I worry, even,
about ending: closing with
some insight or brief statement
that’ll swing this poem shut.
It’s the consequences of thoughtlessness
that I worry about, I suppose:
blank page after blank page,
despite the world going around
creating all those right electrical forces.
It’s the consequence of
thoughtlessness I suppose.
Blank page after blank page
suddenly becomes a neurotic guilt
that itches under my nose
lights up perpetually
and never quite goes away.

The Language by Robert Creeley

Locate I
love you some-
where in

teeth and
eyes, bite
it but

take care not
to hurt, you
want so

much so
little. Words
say everything.

I
love you
again,

then what
is emptiness
for. To

fill, fill.
I heard words
and words full
of holes
aching. Speech
is a mouth.

Woolly Earth, after Olga T.'s "Field Dressing" ver. 2

Does it mean that here we are,
forever walking on concrete.
And then we die and grow
into the shag carpet of soil & grass
that the forests seem to be.
Or does it mean earthen,
grounded, lonely, a poem.
My wrist hurts as I write.

That is woolly earth to me.
And music, and the smell of
cheap wine in my kitchen.
And watching my friend
of only a few days
read outside the Hirshhorn.
I laid on the grass and
thought about sneezing:
how all those droplets return
or disappear somewhere:
into the sky or concrete, or
the woolly earth.

Night Music -- "Are you a cello" or "Are you a cellist"?

At the tip of the night
your index finger
circles around the
Dupont Circle fountain.

You play it like
an adagio for strings.

Or is it the wind
bowing tenor notes
against the empty
fountain...

Water, Ice (after R. Creeley, after George Oppen)

I melt in
the sun's light

I'm a ghost
floating
gurgling water

you've not
seen

I gleam
like

love, like
water

Water

At the time, I stared at the tv
screens, not thinking about
the murders, the utter terror
and panic those students must
be feeling. I was looking
at the photographer, aiming
his camera at the tv, trying
to catch, at the side of the shot,
a few stray watchers, but not me.
What a meta-moment, I said to myself.
That's all I could think of for hours.
Running the faucet in my bathroom sink
I splash water on my face.
It runs down my cheeks, rivults
of gun-metal and loose, failing skin.

Water (I'm working on poems with water, and repeating phrases...)

In water eyes, watery green eyes,
eyes of green water. In touch
like fish jumping out of water,
like deer lapping up cool, cool water,
like bears catching salmon. In
breezes of whispered water.
You are spring rain.

Water, Machu Picchu

The bus, because I didn’t climb it,
took us up the mountain, snaking
around it & around it. The view like
water, grew. That must be the famous
mountain from the pictures, I thought.
I’ve never seen green like this. It’s
so green. I never knew green.
All I could think were those thoughts,
little leaky faucet-thoughts dripping
into my head's bathroom sink.
The place was so green. As green as
water on tree-tops; as water sometimes is.