Frank's Poems

Poems

I offer these to you for your perusal, enjoyment, commentary and response. Let it be hereby known, that I am sole author and proprietor of their being and form, and to me ought to go whatever notice, praise or disapprobation their existence occasions.

Summer Perfect

weightless
in that
geologic
scale

we pick
up stones
beside the
tranquil
lake

Octave

falling: from the
moment you stumble
it's all physics

swift shadows glide
clouds crossing
the flowery meadow

true love: she
gets depressed, he
takes the prozac

after the rain
the cloudy stream
won't give up its secrets

a break in the rain
when she wrote
her letters outside

daisy, cornflower, Queen
Anne's lace: how many
ways the earth smiles

trip on a rock
get bit by a fly
I'm in love with Nature's way

my thoughts
too loud for
this quiet room

Nesting

for A. R. Ammons

That wad of kleenex is
the biggest thing I've ever
seen a bird that small
worry into flight, so bulky

he had to stop halfway
and rest before dragging it
into his corner of the
sparrow suburb. He's looking

to cradle the hungry cries
of a new brood, I guess, so
we'll soon be hearing more
blind gibbering mad for food

at the crack of dawn.
Yesterday's rain was so heavy
and thorough there was
feast enough for all comers,

and the cruel and relentless
robins were dragging out
earthworm by the yard. Down
the street, the big trucks that

carry our food grunt their way
up the precipice of day,
drawing towards smoking noon.
We're being carried, birds

and all, on the back of
a tortoise, his tongue
darting pink and worm like
at the stars. Every time he

tastes a sun, a thunderstorm
comes to feed the birds. All
right, it's a thin web I'm spinning
here, maybe it's already broken,

maybe I'm just spinning my wheels.
But what else can I do to make
a home? I stretch the tissue I find
into an edge I can keep a hold on;

the yardbirds and trucks and
turtles find their way in, the
stars stay overhead and morning
keeps the earth everyday underfoot.

On reading Buñuel's "My Last Sigh"

"Still an atheist, thank God!"

Your malice is an emetic that relieves;
Purgative these pages, your life's story.
As in your films, cunning delights and deceives,
Conjuring an atheist's blasphemous glory.

Sliding clouds, slit eye, vulva fist; the beaten
Boy's body tossed down a garbage pit's maw;
Priestly poker's relic stakes; the uneaten
Scrap hanging from a plump urbane bourgeois's

Dreaming mouth; that maddening wench who blows
First cold, then hot, face changing with desire.
Chaos's images: and we're happy as crows,
Picking through ashes at bishops' mitres.

A faith's negation mocks it in ritual shows;
And in corrosive fire, absent God brightly glows.

"Hair o' th' dog"

The tenacious ghost of liquor
Howls long after a beer
Blur would have dimmed to a
Dull fatigue. The spars of

The spirit ship remain sharp
And bright and the hook
Of jeopardy is still
Twisted deep into the flesh

That never forgets, never
Wonders, but awaits
Patiently the advent of
The tunnelling worm which

Has never yet been stopped
By the pickling of
Centuries, but ever living
Approaches with a familiar embrace

Earthquake country

Last night I was on the brink
Of agreeing to be defeated
When a bright meteor erupted
Through the limitless dark.

This gravid morning I see
Small but brilliant yellow blossoms
Gracing a scraggly tree
That rises from starvelled dust.

Borne on such slight wings
We are kept from falling
Into the jaws of the ground
That growls and heaves underfoot.

Back to Frank's Home Page.