Word Lumber

An intermission here to mention my book, 'Word Lumber: 80 Poems" available from amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Word-Lumber-Eric-Simpson/dp/0557049687/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258507288&sr=1-4

Thanks!

Eric

A Covenant

I split your condo in two sparse quarters,
living room, kitchen, bedroom, bath and sink,
And walk the narrow hall between.
If you do not cleave together then cleave to me.

Dying is not the ultimate, the worst thing
that can happen, though by reflex you think it is.
I could patch you together a breathing being
of rubber bands and used popsickle sticks

in lieu of sand. There are evils worse than death,
any of which might come to you if you call it.
What tongues you have to bring down shame,
burning from the hatred of Cain, lodged thick

in your gut. And easily you condemn, your own
ashheap piling up. Every mouth is a grave,
the true entrance to the soul, eye a decoy --
the soul I love, a love of flames that cannot

resist expression, that burns or heats, that calls
Lazarus, come out! And you come out or
you don't. I do not hinder nor hustle. I wait.
I walk down the line dividing everything,

every split, heart from soul to atoms, I
tread between divorce and war, every
harsh word and wound, death an entrance
where we meet, you and me, in covenant.

Talk on Poetry

Whatever I may tell you about poetry
I mostly overheard, and that in fragments,
through a locked door, or grasped from the lips
of children shouting in the street, or--
maybe read, one or two notations accreted
in the margins of someone else's textbook,

Or shown to me by a poet, who lit dubious
classroom bulbs, local legend, chanting
in the back of police cars, drinking doubtful
words from plastic cups in class out under a tree,
obsessing over pale print from a bad copier,
who said to me "this is my religion": epode.

I found it in theology, heretics and prophets, who
sought to mimic the throat of Chrysostom, of
course, too, in psalmody and other rhetoric, pulled
it from the household of the oppressed, the vain,
the unthinking and the anti-intellectual, listening
to the sudden pulse and throb of language,

that repeating fire that wraps and binds, brain-
washing the catatonic, or setting them free.
It leaked from the eyes of a homeless woman
from whom I hid myself on the other side of a wall,
shouted from the lips of a destitute drunk, a cry
to a sleeping city, "wake up!" to me "wake up!"

Runaway

Let me show you how this works,
a coin is falling in a slot,
a girl is giving birth to words
in a pink notebook at a table,
the ghosts of missing children
haunt the trees along the edge of town;
you wake to hear the cauterwail
in the long distance of an earth
bound bird, canine shouts that mark
the now eerie morning quiet;
a name scratched on a woodpost,
another scratched out, a broke
valentine, styrofoam cups drifitng
on a stream, a rusted red tricycle
tipped-over in the weeds.

Street Woman

Shoot, she said, not only an accusation
but a summing it all up, forgiveness in there too,
a twin to man, what a word! but here nothing
to connote the heavy scratchy blanket of being,
or the gendered isolate, nor the four-armed
symbol rendered in full measure by Da Vinci--
all she could say, maybe, except for a non-fecund
fuck, a verbal space-bar, like shit, too, ordinary
to her as breathing hello (replaced by yo), her
world all muscle, all cord and tendon, all desire
stretched to the intensity of addiction, every
eye a focal point of darkness: shoot, man,
every day its own darkness, sun a brazen liar.

The Big Bad Wolf's Later Years

The problem with you is you think with your snout,
said his truth-teller friend, the mule cop, desk seargant.
And it was true. After a few years he mended his ways,
learned to discipline his thoughts, disassociate smells,
dropped his middle-name: Big Wolf. Then the adjective.
Somehow that didn't help, sometimes less is more. So

He holed away in a squat New York City flat, pavement
drumming under his feet, went straight. Pigs and
friends of the pigs, all cynics, could not forget how
he huffed and he puffed, so now, he wore spectacles,
read crime novels, did crossword puzzles, passed the time
between his me, myself and I. Took up coffee. Watched tv,

Wolf became discreet. Regret marshed into sorrow, pigs
bleated in his dreams, structures collapsing, and he
possessed by a growl, vibrating up from the center. He
bought a motorbike to divert himself, rode weekends
upstate, small country towns, strummed a banjo, wrote
songs about innocence, laughter, cubs, anthems to youth,

before he burned, took up smoking cigars, bags of sorrow
lining dreary eyes, Wolf jumped inside himself when
he saw her, three rows down, at the bowling alley: Little
Red Riding Hood. She nodded, said, "I just go by Red."
And, "look," he said. Just that, and stopped. Her eyes said
enough, no hint of mercy in them. Nor tears. Nor life.

Wolf, seeing himself again through her eyes, thought, "I'm
not the same animal I was back then, not the same,"
growled to himself, a familiar tread this lament, seemed
to purr a little, then went to gaze at a sickle moon, blue
cradle that said, "this too will pass, Wolf, this too." He
threw back his head, lips curled, eyes tight, and howled.

Death

Perhaps something is wrong
(voices not mine whisper, exterior
thoughts stretch like an upper extremity
circling on an invisible rotator cuff)
when I see the dead with envy,
that so-called rest, dissolution of mystery,
one might imagine consciousness that
lingers like an attached file, dragged
along with the corpse, fragmented
with the soil in infinite schizophrenia,
or so I tell myself, concocting hades,
the trash heap on the periphery,
marginal gatherings of crows that circle
like my thoughts, reaching like an arm
jacked into a bad rotator cuff.