Last Bender

  The Sycamore Tree Not to the sycamore tree grave of republicans or the communist party not to the stones and bricks or these buildings or the tangle of ivy the daffodils or the April rain that brings them, no white in the mirror’s face nor black not to fortune nor to any state no [...]

I don’t remember writing this, except for a line here and there. And it wasn’t some late night production. I wrote it in my head on the way to work, scribbled it out on paper and then put it on the computer at my desk. But it went into a folder on october 23rd and [...]

    Frail mosaics of wooded hillsides crumbling tiles   Autumnal clowns in precarious quilts   Like shivering coins of copper and vermilion

  the crude drain in a pair of pants snow squalls at the window   women dressed like children indignant courting of filthy thoughts  

A Question for Dreams why do you bring the dead and write yourself in love’s light why her still and empty face the blue eyes and tangled nylon hair she doesn’t cry ouch at the knots dad wants to know where he is i didn’t tell him we threw the videos out

Holidays in the Sun   Mind and heart in revolt I trade this rain for feedback these branches are broken guitars and the lavender mist smoke drifting in from  battlefields   the smell of mowed grass covers sulfur and formaldehyde Holidays in the Sun –the bombs haven’t gone away and I’m still waiting   the [...]

The Girl in the White T Shirt   Jack Spicer drank himself to death Olson drank himself to death, Lowell and Bishop, Berryman and Thomas drank themselves to death It was fashionable to drink and poetry Was not fashionable and so they drank To be famous and because the pain of alienation Was too great [...]

I’ve always worked on Maggie’s farm. I’ve always hoped and dreamed there was a way out but Maggie’s farm has grown from one end of the universe to the other . Maggie’s farm has flattened the earth. You can’t walk out of it. There is no edge or beyond. “I try so hard to be [...]

Here’s a good poem for a bleak day, by Yeats, at the end of his life. Some poets you admire and some you love. Milton and Wordsworth I admire. Coleridge and Yeats I love. A Stick of Incense Whence did all that fury come, From empty tomb or Virgin womb? St Joseph thought the world would [...]

This morning I went to Ron Silliman’s blog and followed a link about ‘the deep image poets’ to a post by a poet who is reading a book of criticism about the Deep Image poets, bly in particular. The gist of the post is that while a lot of deep image poetry sucks, not all [...]