Douglas Messerli

CIRCUMSTANCES OF BETTER TIMES

“When I left you that day, I forgot to tell you what happened

during the night”

—Can Xue

Then dropped

cold against—

the grim

resisting

the reason.

The fly

of distraction

wove smells

of rot

into sweat

like somebody

forcing open

a hammer.

One bent

came expectant

torturing

the sound

to the pace

of crawl.

My head

had, gone off

into futurity

where possibility

swelled the carrot

that lead

the abandonment

to surface

in the fist.

Then stopped.

A transparent sudden

was considered

a refusal

to retreat.

It repeated

sentences, locked

within closed teeth.

The lawn

arrived in light

greening against

the smoked sky.

I wept awoke.

Los Angeles, 17 January 2006

“March streams exist, if streams exist”

—Inger Christensen

From a train, tired soldiers

or sheep who run

from the herd—that’s all erased,

burned up in the throne of nothingness like a substance

instead of an act—poof! A little incense

that lingers across the air. There is that scent

of dried apricots. The parrot speaks: the house

is still open. The house…

somewhere I am suddenly born

in that house, that wide open

house, that narrow house, that house

with all its windows closed, close as flesh

to any family who hate that they have to

stay so close. Never apricots,

broccoli or cauliflower even, fried fish!

and the flesh of fathers and mothers

and brothers. I recall the train

slowly gathering speed

as it took its way out

of the station unto…wherever it went.

Everyone was exhausted! Everyone went to sleep.

And the train went on like a river

that never stops. It was March or May

or even June since I have no memory of it.

Everything is erased.

Then we stopped or seemed to or went on

again and on like a stream on its march

to the sea. This was later, many days.

I played with my “tin men”

in the dream of the trip. Where have I been?

Perhaps the child in the forest will show his face.

He must—at this point—look like a little

tarnished star, a silver thimble upon his thumb, his mother’s

gift? Nowadays dreams go around so openly.

The soldiers were tired. Who could blame them?

I put them back in the box. I got out my gun.

I shot a ewe about to cross the tracks. I was a hero

I believed. I was confused. I was so innocent

I was awarded apricots. But I never saw

the soldiers again. I never saw where I went

or where I had been.

Los Angeles, 13 June 2004

“the world is dark spirit dust—“

—Meredith Quartermain

Allurement, good morning!

Here in this whiteness—a gasp

of the angel’s eye

outspreads what’s now melted

beyond human gaze.

The phantom looms

in the shape of things,

tapping its sweet surfaces

against verb and utterance.

The clock is back

as radiance talks

to sound. I’m young suddenly

as barbarity, a gallant

about to furl a whoop

into tether—it’s the sun

that churns up the oozy

kiss that shatters

what night sowed

in its silence.

The frog is uncle

to the dove.

Los Angeles, 23 January 2006

“man does not save himself these days—he’s lost the trick”

—Djuna Barnes

Cold time screams

in a lisp through town

as strong as any boy

who sits on shallow air.

Up and down

on his own heel

he thrashes, a bitter

dog, yet cat-wise

falling on four feet

as if paradise

is inside out.

There should be gardens

for old men

to take their seats

bone to bone in

for their having been

too young to tear.

Los Angeles, 26 January, 2006

“warm houses a season in roooms”

—Hugo Claus

There is the disturbance.

There is a search for lamentations.

There is he who turns away

to embrace all the assumptions

slid off the fingers

of a snap, a spinning top

my ear can no longer hear

like amber captured in a jewel

of bright light. I claw

at the canals to clean

out the lark. Meanwhile

how to split oak. From the corner

the skin is obviously the rhythm

of slight, the flame which too bright

falls into a golden rain. Stretch

your hands out into the sputter

of soil, grass wherever

you stand is sooner uncertain

than the place you will

settle into. From within

the swell festers into what spokes,

a history feigned in the chatter

of that foolish spring that is

what emerges from the space!

There is enough to say of the house.

There is a gaze of the imagination

against the spark of the stove.

There is a turn to burn what loaves.

My bones caught fire and I fried

the bitter herb of what has to be

forgotten with what dogs recalled

in coming in.

Los Angeles, 4 February 2006

“almost anywhere there is a poem lying around”

—Christopher Middleton

It bounces, folds, floats

in the climate of its feeling.

There are even seasonal promises

like ghosts that exist only

in memories—

dazzling charms

of spores which envelop

what began as a solar system

now collapsed into pinecones.

The furniture dwindles against

its cold demands. It has built

a nest of atavism until

I suppose grief conjugates

the inkling of its inevitable

tombstone. From its crag

equipoise

gnaws its bone to dog

what was flourished

as an ornament of spoke.

One inch under it he wrote

his name and promptly

forgot that it had been sweated

in his pants of desire’s

expectation.

It was

so he though complete

as incident always comes

up against the manner

of its image. Legends lead

nowhere but to behind

the unimaginable outline

of relief. The red root

of the raw leaves

the unfinished paradise

in the coil of its inception

chocked up

by what will surely

swallow the story it might

have created by what’s now

clearly told:

almost anywhere

there’s a poem lying

in wait to be hung on the line

of possibilities shine

Los Angeles, 6 February 2006