( via / via )

'Two Cats' (Sam and Arry).

A poet who writes like his speaking is like a chess player who only plays against a home computer.

"Nothing disappears..."

In earthquake lands, one & one-storey only;
four years of caked-up dust, is it?--I can't tell,
in haiku or a cento paradelle:
a stony silence, broken just as stonily.

Now others have at times seen me more nesh
nor have i chosen, not at all, these ways;
as if in shelter sought from fiercest blaze,
my hunger & the dark's own hungers mesh.

And this has been some little good i've done
when all the mad ambitions are driven off,
though i will rest not even then to gauge

this tower against the sun...
A rampart made half faith & half of scoff,
a tunnel out, itself one further cage.

(2025)

Boneyards thread.