John Altoon
The neck
of the flask
pitch black-getting bored
jacked
also madness, insidious
intended ghost
(days late)
I cross green & white flowered seas
Valentines, May Day
John Hancock’s John Hancock
makes wind
the way it whirls
about and blows
the neighboring names
of other signatories
away. The point
of it is not
the John or Jane
Doe it names;
the point’ s the quill
in motion as if
still stuck
and aquiver in
goose skin.
The trick to writing
well isn’ t up
the sleeve. It is
the sleeve
that fluffs up
the flourish,
that blooms around
the stunted stamens
of the fingers
and distracts us
from our grasping
for the sun
Jordan (I)
Who says that fictions only and false hair
Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
May no lines pass, except they do their duty
Not to a true, but painted chair?
Is it no verse, except enchanted groves
And sudden arbours shadow coarse-spun lines?
Must purling streams refresh a lover's loves?
Must all be veil'd, while he that reads, divines,
Catching the sense at two removes?
Jottings of New York: A Descriptive Poem
Oh mighty City of New York! you are wonderful to behold,
Your buildings are magnificent, the truth be it told,
They were the only thing that seemed to arrest my eye,
Because many of them are thirteen storeys high.
And as for Central Park, it is lovely to be seen,
Especially in the summer season when its shrubberies and trees are green;
And the Burns’ statue is there to be seen,
Surrounded by trees, on the beautiful sward so green;
Also Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott,
Which by Englishmen and Scotchmen will ne’ er be forgot.
Joy
What never comes when called.
What hides when held.
Guest
most at home where least
expected. Vagrant
balm of Gilead.
What, soon as here,
becomes
the body’ s native ground and,
Judo
I. e., the kind of verse
That doesn’ t try to force
People to their knees
(Seeing as it sees
To people’ s being thrown
By forces of their own).
Julian and Maddalo
I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heap'd from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes
Broken and unrepair'd, and the tide makes
A narrow space of level sand thereon,
July 4, 1974
At least it helps me to think about my son
a Leo/born to us
(Aries and Cancer) some
sixteen years ago
in St. John’ s Hospital next to the Long Island
Railroad tracks
Atlantic Avenue/Brooklyn
New York
at dawn
July in Washington
The stiff spokes of this wheel
touch the sore spots of the earth.
On the Potomac, swan-white
power launches keep breasting the sulphurous wave.
Otters slide and dive and slick back their hair,
raccoons clean their meat in the creek.
On the circles, green statues ride like South American
liberators above the breeding vegetation —
prongs and spearheads of some equatorial
backland that will inherit the globe.
The elect, the elected... they come here bright as dimes,
and die dishevelled and soft.
Ka Waiapo Lani (Heavenly Showers)
As if the flow of the waters
From the triple streams of heavenly showers
So the sacred Ao of the eighth heavens
Whose flames have scorched the land.
Chorus:
Should our hearts’ love be restored
And our rights be ours once more
Then will our sacred beloved shoals of Kane
Be the firm foundation of the land.