. Judson Blake
Poetry Plays A Novel Pastels Ink on Paper
The Kentish Gardener
There isn’t exactly a time and a place
but his knowing broke unkindly
the roots’ black city,
and caused the outcry you heard last night
and the feet speeding along the dry streets
eager to see the surprise of death.
Crushed in the mountains, crushed in the seas,
the thistle root part of him broke without waiting
and he charged the four-centered sun
giving a spade oath and grating over their brains,
for he had wondered if they were living all that time.
And afternoon tourists hoo-hooting with their eyes
desultory softness over dust devil nerves
he let them feel superior, which is what they wanted.
And wonderingly he queried little things
not the beaks of cow-birds and the grain’s homecoming
but what they took for granted
since they hardly had maligned him but muted
cast an independent lot,
and then in secret took him for a fool.
There isn’t exactly a time and a place
for unknotting the bole’s same secret
(time rings like a gong over the thought-free sea)
careening mountains hurtle and tilt
to violas we take for sentimental show
blowing aside what we couldn’t consign
his slipper defiant creeping in leaves.
Kevin Cheats on Brit
Each life is an experiment which,
lived out to the full,
would accrue to the wisdom of God
At the DAR dog show
they’re ready for the golden shit.
Cups on belthooks, scoops and ladles designer signed,
decorator colors, chrome padded handles,
(keep tight the instructions came),
and the matrons of the rotund cheeks stand like totems,
monolithic await
the scheduled obsequy.
Outside, along the wall of the carpetbag hotel, Ackerman smiles,
“Oooh, yeah. At Scottsdale yeah, I knew two women,
one a waist so thin you’d die to put your hand around it.
Th’other told the filthiest yarns you couldn’ believe.
Tha’s the one I married, ‘course, thirty-one years.”,
Broken rib laughter by the ordinary bricks,
smell of potatoes, he grows thick,
old in the enclosure of his conceits,
(ride away, Darkness),
cantilevered over hopeful old newspapers,
evacuated tin cans, bottles meant for rejoicing.
I am I am I am, he screamed, fingering the piece of cloth,
aghast if anyone looked,
betrayal of night sprawled desperate men
skewered just dead meat, rooftop dreaming,
floating in air.
Patterns of Mississippi vine
bower his old man’s protruding shoulders
that make a mousy wince as he sings some Protestant tune,
outfoxes the homilies of the evening news.
Nocturn
I am alone. Just for the night.
The children come and play.
The house is open now to thieves
but I will not lie awake.
To the window then I go
and stare upon the place below
and stare at latticed frames across the way,
the reflection of the curtain fire,
in the window seeming far away.
I do not think that thieves will come,
but someone else I do not know
and cannot think of now.
I casually leave the door ajar.
Beside the old encrusted walls
the children come to ministrate
amid Victorian bric-a-brac,
petrifying thought, and dusty books
that were ocherous when new.
The fire burns; they do not know.
A thief may come.
They leave the door ajar.
They cry like song, breaking free.
I am alone. Just for the night.
I stare across the table where
are strewn uncountable children’s charms.
I hear their jangled cries and smile
to think the world itself in flame.
I will not set a candle there.
All is safe. The fires shine
like ancient stories quickly told.
Burning now they light my face
in the window shone across the way.
I am alone. Just for the night.
Brit Finds Out
Now is the sylphlike advent
of the unexpected self….
Seedy Marie sweeps out the vestibule as if it were her own,
arms cracked Tarot cards,
lines beyond memory have brown, brown memories
of their own.
She adorns glass bangles,
conferring luminescence in the greasy hall,
thus foretelling ancient law.
“O, I could tell stories to ya… but no, not a night like this….
Come back. Do come back, then. Tomorrow, er when…ever.”
She pounds like a flightless bird down stairs,
palms a cigarette off the Lebanese
hides in a brick impression away from the wind,
sucks white fetid vapors,
chases out certain wild arcane thoughts.
“Case ‘pineapples fell on my stoop, green like turtles,
Greeks stole ’em, don’ tell my ex,
goes crazy Thursdays… like a potted clock.
Don’ think I’ll commit him again though.”
She shivers
as if the Annunciation would come.
As if the Annunciation would come,
in a crowded smoky corridor or on some blank deserted plain.
Fly, fly, fly
far away and forget me,
streetlamp wisdom.
