Tuesday, December 31, 2013

This shell of room


This shell of room
Enclosing site
In light- trapped
Artificial white
Two windows
Glare from
Curtained tight
To ward the cold
Insistent bite
Of fires ate
Pursuing light
Now vacating
Winter's sight
This shell of room
Is lardered night
























Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

The cherry tree


The cherry tree
Is sawn
Not dead
Just sleeping
Roots push up
The sidewalk
Insistent in a fashion
Conceit of a way
Made possible
By planting and planing
A map of a world
Made up in time
And time again
Which seams
Relieve the cracking
Ever cracking
A let
To play that game




















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Monday, December 30, 2013

Oh judge


Oh judge
Bark eaters will chew
Their opinions
Always
Before your pen is put
The lake mirror
Seeing
Both fog and rock
The same and frozen
Cloud split
In their fables

Oh judge
Slipping over hemlock
Fat birch and thick fir
The summit will forever
Be a reach from here
Muddied in turns

Field mice play over
Retiring robes
And patent springs
Won't trap their tails
Whipping across
A restive bench

Adjourn, adjourn
The succession you seek
Is in forest
A start within weeds
Then a climax rule
To wood again
With precedent
Musty and giving way
Underfoot

















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Breaking now


Breaking now
The bray-bray
Breaking now

Hows I feel
The winds
Thuh wi-wi winds
Tug-tug tugging
At the blackety- black
Black black

Sprink and inkling
Pop-pop
Popping light
Spray a-raying
Tac- tacking
Crowned around
Me heads
Me heads so light
In spin in-inning

Dried awried
It burns in turns
In turns it burns
It burns urns-urns

Slap slap slap
Tacks the tac-tac wind
It winds and spins
Thuh wi-wi winds
Now how- how
I feels and reels
The breaking now
The bray-bray
Breaking now



















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Thank you


Thank you
For putting us up
For putting up
With us
"We" who are
Under serving
Of your putting
Up with
Us who as we
Put up
Should shut up
And quit putting up
With your off- putting
"We"
So no
Thanks to you
"We" must be
Putting now
















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Arriving in a land of snow


Arriving in a land of snow
Windswept over
Royal grants
Stretching long
St. Lawrence shadows
Windrows
Across a barely gleaned
Young- dying day
I lock fingers
Ungloved and cracked
Wheeling toward the streets
Of Montreal
Slush frozen

Iron bridges
Thrown to breach
The floe -choked seaway
Shudder freshly
Over-salted

Pedestrian pilgrims
In single file
Lit by neon bars
And cash machines
Cold station sentinels
Silver- spired
In provincial congregation
Elbow by homeless
Riverfront silos
Vaulting awkwardly
Unconsecrated

What ever- bloody voyager
Shoed this mount
Frozen- footed
Mouth steaming
To drive another
Winter’s vane

Vapor- lit
The high steps
Of an outside foyer
Curve against ice
Jammed in pockets
I remember



















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Thursday, December 26, 2013

What follows


What follows
Is innocence

The word
Whole-shrouded
Has had its sheet
Short or long
To cotton
Sentenced evil
And afraid

What follows
Is innocence
On death watch
Breaking bread
To eat the terms
Rising inhumane
To the last

Nothing original sins
What follows is innocence


















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Boxed out


Boxed out
Of narrow light
Even this beam
Can't lay hold
Of bars
Tightening
Out of worlds

Obscurely
Nothing dawns
No pleasure dome
Is draft enough

Everyday epiphanies
Are brought up
Barnacled
The worst being
Muscle bound

Rise up
Rise up
And out
Of your striding sleep
Cribbed
In shallow wafting 

Your second coming
Slouching
Waits


















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Never ready


Never ready
The year
Stood up
Becomes
A weight

Pressure drops
Between the rain
Between the moons

Between the hail
Of moments lost
Futile to come
Banging down

To full
The banging
Stop
Now there's
A trick
Unsought
Of then

History yet
Comes written
Down
Banging
Down
Unsought of
Then















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Saturday, December 21, 2013

The light


The light
Slant grid
On planks
Wide-wintered
Shortened
To reach its mirth

This morning
Who can't decide
To continue
The dance

No wrath of ice
Can glinting last
Shackled to mercury feet






















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Thursday, December 19, 2013

The salt grass


The salt grass
Surrenders
The creek
To reeds
Bedded tight
And foreign

Marsh wrens
Rudder steady
Plying insect
Frequencies

A muskrat
Submerges
A skin
To rise again
As a cedar stain

The osprey
Steadies
Its bream in talons
Held to 
Piercing
The rushing wind

















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Whose complex


Whose complex
Torquing spirit
Unformed
By shares
In Elysium
Can rend
This torso
Hole

Why labor so
To arm yourself
The age of bronze
Has yet to cast
A will to reach
And need to stand
Now that time
Has come
To rest

Lose the wax
From your investment
What hollows are all
That's real

















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

The source of heat


The source of heat
Stove through

I sing glass
And coal
What wasn’t
Seemed
To crystallize
As geometric
Huddled
Secret until
Blasted through

(The slag
In tailings
Scorified
The waiting
Cold abandoned)

The source of heat
Stove through
A port
Able to be
Moved












Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

A clearing


A clearing
In this out
Door
Room to
Dally
Close thicket
Around
Hedging
Our beta
Angels
Ceilinged by
The swallow sky
Moving in
Restless
Per suite
















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

The gloom


The gloom
Husk fallow
And wind shucked
Spinning on
Frozen silk
Gathers around it
A rattle
Gold worthless
Even mold spot
Arrested

Low hung
The stars
Are tripped
Premature
Shorting
Their cheer

A cold morning
Late to wake
Sleeps restive
And shallow
Racing its breath
On glass
Polished silver

Puddles expand
Breaking roads
Into oceans
Deep riven fires
The gloom dimly
Piercing













Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Monday, December 16, 2013

My word


My word
Nothing
Is yet elastic
To snap at
The suggestion
Of survival
Which pits
Something
Against some
Thing
In order to
Gain some
Kind
Of traction
Laid out
As in
The penal colony
Waiting for
The other
Stylus
To drop
A declaration
Of interdependence

Your words
Taste like
Cardboard
In my mouth
Let me adjust
Your confession
Until they sweetly
Bleed
For your fits
Part in mine


















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Saturday, December 14, 2013

In time was hoarded


In time was hoarded
The puffing steam
Of a brown mare boarded
By a frozen stream
Blanketed, her head
Points west
Her hoofs stamp dead
A mouse's nest
Whose small brood
Was yet too bare
To be stabled with food
Like the mare

















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Friday, December 13, 2013

One thin use


One thin use
Of the fast-grown
Cottonwood
Is its shade
Barking up
Arroyos

A storm
Short-tempered
Thick limbs away
Slakes a promise
To flood
To melt the clay
And cast the man
Beyond each dry
Defining sun

Anvil clouds
Chain the mountains
With stitches of light
And evaporate
Sparking nothing but static
From the creosote bush

Under this stand
Fire weeds have lodged
Too dry to leave

Throwing shade
The cottonwood crown
Inspires loyalty
But no hope
It's bad wood
For building
As another storm
Makes a smoky approach






















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Before the quarry


Before the quarry
Filled
In the Triassic
Red-bed
Turning over
A raptor's print
Beneath
The beer cans
And neglect
I shalely slipped
Upon
A premise
Split in time
From muddy
Banks
To run on
Free
To hunt
With meat
Abandon
Hope
To roll in clay
To tar the canvas
Of my skin
To claw
A mark
Precarious
Found before
The quarry
Filled















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

There is a way


There is a way
Of dying
Not yet out
Of fashion
Still
In upper rooms
Familied largely
By daughters
And sons
Late to the last
Gasping after
Noon
Still
Slipping on
Garage- sold toys
A kin to wonder
To sustain
Their children
Dancing
Not falling
Still
Broken
And not fixed


















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Then you arrived


Then you arrived
Already made
Of alabaster
Carved in part
From these my
Fumbling fingers
And toes
Foregoing their grip
Tripping on stairs
That
Rising like pews
Cross- sawn
Oaken ladders
Impeded a saintly
Assumption

Shine lightly on
This rushed apprentice
Who wildly straws
His setting fresco
The original plan
Was to complete
The sky
Before your
Immaculate grain
Was borne
Reeling
In the clouds

















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Monday, December 9, 2013

Sometimes


Sometimes
A great notion
Takes drowning
In stride
Walking under
Water
Not flying
With the fishes

Small bubbled
Escaping
Each word
Contains itself
Free of sentence
Breaching at
The surface
Tension curved

Sometimes
A song
Is just
The blues
Schooling














Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Sunday, December 8, 2013

The withered palms


The withered palms
Of Sassafras
And pointed
Sweetgum fruits
Litter childlike
Rolling
Hills down
Into fields
Thence given
To free ways
To wheels
Ground to eat
Up scenery
Sojourning truth
And lies abandoned
In motel pools
False ponds
To leap
From whether
To whether
Never too long
On landing

Above my head
The trees go
All veiny
Like atlas maps
Taped and torn
From use
And a false spring's
Inconstant motion

No shelter
Leaned to
In violets
Thresh holds
This grass
Of yellow
Dying light
In December















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Friday, December 6, 2013

When overtaken


When overtaken
By the youth
Of old
This here
Scrubbed pine
Got carved
A land marked
Oozing pitch

Gasping at
Tiny tundras
Wreathed
And ungrabbed
Moss
I claw my way
Inoriginal
Followed closely
By a fly
Of clouds

The die here
A small mirror
Tractless
Faints into
A whiff
Of sphagnum
It spores
Carried
Off to bed
















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Heade's "The Coming Storm"


Heade's "The Coming Storm"
Is an impossible
Curve
Of harbor
Where a monstrous
Halibut draped
Deflects
The drowning sun
In a sail
Of dirty weather
Which figures
A clear-minded
Fisher
Who whiles
Grounded
Noting
A tiny triangle
Composed
Declining to reef
Its canvas before
An impossible curve
Of harbor

























Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Who would extend


Who would extend
Contempt
Étranger, étrangère
For the love
Of a emigrant
Heart
The very one
Who would embark
Who would inspire
Étranger, étrangère
Contempt
For the love
Of an emigrant
Heart
The very one
That was once
Beneath
Étranger, étrangère
Contempt
For the love
Of an emigrant
Heart
The very one
Who would
Inspire





















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Uncommitted


Uncommitted
Unbound
Chaptered off
Lightly
The center folds

One wrong
Might right
The arrow
Degree
To kill the
Job of Vision

Unhabit
You wimpled
Maids
Sappers
Have shot
Their force
To report
Exhausted
Quaker guns

Call forth
Your fifths
For fits
Are sure
To fort
Investing
Seconds

Woe be it
That this
Is this
In stead
Of that
Which parries
One
















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Sunday, December 1, 2013

The squirrel


The squirrel
Outside
On the utility wire
Paused 
At the transom
In consideration
Of the nested nut
Abstract
Within

How hungry
Might be
It's balance
In wasting
No light
Hurrying on
A shadow
Escaping
Grey
















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Poets are scarcer


Poets are scarcer
Than pumas now
Boxed in
Lobo canyons
They hunt for
Caves
And finding none
Their claws
Are left
Dangling
From businessmen
Trapping taxis
And Mexican
Virgins

Miraculously
Extinct

The border wars
Are over now
And meat to grind
Crosses through
Plastic yet
Lyrically cost

This old paper
Back when
Pulp was
Still wood
Yellows like
A lioness
Dead




















Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013