seeing/saying: February 2013

Thursday, February 28, 2013

When we happened to wind up

In Grass Valley

How could anyone believe

Old hippies at that point

In time

The grass was brown in July

Though there was still some gold

In the children pooling downstream

From their father's weed

And in the Yuba's

Magic pan

Tom McGlynn

Such a narcissist

Leave from my window

With all your sacred enemies

Loyal

The prie-dieu

Arranged backwards

Tips the balance

Toward the profane

The guttered wash

Of gargoyles

Spares the sweeper

Worry

This city is shining

Under its hill

Emptied of all

Worship

Tom McGlynn

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Rick drove a beater Chevy

Handed down by a father

Absent to luxury and

Progress

He used to gun it

Over the failing grade

Almost in hopes of

Bottoming out

His huffing chance

To rehab the body

Was clouded in

Critical aerosols

Once the final coat was sprayed

Close in his mother's garage

That one too many

Marlboro, man,

Lit up the joint like

A nova

Tom McGlynn

You get on my nerves

To know endings

And nothing becomes

A nuisance

More than a second

Becoming

Only to mete

It's tale

Tom McGlynn

These once tightly dressed walls

Slavish to randy squires

Now sprawl in splitting, open

Braced by their mansion mid-wife

To cradle the rock for coping

Obsolete stiles

Out of the wild carrots' reach

Tom McGlynn

What is improperly dependent

A barrow read can't displace

God's half-acre

Simply waiting

On it's maker

A jar transported

From a Tennessee hill

Won't retain its slip

From the underworld

These infernal chains clank

Loudest in the sun

When polished for inspection

While the cave awaits

Its molten core

Home to rest

Vertical laughter

Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

There are no more subjects to speak of

Although chalk may turn to slate

In an attempt to translate

What the clam and the mud

Hopelessly stuck

Can't relate

Monday, February 25, 2013

Don't be fancy with me

I'm not impressed upon a seal

Fashioned for judging virtue

I'm not waiting on any message

Other than your eyes

Unlined by stationary scripture

I wouldn't test your will

To please a perfect mirror

The other side of want

Exposes your singular

Given

Tom McGlynn

Who is left when all are present

Pushed up against an embankment

And executed for a crowd

Composed of slumping figures

Paying with their lives

To save a place

For showing up

Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

This is a slanted emergency

Its gravity builds from left to right

An hour skewed for stretchers

Losing heavy minutes

Once the gut starts growling

In wait for a solid meal

The ductile shapes of longing

Shingle for subsistence

Shacked in such a latitude

In angled, dirty weather

An occupant's distraction

Depends upon their leaning

Tom McGlynn

Sunday, February 24, 2013

I don't own any of this

No way to know

Whose responsible future

Might brand this claim

A repurposed waiver

Of liability

The roof is open

To the wind

Its blowing shades

Are gathered

To register the names

Given to the sky

Skin this tight effigy

Unstuff its nose

Slice wide the grimace

Made hallow

By its conquest

Make me an offer

The worst would be

That I regard it as real

When the best is discounted

For a quick dispatch

Tom McGlynn

The Welshman overseeing

The breakers

Is anthracite mad

And green longing

The boyos hate his position

Just above their boxes

Their bloody- fingered witness

Broken himself back in Sirhowy

Kicking it down the shaft

Hollering the already dispossessed

There is no romance in mining

In pimping its mineral heart

Stoked before the next firing

The Mollies would be stricken

One before his appointment

At the Carbon County gaol

Hand printed in clay

A stain to mark
This final foster village

Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Saturday, February 23, 2013

A hanged man

On the milkman's watch

Had to be called in

Seems a customer

Off Magnolia

Couldn't wait his delivery

Tom McGlynn

What was with the carnations

Indifferent stemmed

And stained

Arranged the same

As always

That failed

To last the evening

Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

I didn't expect this place

A line of rooms

Pointing East to West

To be my longest passage

Spanning three centuries

A prospect for immigrants

Bent on staking claim

To an unexpected place

Tom McGlynn

From Lake Tear of the Clouds

Down to Arthur Killl

The Hudson flushes

Churning time

Covering the waterfront

Are current ghosts

Of stevedores

Shaping up for the living

Still netted in its hold

Tom McGlynn

Friday, February 22, 2013

The blood factory will shut

Churning cells for scribing

Ink for filling moments

Empty lines of marrow

This is not a dog

But a man on watch

Snarling the allotment

Tethered to his bleeding

The blood factory will shut

A fabricated hollow

Piped out of existence

By mechanics of its stories

Tom McGlynn

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Under a rock center

On revolving door avenue

It occurred that I crossed over

From having to want not

Lightening the hole

Tom McGlynn

A Fundy fog

Comes luffing in

For Pocalogan harbor

Its wrack clinging bladder

The sea cucumber sighs

Evacuated on the tide

Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

This estate is an errand

Hiding in children

Seeking the garden

Its blue sphere cracked

In a maze under bricked

By the bonded at birth

Tom McGlynn

The crosswalk

Herringboned

Predicts the van

Silvered

Its rear guard

Hanging

Pedestrian

Hope

Tom McGlynn

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Two feet planted

Two feet planted
In dimensions known
To fox and farmer
Demarcing fields
Seasonally upturned

Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

A sovereign uncast

Flew the aerie Palisades

A vulture turning in July

Seasoned, singular, rising

Carry on summer

Cast in February light

Carving shelves of berth

Insistent on a title thrown

Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Monday, February 18, 2013

Not just glanced by the sun

It's something to you

(Worth a whit to man)

Chipped from an unsolid pond

Conformed to the sure line

Of caddis fly cabinets

And scraped gneiss

Drowned in a younger world

Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Saturday, February 16, 2013

The unforgiving may confess

When that stone is turned

The dead are parched in sockets

Quarry of the picturesque

Staring unfinished cathedrals

Giving way in apses

Acolytes of vision

Blind the lilied arches

Tom McGlynn

Friday, February 15, 2013

That telephone pole was once a pinion

Now reeking of tar for termites

On the corner of Pine Drive

Where hunched a squirrelly kid

Waiting too long for the ice cream man

Tom McGlynn

Thursday, February 14, 2013

This can't be a poem of the mourning dove

But a valentine cut soundly through

A winter fog condensed at dawn

Migrant to the coming thaw.

Tom McGlynn

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

There is no known shape to this

A stack of unread books

Props of places never traveled

Make a sculpture of the stories

Eiffel's first ambition for his tower

To refute tensile impossibilities

Was forgotten after the fair

But still left standing

An unneeded thing

Tom McGlynn

Monday, February 11, 2013

The snow came a ghost

Revived in her sledding

Down Castle Hill

Against the Hudson

Grown to flood memory

Before its melting

Tom McGlynn

Sunday, February 10, 2013

A garage of old kitchens

Channeling home and morning

Is made up for lost boys and girls

To perform another breakfast

After a long night of longing

For mom and dad's redemption

And unmaking prodigal love

Tom McGlynn

Saturday, February 9, 2013

The racked bridge at Ripton

Frost heaved and flood swept

Splinted the lower highway

Giving way to darker reaches

And an orchard's abandoned husband
Hopeful in nature's despair

Tom McGlynn

Friday, February 8, 2013

Pawns on Central

Pawns on Central
And sprayed lawns
Of sprung Dixie
Don't look away
On motel balconies
Or rented lamps
Of bonded men
And bounties

Tom McGlynn
copyright 2013

Thursday, February 7, 2013

In a dearth of small rooms

Or, large the hovel haunched

Similitude, all of a widening hole

A mummy man is unhusked for logic

And the still of an unfinished stew

Tom McGlynn

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

There's a stink on Chickasaw bluffs

Not rarely taken in

Where unfounded femurs

Perpetually dance

Around unsung fire pits

Near a bottomland oxbow

Bent by the elders

Tom McGlynn

Monday, February 4, 2013

How the hell Is a body

Disposed to beatitudes

Found floating on the tide

Sunday, February 3, 2013

There was a point back in Wisconsin

When Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo

Pulverized the cinderblock walls

Of a trailer park game room

And Pollyanna played

To blanketed families'

The conclusions from all things premised

Close packed in fungy estates

Shelter the bilious bettor

With hedges overseen

By labored day dreams

And constant gardening

Of heraldic chrysanthemums

Wall eyed to the sun

Tom McGlynn

And a footed man too ready game

Snuck in so bereft of gift

To alley prat the walking lane

Unaware the grounded shift

Tom McGlynn

Saturday, February 2, 2013

A drainage ditch that land was filled

And then again with leaching spills

Old extremes of unction weep

Blackened liners underneath

Flopping carp hold court in mud

While glossy ibis splay their feet

A big box store comes hulking next

To briny shrimp in tidal reams

Flipping figures on my oar

Cutting through the brackish kill

Friday, February 1, 2013

Clouds ranking west

Cross- cut Carolina

At a foothill altitude

Marking those pines lost

With a bone white sun

Tom McGlynn