seeing/saying: April 2013

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

A cold spring

Drips from buds

Keeping the concrete wet

All the tendril cracks

Will seek their separation

Slowly making ground

A headlong hallelujah

In halt

In vestibule steps

Stems a fervent psalm

Sweet is the waiting

Plumb

Sleeping in its pit

Dreaming of the fall

Tom McGlynn

Monday, April 29, 2013

A cast of characters

We are

Stars and mighty

Need not apply

For these poor
Traits menial

Swing the scales

Off their standard

All our kin were mad

But are now disbanded

We are a cast of characters

Crazy- faced beyond the pale

Guided by actors unemployed

Seeking homes of authors

Free

Tom McGlynn

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Down on 14th Street

And the Avenue of the Americas

A well- tempered host

Invades

All corners are marketed

And open to be sacked

The bums can't hit up

A chump for change

Sliding worldly by

Their skin of teeth

Diminished

This was our sacred reservation

(They cry)

Our Wall Street demarcation

A ragged palisade

Against those avenging angels

Who would let ride

Their positions

Over our concrete margin

Now that life's a beach

With nothing beneath 14th

How many Americas

Will get burned

To keep this avenue

Stoked

Tom McGlynn

Friday, April 26, 2013

As I arrive exhausted

My childish slate

Is erased of dusky stories

Not wanting to describe

In a late dismissal

The clarity of evening

Swept from ground to sky

Strewn

Together with

These clothes

Once close

Across the floor

Is a give of room

Lightening

And leavening

The mess

What can't be

Carpentered softly

Or fixed to set a table

Will just make my rest

Tom McGlynn

Thursday, April 25, 2013

This lite revue

Is poor transport

When all legs reach

Inconsequence

Except the forgotten

There to rip

Behind

The sequenced

Curtains

Tom McGlynn

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

When this was built

The thought entailed

In shaping life

Could be considered

Larger than

The tale in thought

That makes

A shoddy reason

Home

Tom McGlynn

Monday, April 22, 2013

A puma jumps

The taste of time

And couldn't give

A yowling maw

Sad to heaving

Cliffs of man

But moans its prey

That held the bow

Tom McGlynn

Sunday, April 21, 2013

No head in the sky

Can home

In cast comet

Nights

Unlearned

In descending

Stars

To die

Again

Tomorrow

Tom McGlynn

Saturday, April 20, 2013

There is a way of looking

You get it from me

When no one's looking

You take it all in

Now that life is captured

And a living is for children

Watch how you remember

All your glancing seconds

How did you see

Until this time

Of issues and retractions

Appearing as such

An opening

To chance

And quickly

Closing.

Tom McGlynn

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Splayed legs on porcelain

Skidding helpless

Trace a phantom web

Around the drain

No longer suspended

The spider preys

For a sticky point

To vanish

Tom McGlynn

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

The newsprint came off

With sweat

And temporary purpose

When the world was fat

With trees

All that was ground

Into wiped plates

Typical

Leaves with

The evening book

Unbound

Ink fingered

Night swallows

Show dive

And court

Currents

No longer pressed

For cover

Tom McGlynn

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

In returning

To a large garden

Specifically late

She took a part

Her harp

And tripped

Its woody vines

Clattering the daffodils

Tom McGlynn

Sunday, April 14, 2013

A rattler on a rock

Had the dog on alert

At the cut off

I took

Another rock

To cut its coil

With the sun

In its eyes

Beyond warming

The grass was

No greener then

Before the imagined strike

But after

Less taught

Then given ground

Was a comfort

My back to it

Belly up

Crawling

Against the sky

Trophied with an empty scale

Decorum lost to document

I still can't shake

My nature's poisoning

Tom McGlynn

Saturday, April 13, 2013

There are terms for that

Compromise

Desert memory

Leaving bleached remains

Named

After ceremony

To contain murmurs

White

With properties

Poorly treatied

Who would range

From hole to hole

Without a guide

Or band

To trail

Who would bring

The water back

Where to place

The searching

Bones

There are terms

For dry containers

Founded in a former rill

Named for mouths

Of emptied crescents

Handed to a thirsty moon

Tom McGlynn

Friday, April 12, 2013

A pile of leaves

Is not so far

From where

I'll be

Waiting on

Planting time

Working the scratchy

Tools of sand

Ripping roots

And piling

Stones

Dotting these

Folded hills

Weedy cairns

Set to rest

Unreasoned till

The shadows

Crossing above

Wonder aloud

When the earth

Will open

All static

Comes to mulch

A midden overgrown

With lilac bush

Tom McGlynn

Recorded bus stops

Don't impart

Destiny

Just a location

Prompted

By a driving

Past

A secretary's voice rises

Over the diesel

Suggesting that you

Wait your turn

Tom McGlynn

Thursday, April 11, 2013

A basket of wires

And replacement laces

Conspire to entangle

The morning

These weigh more

Than should

Utility

On the mind

Undone

Otherwise

Everything is

Netted

A dodging trip

Sends one flying

Looping to be cached

Tom McGlynn

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

The wind shelter

Lacks decorum

Stripped of pretense

For purpose

Braced around

A hollow

Old manners beat

Mercilessly spent

Neither asked

Nor given

To sway a purpose

Lost

Still the blow

Continues

Gaining in its trough

Tom McGlynn

Monday, April 8, 2013

Orange- tiled stalls

Of surplus design

Port us through

Authority

The shuffling beat

In cardboard shoes

Are junk fed

To a catty moon

Their tickets don't so much

Get punched

As choked in slots

Of civil works

Bricks of orange

Burnt and laid

Happy wait

The wandered

Course

Tom McGlynn

A slow mind in spring

Drifts along sidewalks

Forgetting street furniture

And winter inventories

For a time suspended

In mid afternoon

Saturday, April 6, 2013

These machines don't rest

Supporting night

A bat dives

Past their gathering arc

Because its nose

Is burned of distant ears

Black air

Loud in static

Circles

A restless compass

Tom McGlynn

These little prisons

Inside of nothing

Lay block upon

Our cavity

In time not my own

But not yet owned

I climbed

The sweet gum

Of native camps

Shinning bark

And pressing

Felt

This yard

Of exercise

Is now contained

A measure of

Estates

Locked inside

A wobbled cell

Tom McGlynn

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Empty your eyes

I keep smashing up

Against their glaze

Closing for battle

Branches leave

Without their arms

Your thinning brood

Must have fledged

Without a song

To perch

Tom McGlynn

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The fact of the sun

Hangs infinitely black

In the after image

Its honeyed warmth

Refills the night

Fattening sight

For sacrifice

A candled egg

Divines the dawn

Looking past

Its future shell

Tom McGlynn

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Impatiently the broom awaits

This room was done

And done again

And further done

To scare the webs

Of dirty thoughts

And cleaning flies

No anticipation mounts

Tidy in this cell of straw

Tom McGlynn

Between the star and the bed

The beetled sheets

Hook upon

A scuttled dream

Night floods the part

Of heaving wrack

Combed upon

A sleepless shelf

April caused

An early rise

Set by watches

Unaware

Tom McGlynn

Monday, April 1, 2013

The sound bent

Around the hill

Popping in spring

Automatic death

March over

Cruelty

Turns in its sleep

A train curves too

Working behind my back

Escaping with its freight

Tom McGlynn