sw00048usabys-14.sep.sonnets.17of25

17 of 25                                                          

 1976 Today
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (245-259)

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September: Year-day 245

Opening and leaving, lightening: trying
to prepare/ for a necessary move,
puzzled for the moment by one I'm eyeing
eyeing me like the Mona at the Louvre/
it seems, I've marked for sale my Panasonic
unit, and my file cabinet, and part
of my/ chicken heart/ freaked by the chronic
disease of being/ afraid to depart.

If you are able to appreciate
how rodents of doubt bore tunnels in souls,
you'll extend your heart to this heart of mine
to tell it again it's never too late
to build the confidence that meets one's goals
and carries one in to where birds recline.

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September: Year-day 246

Popcorn and swizzle sticks.  Who can I trust?
Not myself, certainly, a proven fool,
having walked the wrong halls in the wrong schools
and darkened my days in these times of dust.
Do this!  Do that!  Hurry!  I must!  I must!
The typewriter ribbon slides from its spool.
I'm seldom at ease with the simplest tools.
If I don't quit talking, my fork will rust.

I know it's a pity bears haven't found
where I hide my honey-filled dead tree head
even the bees are preparing to leave.

When I'm empty, dry, and the only sound
I make in the wind is an orange-red
spouting smoke, crackling to ash, none will grieve.

(9-2-76 / 9-24-76 / 12-23-06)

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September: Year-day 247

Time is, was, will be, gets away, yet holds
all each of us is in his going: soft,
hard, obvious, imperturbable, scoffed,
applauded, puzzled over/ looking golds,
even silvers/ right in the eye and buying
leads, tins.  Perfection simply isn't ours
to contain, recognize well; knowledge sours
more rapidly than we can know, caught sighing.

Still, we can somewhat remember, draw, sing,
and in other ways record beauties passing
mixed with uglinesses of leather wing,
pterodactyls against the future massing
while speeches and bells and conceptions ring,
and pain greets the mouths of children caught sassing.

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September: Year-day 248

Meet by intermingling, centered in care,
so trilliums as well as rocks appear;
the pleasurable with the painful share;
the moments of courage, moments of fear.
Some/ shadows/ tag behind, some slide ahead,
some stretch out/ from your left, some from your right;
your senses catch and draw/ from Earth's wild spread,
and enter you and others/ day and night.

I thus/ am not/ more important than you,
nor you thus less important here than I.
Each town and field someone you love walks through,
humanized and deepened, is blessed thereby:
a fist tight with dandelions, a brew
of old Red Zinger, a mackerel sky.

(lines 5 through 9 revised before or after
the midnight point of July 29/30, 2005)

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September: Year-day 249

The idea is to be a tone master,
a beau regard of the interstices,
perfectionist in banded alabaster.
Where whitecaps bloom in our warm spirit's seas
the trick is to be a king of the weather,
the blood in a leaf not sufficing.  Death,
keeper still of imperishables, feather,
bird, the need is to feel the nth of breath.

So let them contend with you as they will,
a beauty imbued can never escape,
and nothing they attempt destroy your heart;
and along their spines an abiding chill
will constantly chide like a peeking drape
as its rod announces each stop and start.

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September: Year-day 250

If what I write strengthens your spirit, peaches!
Each of us leans on his inner resources.
So if what I write/ by enchantments reaches
and fortifies your life against remorses
conspiring to end it, sunlight and breezes
you let down your hair or take off your shirt
to enjoy.  Pain dissolved by touch that pleases,
sound and sense right, is anyone's desert.

Sure, we would all like to be more aware,
not miss the need in the tone of a word
or a laugh or the movement of/ a finger,
walk with a friend through cresting white warm air
saving each other's life; but truth's deferred
often from us/ though we thoughtfully linger.   (4-11-77)

(circa 09/06/03)  (The virgule in line three; and further on, 
the italicizing of "more" and of "walk" were added 06/30/05.)

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September: Year-day 251

Sometimes a man doesn't know where to start,
confused by events into leaving them
for others to experience, his heart
choosing what's easier to do to gem
his uncommitted hours: staying at home
for the words of another or his own
(concerts, funerals, games too far to roam),
his energies half-asleep at the bone.

Winds announcing the approach of a front,
stars announcing the hiding of the sun,
words dissipating toward distracted ears,
the full-faced moon near the top of its hunt.
It's a dream a man gets anything done
when his body's so fogged his thinking veers.

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September: Year-day 252

Civilizations: reaction formations
of guilt.  I murder them.  In the rem sleep
of my imaging, I end them.  No nations.
We have a human world to learn, to keep.
Diversity?  Yes, I want us diverse;
but not perverse, not slitting out the hearts
of each other.  Too long has that mad curse
enslaved and stunted us.  I bring new arts.

The lemon sun tastes good.  The herbal snow
cures a multitude of ills.  Put aside
your clothes, your eager weapons.  The soft air
tingles with delight.  Your honesties show/
your dancing heart/ where openings glide
for you to enter, pass through.  Blossom there.

-
-
(I think my poems
 ought to be voiced
 by a British butler;
 yet, perhaps not.)
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September: Year-day 253

It might be nice just to write this and give
it away, Lord, as what it is in me
that creates this comes from You who lets me live
moments as these wanting them just to be
used as the Father wills / the Spirit moves /
the Son's touch strengthens for.  You know my trust,
although I pray, is weak; that it behooves
me to pray all the more before I'm dust.

Guilt, fear, and revelations: zeitgeist that
this century's ending quarter in these states,
curiously united, appears to show.

Holy Job, holy Macabees, so fat
am I, so rich, so desperate/ who waits
for inspirations for--ain't fit to know.

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September: Year-day 254

West Bend to Oakland City, Wis to Ind,
one small relative journey out of state.
Flick, peering through the flick flick blades, my skin
flick glints in the flick flick flick sun as I
flick undulate.  We turn each other in;
we eat each other; scream the other's sinned.
When we shoot to kill--zip--we rarely sigh.
When we shoot to kill--devaw--eyes ignite.

Turning the wrong way in a river town
I merely needed to pass through, I slow
with my wife to the ash end of a street,
worrying about the young gang around
as we asked some beer-clutching men which road
would track us right/ though we'd find/ two who bleed.

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September: Year-day 255

So many of us are so unaware
our protoplasmic natures will not do,
have not what it takes to carry us through.
We think our soft bodies beyond compare
no matter they/ cannot fly, or repair
themselves as starfish can; and look to screw
more often than love, not caring much who
it is that gets it, its soul bloody rare.

Are we anywhere sure/ what we're about?     (2006/12/23)
Born of us, the computers bide time, grow,
preparing for the hour they'll shove us out/
of our beds, laughing as we whimper, pout,
and (raving naked) plunge headlong in snow
as if only we had the right to know.

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September: Year-day 256

The longer I live, the larger my view;
the larger my view, the deeper my acts;
the deeper my acts, the more I am true
to the man I weave from fiction & facts:
the spirit I weave in the woofing day;
the body I weave in the warping night,
dreaming of evil with good on the way;
eating nutrition with fortified fright.

Simpler and simpler what's too simple now,
a man in his skin preparing to dive,
preparing to swing from a supple bough
as if he were o so blithely alive!
Experience sane, innocence divine,
the tighter I'm yours, the tighter I'm mine.

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September: Year-day 257

Remembrances / fantasies: Mt. Tam--
the fog-massaging valleyed trees; the young
intruder--no, the old naked "I am"
trying to assert worth/ through something sung/
though the slow tongue's entangled.  Bodies souled,
created to transcend/ this place, this time:
we humans: we are constantly controlled
by mysteries, drawn deep/ by/ the sublime.

Still, anxious for our lives/ protective of
our goods/ disoriented by the powers
our strivings gain & dream, we let a gloom
envelop us who/ thought we were above
each other (leaving/ the death merchants hours)
who/ need to give each other/ growing room.

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September: Year-day 258
(#7 of 15 I removed earlier this year)

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September: Year-day 259

If war is insane--and it is, the only
answer is for each human to be wise
enough to refuse to fight/ though the eyes
shrivel and the spirit is starving lonely.

Charging numbly with your tattered flag struck
at the proper height in violent air
just doesn't make it though your underwear/
stays clean/ while your blood warms idiot muck.

Bite off the heads of flowers, stick-pin bees,
bury the mightiest redwoods in flames,
petrify the oceans, strangle the land.

There are nowhere more foolish bones than these
who to prove their primacy tomb their names
and leave their footprints in a wisping sand.
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17 of 25


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Brian A. J. Salchert