these new days
leave me
each one

as new men
each one

grasping
with fingers
so desperate
and hopeful
and clean

at meanings in
the sunrises

these skyline visions
lie and move
features of a great
sleeping beast

and we all creep as its parts
in the dark

suzanne
of the
long haired night
you
tremble in yr sleep
then turn over into
peace

i hate to see you
stumble in the storm
but
on occassion
the wind
and the light
and the multitude of dazzling
characters

will catch you
falling
just right

this mist
obscures
the peaks of
the Verazano
as these mornings
obscure myself

idol worship

Ernest Hemmingway drove an ambulance during the Great War

"the great interests of man: air and light, the joy of having a body, the voluptuousness of looking."

-Mario Rossi

525 Mountain

525 Mountain

I bought an umbrella on Wednesday. White, with a white handle. It’s the kind conscientious women buy when they’re getting married; I suppose it looks good in photos. I was thinking of using it to turn a poem into a sculpture.
This was just after the usual drive to work. I started the trip on the turnpike, in a gray haze that made the buildings and the sky seem like part of the same work in progress. The buildings looked untouchable, yet eerily close at the same time, as if hovering just above my dashboard, barely out of reach. From there, I exited onto Rt. 525, where, for at least 9 months, a crew of men has been either building a mountain or taking it down. Enormous vehicles circle endlessly up and down this giant mound of dirt, and the number of machines in use there increases daily, seemingly exponentially. On Wednesday, there was all of this, plus an airplane.
A good friend of my father’s used to have a plane that he would jump out of nearly every day, at least in the summer. I remember asking him once what it was like to fall through a cloud. He always looked at the uppermost edge of something, like a beach umbrella or a flagpole, in preparation for explaining something this important. All he could seem to come up with this time was that falling through a cloud is wet. He said that, the first time it happened to him, he thought it had started raining.
Yesterday, on the drive to work, it was raining and it was not raining. It felt like there was a sick student’s spittle suspended in the air all around me. Men in yellow hats had begun building a wall around the mountain, so I was thinking I would never be able to tell just what it was they were doing. For the first time, a red truck with a rainbow colored umbrella above it was parked at the site, selling breakfast sandwiches and hotdogs, so I figured that whatever was going on had to be something important.
When I got home, I watched something on TV about art and craters. Apparently lying in a crater keeps the horizon from seeming too hazy and the center of the sky from seeming too clear. So, if you’re lying on your back in a crater, the sky has the same degree of clarity no matter where you look. With the proper consciousness, said the astronomer who described all of this, this clarity makes you feel unimaginably close to the sky, as if you are in the atmosphere, and one with the universe. He spoke just like an artist, low and slow, only without the hesitation. He looked right at the camera.
This morning, I noticed that they had finally put a sign at the bottom of the 525 mountain, yellow and black, official. It’s tiny, and half hidden behind the wall. I was driving too fast to see it on my way to work.
I quit my job today. My students worked and didn’t work. Mostly, they made plans for the summer. I did everything I could to make sure they looked in the proper place as they painted, but nothing I did was successful.
On the drive home, I slowed down in front of the sign. A woman blared her horn, and the guy at the hotdog stand shook his head at me, wiping earth from his eyes. All I managed to read on the sign was something about a gravel company. So the only conclusion I can come to is that they are selling the mountain. I still don’t know whether they are putting it up or taking it down.

cool.

Tried to leave this as a comment but my internet service is being selective as to what windows it will open. Arg..

I think writing short stories is a great idea, not only because it can help with publications, but because it can help us address subject matter we may struggle to address in our poetry. I think it's often liberating to work outside of our usual medium.

PLUS it will kill more time at work.

"They say if you get far enough away, you'll be on your way back home."
~Tom Waits "Blind Love"

In an attempt to create a complete body of work, as writers, I thought it would be "cool" if we all tried our hands (quite literally) at writing a short story.

The idea here is to have it all published in The Idiom (I hope), our "sister magazine," if you will. And further more, to start shopping a more complete body of work around to be published by a larger publishing house (no offense mark, I love you).

After speaking with a few of you, I thought this would be a great idea since alot of authors write poetry and short stories and novels etc etc etc. Also, I just thought it would be nice to see some more stuff come from Walking English and end up in the Idiom as well.

The target being to have a final draft/post up on the website in July that would accumulate to anywhere from 2-6 pages, I'd say...but you tell me.

If putting it on Walking English worries anyone about plagarism, we could always mail it directly to the idiom or pass it amongst ourselves for constructive criticisms, cheers, sneers and Pam Griers.

Comments, Questions and Criticism are all greatly appreciated.

before pulling taut our answers

we slept

a slack hammock of questions

"To hell with the universe. Think of something."

-from Endgame, Samuel Beckett

I don't really know anymore
what's real
maybe someday
you can move back here
and we can be who we are
in all those dreams that we dream
or maybe
you're just my muse
something to fall in love with
on weekdays
when it's quiet enough
to think back and feel
the echo of memories
sting me in the gut

I remember why
I'm the ugly casanova
'cause you make me feel
like I've got it all

even with your
flirtatious criticisms
as we go back and forth
inflating
deflating
eachother's egos
just to see
who will lean in first

When I think of you
I think in poetry
and it all makes sense
every line sounds rehearsed
every smile seems faked

when I talk to you
I talk in poetry
it's gritty and real
but it just sounds so pretty
'cause I'm talking to you

You took the wheel again
and we began sliding back
down dark city streets
bellie's full of beer
and our hearts filled with youth
once again

here we are
rainy city streets
will always remind me of you
smiling back at me
from the driver seat
as I grip the dash
'cause you're way too close
on my side of the road
'cause you're way too close
for me not to fall in love again

every exit is an entrance somewhere else

-hamlet or rosencrantz and gildenstern are dead

to begin
as a movie
somewhere in the middle
with backstory

but to begin all the same
and wonder
if the phonix
perching with new eyes
still possesses memories

of what the old ones saw

the girl who likes rain
digs her nails in
the small of my back
like suggestion

all we are is eyes in the night
adjusting

when i said she looked great in the wind
i meant

the world was frozen breathless
it and the bustling just ceased all the spinning
an axis undescernable
only her hair filled up with dancing momentum
in all the punctuated static

i was telling her everything

and when she shifted one converse over the other
said thank you, tilted her head to the south

she was honest and subtle

her brown curles settled
and the rest began to unwind again