Drip Drip Drip

While (the Heir of Lambton)
was away the thing grew too
big for the well, and came out
and began to ravage the
countryside. At length it
got so big that it coiled itself
three times around Lambton
HIll, and every night it had to
be given the milk of seven cows
to keep it quiet.

-- from the tale “The Worm
of Lambton Hill,” in Briggs,
Fairies in Tradition and Literature

... Against his will
he led them to the earth-vault he alone knew,
an underground barrow near the sea-billows
and heaving waves, heaped inside
with exquisite metalwork. The one who stood guard
was dangerous and watchful, warden of that trove
buried under the earth; no easy bargain
would be made in that place by any man.

-- Beowulf 2409-16, transl. Heaney

Lord, sometimes I get so tired
of orating this same mythic crap
where history and mystery
crash at a shore of welcomes
and farewells, blah blah blah:
Even blue at its wildest tide
hammers in a drone when
that’s the only tone to register
inside all days. It’s 4:30 a.m.
and we’re in the rainy season
at last -- hard pours for
two days as the afternoon
seabreeze fronts strolled over.
This hour is now a thick
heave of those sated lungs,
lush and verdant, crickets
weaving a dazed ooze
of something labial and
creamy and darkly, darkly
sweet -- mmmm. Our cat
sprawls in sleep on the
couch across from me,
a furred familiar, her surrender
to this rich and drifting-dreamy,
ruddering somehow my song.


Outside one of the strays we feed
seems sick and could by dying,
not eating well for a week,
vomiting whatever he gets down,
waiting a little farther off the
porch each day when I go out
to feed him and his brother and
their even-more-errant mother.
Dunno if we can catch him
to get him to the vet --- he’s
so intrinsically wary -- and
there may not be much that
can be done with him if
its HIV or leukemia, except
to let him love what remains
and then -- gently, gently --
put him down.




There’s a drip drip drip
of sadness in these days,
a slowly filling
dark gold cup which
one day we’ll be forced
to drink to dregs &
give up some ghost of
our former happy days.
The drops come at us
from every thing we
live and have our being:
our parents aging past
the sere; cats everywhere
getting sick; our finances
getting slowly worse;
our house in need of repairs
I cannot do nor can
afford to pay someone
to come out to fix; this
season slowly gathering
in its wild bellows the
hurricanes of August
and September, whirls
sure to wreak over this
way or over friends
and family nearby; our
country’s economy
in bad arrears, paying only
to the rich; the world’s
modernity corroding
something in the soul;
our CO2s eroding ozones
in the atmosphere and
ice packs north and south
so imperceptibly we
can’t even hear the
drip drip drip of
the faucet which will
drown the coasts;
and this poem is
stuck exactly here
with its massive coils
wound three times
around my throat and
heart and loins, too big
for anyone’s damn good
and darkening the
merriment which once
made green its woods.
Sheesh. Is there any
other way, Lord, than
through this dreary
pit of sea-bottoms
and heart-darks and
unremitting fires
my loins will never
meet, much less sate?
This way-too-early
morning barrow is stacked
high with fine metalwork
and bottles of spilt
whiskey, with surf-billows
and crossed-Oh cunts and
asses, a trove of verboten
booty no one cares to read.
Just who will hold the
pen which writes free
of this dank wild den
of susurrant, labial delights,
the quintessence of
a thousand 4 a.m.s
writing withouts in belching
rage? Let me know, Lord:
gift my hand with whatever
willingness it takes
to praise this darkness
off the page, if Your
work so recommends
my own. I just keep
on keeping down
the bowel-like vaults
of night, my plashing
feet in counterpoint
to the drip drip dripping
from all that’s slowly
leaking through the roof--
sea-water, blood, sweat
and spume of ten
thousand beds, ink of
the oldest kind,
cobaltish lucence
spilled from ancient
lands whose thrall
I ever am. There I
go, I’ve done it again,
I’ve writ the same damn
sing song poem. Remit
it somewhere Lord,
if that’s Your will.
Seal it in one of
these emtpy bottles
and dispatch it on Your
tide. Ferry its insatiable
blue to the dryest shore
beyond where other
all the other lost angels
choir the salted breadth
of You: Or just drown
it beyond my view
of night and dreamy
lush garden and the
sad confines of a life;
remit it blue for blue.