I Could Have Been A Contender
I should be building houses and saving frightened animals.
I should be walking on the moon or captaining a submarine.
Instead, I’ve an ear cocked in the dark, straining at the stool of poetry,
worshipping the minutes as the hours tip-toe past on the way to the lav.
There are only so many days to waste, so many years on the calendar,
and here I am pushing words around, a somewhat literate bully.
Morpheus snickers while Venus strokes my purple fur.
The dark lasts longer every morning and I’m dancing with the dog.
A full moon last night, casting its moony-eyed spell,
planets zigzagging, stars gone off in their merry manner,
and I’m lying here like the prince of poetry and punning.
A world on fire and floodwaters rising round our necks
and I’m trying to say something that will make any difference.
Every day is a new start, so instead why not a career in evil?
Why not run for political office or overcome a fear of flying?
At my age now, and every year is a stone in my mouth.
Every morning is a challenge I’m too bullheaded to disavow.
Disappointed with myself and others, I can barely find the words.
It’s all I can do to finish this sentence.
© Susan Weiman: Clapton wall in Brooklyn
The Grand Illusion
Another fine day in the Anthropocene Era.
Another day commuting between neither here nor there.
Polishing our wordy brasses. Making music out of air.
Going that little bit farther into the forest,
suitably lost and finding comfort in our confusion.
One more morning, thank the stars, in the Grand Illusion,
among windfall and apparitions and visceral scents.
Shoring the flesh. Numbering the evergreens. Mending fences.
Another day of strolling about, sentient and conscious.
Above the earth, and not under the Terran confluence
of latitude crossing longitude. The last man standing,
everything that needs saying is already said.
Another day overseeing affliction and lament,
chartering my leaky craft, staunching the blowback and backdraft.
And it’s all going remarkably well, considering the alternative.
That silence that comes at the end of the day and keeps on going
Making Things
A portrait of creation’s spark,
opus and epic of the right hand,
whirlwind invention beginning here,
the mind’s glistening corpus
rifling a subconscious index,
a bit of neuronal foreplay,
the manufacture that makes a mind,
our clever monkey antics
giving us the handgun and lightbulb,
telescopes and buzzbombs and soda pop,
wristwatches, nerve gas, opium…
The mind that gives the gift
of spirituality and conscience.
Small wonder we need to rest come night.
When we dream through frenetic slumber.
Godlike and feral.
The Hive’s Heart
At the heart of the hive
is a kitchen warmly lit in midwinter.
There’s a voice describing gold and yellow,
their small but many differences.
At the heart of the hive
is a vase containing buttercups.
There’s an altar and a candle,
offerings to the god of suns.
Unearthly music can be heard,
an allurement sending bees into madness,
those clever carpenters and wheelwrights,
those busy emissaries with love on their lips.
How brief are their lives, how sweet their desperation.
A Poem Because Of Helen
This poem is dedicated to the last cut cord of wood.
To the hobgoblins behind insomnia’s pressboard paneling.
To the bloodless holes inside my hands.
The unswerving daylight of dreams and nightmares.
To the amethyst heart. The Cretaceous Period.
This poem is for you, the stranger, the strange, the estranged,
summer’s sandcastles washed away, youth throttled,
the demon drink let loose from its cracked carafe.
A product of the many for the few,
this poem was written under water in the rush of days,
mendicant August affording little truck with patience.
This poem is a dog barking and the quiet of an Etruscan tomb.
This poem is because of Helen, and despite her,
that honeyed flirt come back like an obscured Lazarus.
Like Gorgon’s daughter combing the snakes out of her hair.
Who turns back toward the Underworld, without rescue.
A crow now. A pillar of salt in a desert.