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-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
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-- poems from --
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-- HOME --
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-- by --
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-- TOBY OLSON --
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2.
It could surely become more involved: we'd
say things about structure
the sexual possibilities
of every flat surface in the house
and the round surfaces also
and the pointed ones: all
the possible pleasures of invention.
There are new objects constantly:
this week
a table and a chest
We walk out in our new coats:
we become more involved with each other.
4.
I cannot altogether formulate what I mean
Our love is bondage or a migraine
headache we possess in common
Slow poison of my stomach
I cannot for long eat food in another place
And then too, you come, sideways
often at the wrong times into my life
my thoughts
Agent
who would not like a fist fight
with someone he did not know
You have to touch them
which is intimate.
5.
Sometimes, when we have spoken,
you have carried those things with you,
however foolish: to work
in the lunch room -- I have
taken them too: the specific
touch of your body, whatever woman
I talk to, and you
are doing the same
with the men: we
enter the conversation
together.
6.
Outside the wind is serious
that which enters
the cracked window
is tentative. we believe that
we have controlled something
tangible. in our lives, we say
we live in the eye
of a hurricane.
down
bay-side, the wind is furious.
unaccountably: the ocean
is flat and calm: at the same time
in our lives, we say
hard things to one another: hate,
and then we love each other:
out, at the Cape's end
it comes together.
17.
Fresh blossoms
as if it weren't enough
that you left this morning
and I discover them
alone, and can't give them a name.
It's Fall already
the blossoms seem new though,
yellow, possibly
Queen Anne's Lace? or King Henry's
Venerable Crawler --
who knows
what evil lurks in a name?
The wind
is no longer warm
it goes _through_ the weeds
and not over them as before,
tho the sun's still bright.
Gone,
and so I have to write this lament
doubly for the two of us: myself yesterday
and the one who is here now
not knowing the names of flowers
foreign in his posture
bent down over them,
a gesture of protest against
absence.
Who is it that shakes his head then
and stands up?
the flowers
yield to the fantasy
of a name: Rag Weed, moves
in the shared power
of the wind.
Miriam,
there are platitudes so deep
in the heart's core
we can't speak them,
the way even I stand here
is conditional,
call them
matters of biology:
flowers are brought up regardless
of names,
hearts do
_cleave_ to one another
beyond imagery. brutal
& real, locked
in the same skin
is bondage.
And you are my twin,
converse of the face seen in these buds
complement into symmetry
light side of the shadow
that falls over his shoulder now
the clouds closing --
it's Fall.
I walk toward the house leaving
the history of that gesture:
the bent body, the look quizzical,
the strange buds --
and enter the door followed
only, by the first drops of rain.
21.
Last summer, we put in many hours
of work around the house.
the other night
with friends, we talked
of all the work we'd done
and other things
such
sad simplicity
of time, that splits the distance. you
were sitting on the couch,
our friends were there
and gathered
in the matrix
of our talk
a distance
from the things we said
and from each other
yes
in time, but also
in the spaces of the room itself:
the smoke that made it tangible.
How hard a thing, and seldom
that our faces
make an imprint, other
than in air . your hair
keeps growing longer.
what could I expect?
but that last summer
takes its measurement in hair:
the length of it you carry
in a changing way, a different
tilting of your head
your hand
that brushes
hair away from face.
And of our friends, their talk.
And of myself
who's carried back these days
to funerals.
or of another friend
who finds it hard to eat:
that I can see such action in his face,
that is his own,
but takes me back
into my life: my father's
inability to eat
. . . and saw his death prefigured
in his actual face.
The sad
simplicity of time
we fill with gesturing
and sex. the hair
grows natural and like
a forest
or a tumor, is
a kind of clock, and yet the words
we think
can form a closure
as in sutures
of the skull, or make a fusion
as the smoke does
standing
in the air
that only separates,
defines the time as distance.
And of these words I speak
I'd form a matrix or a web
. . . but not a web, no
metaphor
or image: but an action
so to fix my friends and you
in time.
I do not mean this poem.
I mean an insult or a real whip.
We are our faces, certainly.
we face each other
when we talk
we love
to put our faces close together.
saving face
or facing things
that happen
or another face, that we
should think our faces sacred things,
we cover
or reveal
ourselves. we sit in circles, so
to see the faces
of our friends, and yet,
at times, the face is drained,
turned inward
into space and time: we make a face
to hide it.
my father's form was rocking
in the chair.
he was so thin and light
the chair
would barely move,
his eyes would rock, and I
would find that I was rocking too,
our friend
who finds it hard to eat
was rocking also
on the phone last night;
his face is turned to distance
we can't enter
though we try
to form a web
or matrix.
The night before
that call: our friends were here.
we talked of all the work we'd done,
and other things.
It was no more than this:
we spent a simple night together.
I've been
only speaking for myself.
25.
Whatever goes on with us is extendable:
the rights of man
and not as the crow flies.
the gull's body in air
fluctuates. the state of The Nation
is measured in The Nation's garbage.
my brother talks of the City
as if he'd been there:
men on the lookout for money only
Depraved Seat of Power.
a man in Detroit
vacuums the City's sewers: diamonds
false teeth, a string of pearls
identification
bracelet of fence
where the crows sit.
at the end of sight
the gull's body
floats on a solid object
which is the air
my brother taks of the cities he's been to
I kiss your legs & knees in the City
whatever goes on with us is extendable
my brother talks of a fictional city,
without you.
35. _(the dead)_
The nearness of you
tho you've gone to work
and I'm alone in these four rooms
is evidenced
in your blouse lying across the chair
the placement of ashtrays & books, even
the flat cool breeze sliding
under the half-cracked window
at my side.
outside
snow general all over the terrace
in its drifts, the brick
wall around it and the metal railing
snow capped . Paul's
too real picture & yours
where my eyes go
to the wall.
nearness
of friends dead and friends
gone to work
in your new dress
and boots (old boots
in the closet
a pair
left in our house on the Cape
where the snow also is general
poles marking the land
standing in drifts.
reluctant to start
a movement in real time,
fixed line
of a row of trees, a man
stands in them as vector
as gesture of open
coat, wind down boulevards
a row of low buildings
passed on a Triumph
in West Los Angeles
Pasadena . Annie
sleeping together
waking
together, in boredom, in real time.
the mind goes in its junk
to the wall: camera
and man standing
under a snow bridge
in the middle of gesture,
his nearness
It is not himself. not
that a camera lies;
the eyes
go to the wall --
was of stone & blank face
Sara
holding the rope, Paul
hanging below
both
watching the camera
goofing. hat
cocked on his head
blind light in his glasses. serious
Sara.
the mind throws out junk
objects
gather in their places
ash trays & books, your blouse
the nearness of you.
my mind's
junk is a history of women
in pictures
all those things done wrongly.
we live wrongly. but
that we live _in_ these things,
go to the wall --
was of stone
like a carved placque
of the war dead, hand holes
of the names in the letters
grave stone
worn in the weather
sight extension of my father's life
standing
in his body in the general snow.
he is 59 now.
_click_.
How then to extract myself
from these dead
"How rare, the move to center
where we live":
the nearness of you
to be home free of the mind's junk
is a history of bondage
pictures
of women loved wrongly
and men.
Go to the wall then
there is nothing there
but flagellant
but stone's message to stone
vague scent of bodies in bed or on fire
impossible elegance flesh has
retreating from muscle and bone.
a short distance
so much bulk
a bundle of sticks
the loved corpse
technician.
*
the chair sits in the room's center
it is free of the wall
around it
are fixed objects: books
and the made bed,
a shell on the table beside it
In each case the agreement
was contractual, "you
stay, I'll go"
Sun
makes the chair beautiful
sunlight enters the shell
all these things are particular
it is a lovely chair. the shell
is made ridiculous by the light
It is ourselves we love.
*
I want constancy
I want to live on in the face of death
in the face of those dead
I want my father
I want my fingers
gathered in the letters on the stone
Want your body, your objects
this fixed roof.
the wall before me
is empty
beside these closed frames of photographs
Isolate
Faces of times that are dead now
(you were a child then
outside
snow constant in drifts in the starlight
the nearness of you: Home
ceases to vibrate
It's not the pale moon that excites me
you return
as the same one
who left me.
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HOME was published by Membrane Press, now
Light and Dust Books. Light and Dust Books
are available from the Grist On-Line Bookstore.
Copyright (C) 1976 by Toby Olson.
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