“Many of my recent poems were written during visits to Lafayette Park, near the White House, inspired by the circus of protesters, tourists, office workers, picnickers, ducks and squirrels and statuary. I write poems to explore language and break away from the rigid rhetoric of the local landscape.”
Coming to Ground at an Oblique Angle
in Findhorn the veggies speak
gobble
gobble
yum yum
my the weather’s
nice today, &
the soil so
wholesome even king mole
sits contented amid urine
soaked walls,
roaring for
his cup, his pipe
& his fiddlers three:
jig oh my darling,
jog oh my dear,
people get
ready,
the bondsmen are here;
cry cry my darling—
cry my darling do,
keep the fear from us,
keep the banks away,
keep the sun in orbit,
keep the moon
in our prayers,
keep the taxmen in penitentiaries,
keep the marvelous
in the halls,
keep the giants on the earth,
keep the trees,
keep the mountains,
keep the sea,
keep the long rivers
thrashing against
the banks,
keep the crayfish in quiet
creeks & pools
of liquid gold
underneath the
leaf-frothed sky,
keep
us here,
in this moment,
in this earth,
in this garden of
nitrogen, carbon
& god: divine
bacterium
melting down a castle
for our mmm-mm
sighing breathing dancefloor
of the gneiss,
the granite &
the gold
the scales vs. the serpent
(or, a sea serpent means everything to me)
a sea serpent in the Chesapeake
sorts thru
the last oxygen,
counting blue crabs
they used to assemble
for drag races
but it’s just too
dangerous now
sunlight glints on
reptilian eyes
resting in the gently
swelling waves
he stares beyond
the world
of power skis & men,
the taste of an
oil slick in
the back of his
mouth
a photograph
might show a log,
a manatee,
an overturned rowboat,
a tractor tire, or an old
honeybucket,
it’s just a trick of
the mind when
you can’t see thru
the calendar, the wind screen,
or the lens;
when the TV provides
colors richer
than the river;
when the internet
connects you to
every blindness
of the day;
when the automobile
can get you to
the mall
where the lines for coffee
& pillowcases grow
longer than the
serpent,
& the lingerie
so much
more real
Dwarfed by the Sun
the beauty & the crying:
two worldly
things
we never
escape
all great music
puts them
together
like a preacher
wishing to
transcend the low
mind of the moment:
the hungry, hot/
cold, horny
mind of just
sleepy now &
the look of your
girl’s ass in
her pants
until the beauty
pushes you over
into tears
& the flooding frustration
of a human life
that must
disconnect with another
human life
until
eternity
looking past the plate,
the fork,
forgetting the wallet
& pocketbook
& bread box lies
pressing like
heroin into your
veins
there’s a blank
mirror &
no you &
no nature
& no green emblem
of god
again the crying—
& the empty mirror,
beautiful in its emptiness,
could hold a flower,
or a girl,
or a plate of cherry cheese Danish,
or just one stone
all mountainous,
old—
dwarfed immeasurably
by the sun—
lined like a face filled
with earth (birth) &
rain (pain)
words of silence
shimmering no name
to the broken robot,
to the dead
fruit tree of
the eye
The Layoff
strange fruit hanging low
on the tree,
delicious piñata
waiting for the
stick
The Layoff (haiku version)
strange fruit hanging low
on the tree, sweet piñata
waiting for the stick
Time Release Discovery of Need
find Atlantis in
my bathroom sink
where soap scum forms
a map
to guide the
way; those
hairs are borders
& the crack
in
the porcelain marks
the time, the date
on which to look,
a calendar of destiny—
an all
day search for car
parts that leads
nowhere; all day
plastic navigation in rain,
in ignorance & want, &
where
for want of ignorance,
needs
have risen
to fill the void;
those great floods that
took Atlantis
repeat
in all the long
sales venues & glass lined
theatres of need,
where floods rise
visibly behind eyes
blurred by date
stamping:
tick
tick
tick
tick tick
Jeff Bagato is a writer, musician and street artist living near Washington, DC. Some of his poetry has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Chiron Review, Shattered Wig Review, and local journals. He has published three books of poetry: And the Trillions, Spells of Coming Day, and Latest Headlines, and several novels, including The Toothpick Fairy and Computing Angels.
He has recently started blogging about writing and publishing at http://jeffbagato.wordpress.com.
