Steve Halle (Palatine, Illinois, USA): from Elegiac Stanzas

elegiac stanzas for m.r.

in fall on a lake a turnover a man with fake plastic watering can a lake a scum comes to turnover unseat the stability of a thermocline and a teeth live in lakes but in summer teeth go sleeping and dorsal fin on a surface unsharked in fall on a lake leaves sink to rot and the wind has teeth the meaning: to lurk a life spawn bloat die and wash ashore a man waters leaves unwithered somewhere fire near a lake an M house a landmark somewhere we can turn over a gascan a gascap something I've forgotten in fall a time of forgetting the aging man my fall if you know a lake certain places sunken ships and cars structure and superstructure a hide a lake grave the smell of fish washed ashore and decay an aging man thinks of turnover and gasoline he waters himself he is thinking of growing larger an aging lucid man uses gasfire to speak his fire himself flesh the message he sends and no lake enough water no lake of fire or human powermad leviathan enough to douse can say chain enough to stop the spread of firewords he speaks with a silenced mouth beside a lake a man in turnover he is fire the message he burns

elegiac stanzas for k.c.

a whistle is bell enough to Donne wheelsteel pestles memories & fleshes a bellwether herds of yellow an island yard to which i'm sailing altho purple of the plum trees lose leaves in red whether watercolor in dinghy wind but don't fight it rain in the face it stings don't fight to stay ahead of whether oars aside for Sisyphean challenge to find the most infinitesimal Russian doll a rock reaches the nadir of all whirlpools or dinghy contained by brained container ship holding the roots of memory hostaged rake ahead of leaves and flame-retardant chem ahead of wildfires conductor smokestack engineer laboratory lightning he sees his burden before premonition scintilla among words raked together in memoriam a name mouthy kid an essesnce upon the axis of his own growth in naming windy eye beasted hurricane sylvan wye a slave to whorls of task a question exclaims its own answer we found it don't fight is Traneing In proving where we cannot believe

elegiac stanzas for r.r.

paraphrasing Eliot: the irony is to be born kicking, drooling & shitting into a barren world. o eyes i hear with, ears i see with. is it not better? measure life in windows fifteen thousand one hundred forty five go by each flecked with drop spots particle particular where water had been but is no longer. two hundred fifty seven per pane average backed by winter fog. wheel & electric rail & Adolf the fury of approach furious even in stopping. metal-metal. weather strip. aboard-abort. it's overheated in here. ads. faces. words. phones ring but none answer, none speak. the route respirates (in-out, back-forth) its own infinity into graffiti, the unmanicured middle of a vacant lawn, weedy lot. time spelled backward is emit. heat, radiation, vapor. your building differs or i enter through a different door. you are the you i thought of you as being but something else simultaneously. head-sprung you i chucklestudy the absurdity of perverse o'er-urinal propositions. o the philistines mad to create! even to create the potential circumstances of creation. to create a game by which the circumstances are enacted in a ledger of probabilities one of which being a simulacrum of the intended creation. even a premonition of a second self. to hold: the center of the pendulum. the Strict Master w/ scythe keeps time in ears i see he claps they grow the train in rushes by as we hit the tunnels' stairs a misser in harvest time. i hear you; you're you & other. against the backlit city we dance arms enlocked, unsmiling. followed by the fool. Route 12 a road to Unicorporated Count(r)y seat of the Lethean imagination. fishbrains: newborn every ten seconds--achtung! the chess pieces too hot to finger. No One removes his cloak. curtain. drape over the mirror. sweated bangs hide the forehead forgets. the sun again the sun. eternity is three-handed: a card game beyond trump a mutation beyond holding a watch you cannot afford. i take my imagery from the Swiss from the dawn in a solemn dance away towards the dark lands while the rain cleanses cheeks

elegiac stanzas for a.r-g.

the pendulous chubby-white knee meat is a swing-year-old five in repetition amidships the blued plastic childflesh makes the upstroke of wind in recollection a rust-year-old time in saddle-gold the shoe while new in dismount learns the pleasure of gravity's grassjolt via the earth mechanism (1.ooomph.!) Exeunt and here insert a Shakespeare "" likely Lear again alas poor Yorick the Cutlass rumble is my skull scene spelled homophonically in the intersection over where plasticine angels chortled i was almost lost never in Denver! the terminal repeats a simple is not a phrase an apple of a simple to be LeBaroned in tow the child's simple too safety if not reverie to be backrevered one light seat to fancy must be forwarded in the paths' past impressions of a rickshaw glider glaze slide concussion a harmonic immolation of steel-steel to shatter traffic patterns my glass perfect crumple to peel in aftermath memoryskin orange of my sinus i've seen the other angel her sinews terrible-charitable lust cheek under halo i beseech & heal sirened away I See You Exeunt i knew him Horatio

elegiac stanzas for j.r.

Dear Lodi,

palomino in terms of bull by the balls and Arabian by means of its snow leopardine tail frozen in a sculpted mid-gallop when the horse's suffering ceases its cathartic valuation out comes the gun tubes out of her arms new tubes NOW to dull pain of coming dullard "Goodbye" i say over the rainbow your suffering no longer panolplied by the coloring of this aging man punished a sculptor whose talents are weak who ceases exploration in his creation but never ceases carving a space in the world in which to die picking out clothes casket plot affairs in order no different from the underporched dog who limped off arthritic to face things as he must alone a composer no longer finding justice among the notes admires Cage for the wrong reasons admonishes silences with noise unpacks bags and sets off for Bozeman in need of O Marie! I'm coming for you! a mountain view in lieu of carbuncles wrinkles corpuscles etched via marcottage, Élan vital, signed then titled "Crepuscles in Bronze"

Goodbye,

Idaho

© Steve Halle 2008