Poetry and Art: Stephen Mead
Wave
Sudden tsunami, This long expected great ocean blaze... The surf is flames, Davy, but nothing burns Save for fever.
Where its breaking is the dousing In an aria of sheets going over Completely white-tipped. Stunning, Howard, that salve is Absolute, Frank, for sores which tongues, Tears, try as they might, could not wash away The salty crusts of.
Now, post-flood, a supreme calm Is clean purity over trials of your last brave nights, & our days are such new sons, new daughters to name. Strange that Mother Earth, Father Time orphans the parents as lovers asunder via the sickness which smashes & smashes the shape of our whole coast.
Taking form again here is the survival of wash ashores Yet we do it Dave, Howard, Frank, for the memory Of love's sake too tidal for anything else.
Supplication
Now Meeting only on plaster, My face a case of dust, these statues That you started leaving me To finish off & "Done with it!" never, will not be long enough between the floods & the clay that returneth back all of our work, all which was love as, coward, how I curse, deliver, now smash With fingers, knuckles, all in a grip, A slide, a caress
Again on mud, on fluid, on rock, The skull Beneath the muscle, the veins Beneath the skin, my pulse Beating your name as chisel, as mallet When my own all along really was splendid
& to whisper it is simply damnation, remembrance the least arrogant beseechment, dearest, dearest, that you will ever receive
From The Nudge/Nudge
The frame is pink, Magenta at sunset, And our outlines? Orange, tremendous Heat of summer seen Beneath, between The window-figures, Their beautiful deck view Of cat amid flowers, The rolling ocean, And a single monument Of haze-burned bricks....
All that warmth comes from us, And in the painting of you, Angel, in a biblical sleep Of deep sheets As robe swirls, Your halo is the only light source, Your skin soft with strong gold...
For the next canvas wings Will sprout with the myriad Reflections of water, A harps prism, Glue-glitter sprinkled From some tacky 5 & dime...
Fairy dust, myths, mediums, The legacy of oil To sustain each day As tonight, meanwhile, mortal, I pray cancer shall not have My Father by the throat
Albany 30
Snow is the long voyage Snow is the longing & it is warm enough for snow there, in Albany, the weather station informs, so Pete, Peter, Marianne, Marie, 20 minutes from that city banked between treelines in your suburb, on your farm... Can you feel the soft immensity Of this snow falling here?
Poignancy is its colourlessness Gathering hues through the blank Blankets, the textiles of stippling Weaving the air's loom, the air's Curtains of movement eyes find The stillest flight in, & gloved fingers catch melting lozenges of true as mouths.
Bowl round, how mine opens, A gull call of silence Where flurrying paths stop At a single stretch of surf Pulsing purple at the world's curl, Its very tip, this jester's slipper...
Upside down the pen could turn it, & out would pour addicts, drunkards, tourists & fish mongers... Out too all the recluses, the artisans & broods of pilgrim ancestry adrift in ageless niche-work of home, home, home...
Echo, echo, echo----- The snow shapes my silence Tide-ferried to every highway, Every airport, every current Which might bring you my call----- & here the snow, and here the surf, they deliver the familial scapes of antennas, vanes of compass needles, of barometer dots, & weather station scribbles...
Look, our screens are widening, & rhythmic calendars snow tick in unison 'til you picture me as I, umbrella now, encompass you in return
See the artwork that accompanies this collection:
Copyright © 2003 Stephen Mead.
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