Things About to Disappear

Things are vanishing.

It happens while I sleep.

I wake mumbling some half-formed

phrase from a lingering dream

whose images separate and dissolve.

too quickly. The dream is gone

by the time my feet touch the cold floor.

At the lavatory I face down

the scarecrow in the mirror.

I always seem to blink first. He

only smiles if I do.

So here's my morning quirk. I

hoard marbles in a Crown Royal sack,

purple cats-eyes tucked like jewels

on the closet's top shelf

under the ruckus of winter clothing. Each

morning I toss a marble in the pond.

It scares the beejesus out of the koi, those

shivery pomegranate shadows in the murk

do not appreciate my gifts. I guess one

man's amethyst is another

fish's bomb ball. Birds like me, though.

I scatter day-old pizza crusts on the

fresh-cut lawn. Something for them

to peck at.

There's a girl at the gym. I see

her almost every day. Something

is wrong with her complexion but

her smile is radiant. We carefully

ignore each other.

Evenings are best, that

hour after sunset when arms

of flagging sunlight reach up

to the clouds with orchid

and mulberry crayons

coloring outside the lines.

I watch until it hurts.

The colors vanish

minute by darling minute

and the slow lamplighter

comes calling.

Donny Davis, September 2007

The Waltz

he danced in the park, in the moonlight, all alone,

a waltz in the moonlight, in the park, on the lawn,

we watched from a parkbench, watched

him dance in the moonlight, this woman,

who will never be my lover, and I,

we watched as he danced in the park, on the lawn,

with his arms held cradling, in the moonlight,

a shadow, he waltzed on the lawn, all alone, while we

watched from our parkbench, not-my-lover and I,

with his chin to the starlight and his eyes half-closed,

he danced in the moonlight, he waltzed in the park

as we watched from the shadows, he, up-two-three,

turn-two-three, waltzed with his noone, while

we watched him together, this woman and I,

back-two-three, swing-two-three, enchanted

by the dancing, we watched as he waltzed,

a man and his shadow, in the moonlight,

in the starlight, in the park

on the lawn.

Donny Davis, August 2007

The Stone in the Coat

Such a ho-hum word, "mad" and you

tossed it about so casually on social occasions

"Back when I was mad". I can see you,

flibberti-gibbet, with your Bloomsbury circle,

your sharp nose canted in mild deference,

those intelligent eyes opaque and quivering,

that coquettish smile and purling cigarette,

"Back when I was mad". Everyone laughs.

It is the stone in the coat that chills me.

Ten days before, you came home soaking wet.

This time, as you pulled on your coat,

you knew the stone was required.

'Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again'.

you wrote. Oh, you regent of spin, pucker, and pout,

of the stream of words on which we sail and the music

that makes a masterpiece of a mark on the wall,

was that the best you could do?

As you chose the proper stone with the proper heft

I wonder if you rolled with your blessed tongue these words

you wrote to Leonard and if you judged also their heft:

"I can't fight it any longer". To me that sounds more like it.

And as you worried the stone into your pocket,

(how large was the pocket, anyway?) and brushed

the stone's grit from your palm, and stepped into the river,

felt it's cold tug upon your ankles then your knees,

felt the weight of the stone in the coat,

did you think it would work, that closing

recollection of past joy meant to soothe him:

I don't think two people could have been

happier than we have been.

Donny Davis, July 2007

The Secret Words

fly, butterfly, fly

all the way to india

find the secret words

I left my boots on the doorstep

overnight. When I woke

they were covered with blue mold.

scurry, lizard, scurry

through a crack in the world

all the way to china

find the secret words

I left a skiglove on the rooftop

overnight. When I woke

it held a sandalwood fan.

swim, damselfish, swim

through the panama canal

past the virgin islands

all the way to england

find the secret words

I left my tophat on the windowsill

overnight. When I woke

it was full of lovesongs

fly, butterfly, fly

all the way to india

find for me the secret words.

Donny Davis, August 2007

The Secret

next wednesday

there will be a meeting

of the Dull Men's Club

and I'll be there--

in fact, I've been made

Sergeant-at-Arms.

I'm the one

who guarantees

that Robert's Rules of Order

are conformed to in the nth degree

and if one dull man, should,

for instance, clamor to discuss

benches when the topic is

standing in line

it is my voice,

strident yet undismayed,

that cuts him to the quick

and permits discussion

to continue unabated

on standing in line.

But I have a secret.

I found a feather,

shaped like a nipple

and soft as a kitten.

It appeared at a glance,

a boring enough shade

of black, and I collected

it without a thought.

But as I sat in my yard

counting the bricks in the

brickpile next door

I mindlessly stroked my cheek

with that light feather and

realized that it was not

merely soft, but

mellifluous.

Startled, astonished,

even agitated and disturbed,

I investigated more closely

and discovered that

what I assumed

safely black was

in truth subtlely

iridescent.

Donny Davis, September 2007

The Robin's Egg

A straw at a time, that's how her snug nest

is made. Given patience and space you might

watch in a day sixty trips without rest,

away to an offbeat gathering site,

back to the swelling nest, the single twig

held in her beak guided by her forest

instinct to its station. A playful sprig

of cellophane adorns this robin's nest.

In June the eggs are laid. This morning I

wake to find, spattered on the patio,

a bit of baked sun in a jigsaw sky.

If she's counted, or judged the ratio

of egg to nest and found it lacking, she

wastes no breath regretting it (unlike me).

Donny Davis, June 2007

The Pisces of her Sulk and her Smile

She says, "I am
a wedged orange on a blue china saucer
balanced on a gloved hand."

She says this as her limousine whirls
the corner of Seventh Avenue and Oakridge.

I spilled my green tea
(lemon-cactus flower with natural flavoring)
on her white chiffon blouse and she sulked

Until I said, "Your eyes
are like burning chocolates"

Donny Davis, June 2007

The Hot Bath

We poets abhor the empty page, we

cleave to simplicity in difficult times, and

when the mind is dry of ideas, when the well

stinks of sulphur and the bucket leaks, we

poets often find there is nothing better than

the forbidden luxury of a hot bath on a warm

afternoon, and so it is that I draw my bath warm

as blood, step into the blood-warm water

and stand a moment to let my feet, my ankles,

and my lower calves adjust, then lower

my body cell by quivering cell, trembling,

(my mind also quivering and trembling) into

the blood-warm water till body and mind

stop quivering and are pacified and my skin

cells go "aah" and with that behind me I turn

to the task at hand which is, in honor of

Marie Line, to think lofty thoughts, to lift

my poor mind from it's treasonous gutter

to that exalted rooftop hers prefers, to think

of Nietzsche and Sartre, to meditate upon

being, nothingness and existential angst

but all I manage is to mouth silently, while

staring at my toes which I notice I am wiggling,

"there is nothing existential in being angstness"

and then I think of that night some other french

philosopher told Sartre over dinner that if he

were an existentialist he could make philosophy

of a glass of water and why I wonder did he

find that so blasted fascinating that he changed

his career and wrote the most impenetrable

book ever translated into english, but then I begin

to lather myself with blue liquid body soap and I

wonder if liquid soap is superior to oldstyle cakes

and did I buy this particular brand of liquid soap

simply because it promised, right there on the label,

"the ultimate clean" and then I wish I had made it a

bubble-bath and I wonder if the Mr. Bubble t-shirt I

ordered online yesterday will arrive tomorrow as

promised or if perhaps I should have gone the extra

mile and actually purchased a box of Mr. Bubble

and sent in the preprinted form shoved in the box

among the bubble grains, just to be sure,

and for all I know they do give preference

to actual Mr. Bubble consumers over silly

poets who order the t-shirt online and I did

pause to wonder what if I were a clerk at

the Mr. Bubble warehouse would I give

preference to preprinted forms over online

orders, even if I were instructed by the

highest of the high in upper management,

by Mr. Bubble himself, even, and not merely

some cranky middle-aged thorn in stylish glasses

stressed out himself by some recent missive

from the highest of the high, perhaps Mr. Bubble

himself, demanding once again greater efficiency

and quicker shipping of Mr. Bubble t-shirts, and why

I wonder, were the t-shirts available only in white,

why not cyana or vermillion or at least blue or purple,

why must Mr. Bubble be the Henry Ford of logo

t-shirts, and only then, as I notice a stream

of light that strays through the curtain onto my

stomach and wonder if she (not Marie Line,

though yes, her too, now that you mention it)

would find me too repulsive if she saw me lying

in the bath this sunny afternoon, only then

do I remember (and it is too late for the bathwater

has cooled) that I intended to think of Nietzsche

or Sartre or maybe harmless old Emmanuel Kant.

The Hot Bath

We poets abhor the empty page, we

cleave to simplicity in difficult times, and

when the mind is dry of ideas, when the well

stinks of sulphur and the bucket leaks, we

poets often find there is nothing better than

the forbidden luxury of a hot bath on a warm

afternoon, and so it is that I draw my bath warm

as blood, step into the blood-warm water

and stand a moment to let my feet, my ankles,

and my lower calves adjust, then lower

my body cell by quivering cell, trembling,

(my mind also quivering and trembling) into

the blood-warm water till body and mind

stop quivering and are pacified and my skin

cells go "aah" and with that behind me I turn

to the task at hand which is, in honor of

Marie Line, to think lofty thoughts, to lift

my poor mind from it's treasonous gutter

to that exalted rooftop hers prefers, to think

of Nietzsche and Sartre, to meditate upon

being, nothingness and existential angst

but all I manage is to mouth silently, while

staring at my toes which I notice I am wiggling,

"there is nothing existential in being angstness"

and then I think of that night some other french

philosopher told Sartre over dinner that if he

were an existentialist he could make philosophy

of a glass of water and why I wonder did he

find that so blasted fascinating that he changed

his career and wrote the most impenetrable

book ever translated into english, but then I begin

to lather myself with blue liquid body soap and I

wonder if liquid soap is superior to oldstyle cakes

and did I buy this particular brand of liquid soap

simply because it promised, right there on the label,

"the ultimate clean" and then I wish I had made it a

bubble-bath and I wonder if the Mr. Bubble t-shirt I

ordered online yesterday will arrive tomorrow as

promised or if perhaps I should have gone the extra

mile and actually purchased a box of Mr. Bubble

and sent in the preprinted form shoved in the box

among the bubble grains, just to be sure,

and for all I know they do give preference

to actual Mr. Bubble consumers over silly

poets who order the t-shirt online and I did

pause to wonder what if I were a clerk at

the Mr. Bubble warehouse would I give

preference to preprinted forms over online

orders, even if I were instructed by the

highest of the high in upper management,

by Mr. Bubble himself, even, and not merely

some cranky middle-aged thorn in stylish glasses

stressed out himself by some recent missive

from the highest of the high, perhaps Mr. Bubble

himself, demanding once again greater efficiency

and quicker shipping of Mr. Bubble t-shirts, and why

I wonder, were the t-shirts available only in white,

why not cyana or vermillion or at least blue or purple,

why must Mr. Bubble be the Henry Ford of logo

t-shirts, and only then, as I notice a stream

of light that strays through the curtain onto my

stomach and wonder if she (not Marie Line,

though yes, her too, now that you mention it)

would find me too repulsive if she saw me lying

in the bath this sunny afternoon, only then

do I remember (and it is too late for the bathwater

has cooled) that I intended to think of Nietzsche

or Sartre or maybe harmless old Emmanuel Kant.

The Hot Bath

We poets abhor the empty page, we

cleave to simplicity in difficult times, and

when the mind is dry of ideas, when the well

stinks of sulphur and the bucket leaks, we

poets often find there is nothing better than

the forbidden luxury of a hot bath on a warm

afternoon, and so it is that I draw my bath warm

as blood, step into the blood-warm water

and stand a moment to let my feet, my ankles,

and my lower calves adjust, then lower

my body cell by quivering cell, trembling,

(my mind also quivering and trembling) into

the blood-warm water till body and mind

stop quivering and are pacified and my skin

cells go "aah" and with that behind me I turn

to the task at hand which is, in honor of

Marie Line, to think lofty thoughts, to lift

my poor mind from it's treasonous gutter

to that exalted rooftop hers prefers, to think

of Nietzsche and Sartre, to meditate upon

being, nothingness and existential angst

but all I manage is to mouth silently, while

staring at my toes which I notice I am wiggling,

"there is nothing existential in being angstness"

and then I think of that night some other french

philosopher told Sartre over dinner that if he

were an existentialist he could make philosophy

of a glass of water and why I wonder did he

find that so blasted fascinating that he changed

his career and wrote the most impenetrable

book ever translated into english, but then I begin

to lather myself with blue liquid body soap and I

wonder if liquid soap is superior to oldstyle cakes

and did I buy this particular brand of liquid soap

simply because it promised, right there on the label,

"the ultimate clean" and then I wish I had made it a

bubble-bath and I wonder if the Mr. Bubble t-shirt I

ordered online yesterday will arrive tomorrow as

promised or if perhaps I should have gone the extra

mile and actually purchased a box of Mr. Bubble

and sent in the preprinted form shoved in the box

among the bubble grains, just to be sure,

and for all I know they do give preference

to actual Mr. Bubble consumers over silly

poets who order the t-shirt online and I did

pause to wonder what if I were a clerk at

the Mr. Bubble warehouse would I give

preference to preprinted forms over online

orders, even if I were instructed by the

highest of the high in upper management,

by Mr. Bubble himself, even, and not merely

some cranky middle-aged thorn in stylish glasses

stressed out himself by some recent missive

from the highest of the high, perhaps Mr. Bubble

himself, demanding once again greater efficiency

and quicker shipping of Mr. Bubble t-shirts, and why

I wonder, were the t-shirts available only in white,

why not cyana or vermillion or at least blue or purple,

why must Mr. Bubble be the Henry Ford of logo

t-shirts, and only then, as I notice a stream

of light that strays through the curtain onto my

stomach and wonder if she (not Marie Line,

though yes, her too, now that you mention it)

would find me too repulsive if she saw me lying

in the bath this sunny afternoon, only then

do I remember (and it is too late for the bathwater

has cooled) that I intended to think of Nietzsche

or Sartre or maybe harmless old Emmanuel Kant.

The Gravity Well

Seven months of no rain and his ranch
drifts on the wind into water-starved trees,
drifts on the wind across the water-starved hills.
His truck-garden is sick. His sheep
have no vigor. They suck
the mud from a vanished pond. He walks
his land with an unbent divining rod,
morning to night, morning to night,
oat husk morning to coal dust night.

But now is a day like any other: the dry soil flies
across the hills, the garden withers, the sheep thirst
at noon. His divining rod bends. It bends, it bends,
his hands, his forearms, his shoulders clench,
the rod's tip dips with unbearable longing,
the rod's tip tugs till he stumbles and tumbles
head over heels down a gully to a dried-up stream.

Shivering as he digs, he digs and digs furiously,
shovelfuls and shovelfuls of dust tossed
in clouds and piles and piles and clouds,
three feet, eight feet, sixteen feet deep,
he digs and digs furiously, shivering as he digs.

Something moves.
Beneath a conclusive crust of dry sediment
something moves.

He raises the shovel for the coup de grace
a dustcake mask on his face and clothes
and now and now, "oh god dare not forsake me,
give me life, give me life-giving water, give me water,
give me life", the shovel falls with all his force, yes force
yes force is what he gets. A vortex spins,

whirls and spins out of the hole; a tornado, a maelstrom,
a cyclone of gyrating energy, spinning gravity, whirling energetic
gravity that hauls, pulls, drags, till the haul, the pull, the drag
sucks things of all shapes and sizes into that yawning abyss:
sheep, withered corn stalks, barren berry bushes
sucked into the abyss, planks of wood from his barn
torn to splinters and sucked into the abyss. He clings
for life to the trunk of a tree, the roots of the tree cling
for life to the earth and inch by inch are hauled from the earth.

The sucking maw hauls with unbearable longing.

But wait.
A granite chunk,
dislodged from the gully's bank,
larger by a diametric foot than the well,
rolls onto the well and seals it.
The earth is still. The wind is still.
Dust settles in piles

and clouds

the underground stream
discovered by the boulder's surge.

Donny Davis, July 2007

The Girl and the Butterfly

a butterfly rides on her fingertip;

slowly she glides by a stream, past foxglove

and iceland poppies, a passenger ship

captained with focus and helpless with love.

Myths are made of less. Her bare foot must probe

the bare earth with each step lest she waver

so he flies again, lest the forest's robe

of mantilla sky reclaims his favor.

Donny Davis, June 2007

The Foxy Minister and the Apocryphal Communion

She extends to me that morsel of bread,

the body, and to my indulgent tongue

reaches near and nearer. I've never said

I desired grace -- though I'm no longer young

I cry not for salvation but for that

apple I see now in place of bread, held

in her sublime hand, the hand a placemat

for the body. It's her body I hold

in my heart, my unoriginal sin

is craving, for communion, for the taste

of the body whose fine hand now extends

the body to my tongue. Wafers of toast

are but tasteless bread and bear no more grace

for me than now shows in her sober face.

Donny Davis, August 2007

The Acorn

I sleep with my door ajar so

the ghost of Lao Tzu can slip

inside and inhabit my dreams

An old woman at the bus stop

was chewing acorns.

How does that taste?

"Foul" she says, spitting

a half-chewed acorn at my feet.

"but

I remember when

I was something

the wind blew through.

Acorns are not so bad."

Tonight as I slip between

my cool, clean sheets,

and read a poem before

I turn out the lamp,

as I sigh in the cool,

clean darkness,

I remember how

this afternoon

a hummingbird

green as a june bug shell

sat on the sweetgum tree

and winked

(I swear he did)

I remember also

that other afternoon,

how I ate an acorn

to see if it would

really stop

the wind.

Donny Davis, September 2007

ted kaczynsky's lovesong

the broken sink needs fixing, dammit,

that drip, drip, drip is human dignity

abandoning ship down the foul drain

gutter main of the corporate master's

thyroid vein, staining the grass black

with the oil-track artifacts of blind ungoverned

greed and the slow stampede of regression

and repression, the source of depression.

(If the whore in the boardroom or

the whore in congress or the whore in the pulpit or

for that matter the whore in the pew said

gimme your balls you'd say here's my balls and

what variety of platter would you like my

balls served on, china, silver or embossed

leather?

I'm sick to death of your

feminism and your causism and your homosexualism

and your low self-esteem)

I hear the machines in the

middle of the night, forthright they clink,

outright they clank, they crank my tractor

loud, they mutter like a theif, a commander

in-cheif with a muttering, fluttering, stuttering

tongue, when all we need is a well-made bomb

mailed to the right sonuvabitch and we'll have

our revolution, our solution, our incandescent

absolution...

and halt, once and for all, this devolution

of mankind.

Donny Davis, August 2007

Speaking of Knowing

I could tell you I know
landscapes and islands
the coldness of swimming
between them, your stars,
the anguish of counting
your stars in your black night.
all these things –
the sound of no constellations.

I could tell you I know
the taste of ripe cantaloupe
and virgin strawberries
a Strativarius' strings purling
in winter as light snow falls,
the anguish of being
frozen by heat
all these things–
the sound of no footsteps.

If I told you I know, you'd nod,
and make an affable fuss

while the kneetap reflex
slaps shut a trapdoor
inside your prism
inside the colors you make
when you smile and when you cry
and you want to shout
but will not shout
"Don't lie to me,"

What I can say is that distance
is a shade of closeness
that rivers exist and pull and if we had a raft
we could ride from one continent to another,
without lifting an oar or pausing to speak.

I can say there is such a raft and such a river,
that there are constellations and footsteps
yet unheard.

Southern Cross

Across Down

1. Proximate cause of a 1. Gossamer wall between
shipwreck you and I
7. Text egalitarian 2. The water of sunlight
11. The dull ache in Cyrano's 3. Shipseye view of a
throat lurking whale
16. Sound of two ships passing 4. What the heron said
in the night to the fly
23. Beaurocratic sophism 5. Brass stain on a shiprail
25. Perfume prism 6. When love goes
32. The junction of bow and stern 12. Statement of Ink (v. pl.)
37. That moment of clarity after 35. Quitting the fort
making love 36. Synonym for loneliness
43. Filibustering chicken 43. The only long swim
44. Active mold on a sunken 46. Shakespeare's bald spot
lockbox 48. The first mate's teenage
49. Child of demitasse crush returned at Xmas
57. Oceangoing acre 50. Taste of a bruise
61. Why the west 66. Onyx phalanx
63. What is sufficient 67. Androgynous ship part
70. Who are old and winged 68. Feel of a heartbeat
75. Where the captain's widow against your ear
sang

Donny Davis, September 2007

Serenity

aside from the lunatic german shepherd,
the episodic kerthunk of loaders
at a concrete manufactury,
the screel of my neighbor's saw,
the bearish gnarr of cars and motorcycles,
the rattle, clatter, shatter, smash of passing trains,
the protestations of geese,
the shivaree of cicadas,
and the discordant symphony of my own thought,

it is really very quiet here

Rules of Flight

Daedelus,

master craftsman,

fashioned the wings

with inferior wax,

intending strictly

utilitarian flight,

one quick waft

across the Aegean

to freedom.

He wept as

Icarus daubed

feathers to frame

in natural rows,

the shallow

feathers then

the heavy ones.

He knew

already.

So they flew,

gods for an hour,

two bodies,

two minds,

one being,

windborne,

sailing, one

mind focused

on the far shore

and the end

of heartache,

one mind glorying

in the sky's blue

mercy. Not so

low, not so high,

stay with me.

Oh,

child

Icarus.

I wanted to

touch the sun,

too.

Donny Davis, September, 2007

Rescue

If insanity could be bottled and sold

from kiosks, like colas and beer,

you would have some to sell, my friend.

Take my hand, now, stop stamping so.

The river down there is all

cold strength, all pitiless virtue,

like any natural thing. It doesn't want you.

All that's occurred is god

got drunk -- god, in his cups,

conceived this cold fusion of sun and tears,

this absurdly improbable sequential symmetry

that designed us, you and I, flinging

us, together, here, today, you

trembling so wildly. Take my hand, now,

stop staring so. Leave the river be.

Donny Davis, June 2007