----------------------------------- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- poems from -- -- -- -- HOME -- -- -- -- by -- -- -- -- TOBY OLSON -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ----------------------------------- 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. --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- 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. --------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------