Poems from Coming Home
“D.C.’s intensive clear details always a pleasure . . .
very solid clear human texts.”
—Robert Creeley
Copyright ©1993 by David Cope
Acknowledgements
Poems from Coming Home appeared in Vajradhatu Sun, Lame
Duck, Big Scream, Headcheck Number Four, Big Hammer,
Napalm Health Spa, Heaven Bone, The Grand Rapids Press, Lactuca,
and Indefinite Space. “The Lovers Sleep” was published in Sins & Felonies (Ed. G. F. Korreck. Barbaric Yawp, 2007).
Poems included here:
The Return
Pointing It Up
Fireball in the Clouds
In Fitful Sleep
Below the Headlines
Ghazal for the Coming Spring
Pacific Sundown
Each Wound Became a Voodoo Mouth
Catching Nothing
Poem Beginning with a Line by Pound
The Lovers Sleep
The Abandoned City
Midsummer Night
●●●
The
Return
the silent winds whirl under condor’s wing,
up valleys where bison calves leap
& coyotes prowl, around redwoods &
up concrete canyons, among Wall Street pillars,
past
saxophones wailing on
around the lovers in red-trimmed peasant black
reclining on grass above the sunlit spray
of
baseball players. millenia pass in falling
water, whole families walk away from homes
where they grew, a woman wipes her eyes
at the edge of her husband’s newly dug grave:
many nights I’ve walked these dreams away,
lovers & friends returning in winds at dawn.
Pointing
It Up
the whole city
spread below, he perches
on his scaffold
pressing mortar
into cracks, turning
his trowel with care:
eyes so intent
on his work, he’s unaware
the wind is rippling
thru his shirt.
Fireball
in the Clouds
the soft snow floats thru
tight-packed buds & flaming
stems. shadows gesture
& talk of ecology. bits of brain,
strands of veins cling to their
words, unseen.
spectres glide in corridors,
line up at windows & whisper about
the weather—phones ring,
secretaries coo & yakk—a red mist
descends & settles over every-
thing, unseen. protestors
& flag wavers shout in rivers of
blood & oil that also engulf taxis,
hydrants, passing buses—
hands raised to flaming clouds,
a drunken man stumbles & reels
into the gutter, empty yellow
eyes & open mouth facing fireball heaven.
peace, peace, a million cry—
grenades & flags parading from
open mouths. soldiers at briefings
describe mass murder in surgical
terms, blue-eyed innocents parade
with flags at the Super Bowl as
gassed Kurds & blasted Iraqis
mingle in the silent screams
that rend tender springtime’s
sleeping buds. O fleeting doves,
O soft snow, O delicate
curve of wild berry, O sleeping babe
bombed with dreams, what briefings
await you in the nether world?
In
Fitful Sleep
legions of bleeding men
drag themselves in line,
armless, blue-black faces
powder-burned & mutilated,
ragged hanging cheeks
& ripped flesh march &
march with eyes once
Johnny’s now hanging
in their sockets, march
with Bible thumpers &
ancient vets trotting out
flags & angry speeches,
march, young rambos
split from cheek to crotch,
march, arab bashers &
Hussein mashers, march
into the breach, into the
breach—where the god waits
in the center of the fire—
O cringe & tears of mothers
& fathers again, again
anguish of women & young men,
march for oil, march for
flags, march for Hussein,
march for Bush, march for
God, march for right,
march for money, march for
smoke of burning bodies,
march.
Below
the Headlines
below the photo of Cheney & Powell
grinning with a Bart Simpson statuette,
a surgeon in
children's legs & arms by candlelight,
no anesthetic; takes blood from one
to give to another, praying the unknown
types are right. the procession continues:
old & young men, bomb-battered women
with babes, faces ripped by shrapnel.
some die for lack of medicine,
clean water, some from the cold night
filled with sirens & bombs & wailing.
Ghazal
for the Coming Spring
broken men march with bleeding ears,
guns trained on their backs, glistening.
here tanks & launchers burned, masses of
corpses flew & fell, ripped & stinking:
here graves mass—open jaws & sockets
of skulls tell no hero’s story nor sing
where blood ran into sand & sank,
where rain & shamal remake the land daily:
passing caravans tell & retell a silken
story & pilgrimage sums a lifetime’s hope.
women of
& burning wellheads blacken the sky;
across the world, old men dream in
starlit silence among lilacs budding early.
Pacific
Sundown
across from Sheraton & ShangriLa
& New Belle Vue Bistro where ties & skirts
in shades promenade & raise glasses
to contract, deal, & faithful love,
homeless old & young slump on benches—
rusted carts, pans & clothes, backpacks,
bags, an old blanket shook free of dust
laid beneath oleanders & palms in the deep
Pacific evening. children with old women’s eyes
stare at every passing shade. old man,
face & hands a web of lines, sings to himself
& claps, & claps. waves race onshore
yet none swim now: millions foul
their own bright blue waters where
native & european once looked out
to marvel in the fading day.
Each
Wound Became a Voodoo Mouth
breathing fire. the acquitted officer grinned—
hands that crippled a defenseless King
waved in departing. gunblasts & fire followed.
she could see the flames from her office window,
carried a pistol in her glove compartment.
Koreans opened their shop to looters,
praying it wouldn’t burn. King pled for calm.
white kids on 90210 partied on in the angst
of wealth: who’d get whom in the all-white
swimming pool? faces dripped blood,
scalps laid bare: fire—fire—
from the hold of the sinking slaver,
escaping slaves still dragging chains
broke free, no common language but anger—
their bonfires rose on the alien shore.
Catching
Nothing
thru the tentflap, with Anne,
half-asleep, distant rumbling
thunder coming on fast—
last night
I wandered in circles staring up—
stars thru dark branches,
owls calling
valley to valley—
I dreamed of you, waking after
102 years of dreaming
enclosed in flesh,
gone the dark way now—
visions of puritanical
ancestors passed, Wiltshire
to
the dinosaur bone collector,
efficient & ambitious,
whose skull is now some
professor’s paperweight—
& my grandpa, wandering
purposefully
thru his fruit trees—
the thunder’s closer now, now
torrents of water crash thru
dark branches;
the rain’s steady, flood heavy—
rivers spring up in pathways to camp—
thunder hammers
the earth, which
trembles, shakes beneath us!
lightning arcs
thru camp past the tent, again!
we speak in high voices to be heard—
what branches above us might shatter,
crashing thru our skulls to earth?
we lean to the open flap to know
the splendor of the torrent.
in dreams my father
sails out of a starry night
past rocks
& wrecks where
bones are washed & sink in sand—
along
last route to
died bringing words
to confuse natives who knew
well enough the spirits
that speak for earth & water.
my father ages at the wheel—
hands grow gnarled, winds cut
great lines
in his face, yet
his eyes flash as he closes
on the dawn,
his genoa full of wind as he
plunges thru heavy seas—
later, becalmed, he sings
an incantation for the
beckoning dead
that he might move calmly toward their rest.
the morning after
is calm, cloudy—
fishermen wade in the swollen river,
casting & casting &
catching nothing.
the silent heron is still.
deer
move out across the open plain toward
the lake, where they lower their heads
& lap the still water,
ears alert
in this intense silence—
even
our hearts beat like
hammers now, sending out waves of sound
over & over—
the breath
is a wind that
stirs up all the world.
Poem
Beginning with a Line by Pound
State of the Union, 1992
the enormous tragedy of the dream
cries out in the bent shoulders
of the peasant
women of
in the rough hands passing over
the brows of wrinkled toothless men
waiting in breadless lines.
Hitachi closes its California plants:
Mexicans will build wide-screen TVs
for a dollar a day. laid-off workers
may wait in unemployment lines where
the eyes & hands of mothers turn
to skinny children at their feet.
"those who aim at the rich usually
hit the poor": this wisdom comes
thru a boardroom smirk to a rising
rhythm of stuffed shirt applause.
The
Lovers Sleep
all winter, the wind
carries loam aloft from the stripped land;
the lovers sink further
into sleep, the moon rises over
frozen furrows & lines of lights race across the vast prairie
where no man sings alone by his dying fire among constellations.
when stars fall, the caged shaman sings, his guards hearing only
silence. the millenium approaches in a raging human flood,
the swarming intellect polluting its own skull, cradle of dreams
where fields might blossom to meadows in singing silence.
the unruly master bangs away in the chest, summoning
blood & obedient hands to turn the wheel on which a sparrow
hangs & sings; tomorrow the shriveled finger points within.
so the lovers sleep, locked together beyond their spinning songs
in a dream where light rises to light continually.
The
Abandoned City
if we sit long enough, will our love grow wise?
the roman mottos tumble from facades & crash.
where statesmen argued the language of law,
cedars split paving stones & broken pillars crumble.
atop the giant boulder, a maple's single thick root
grips granite all the way to soil below, where
we stand amazed. lovers go to sing their love
hand in hand, passing a drunken cursing hulk
who pitches headlong toward a red-faced hooker—
she shrieks, pushing trash cans in his path,
her mouth a red circle of moaning terror.
O air pregnant with mouths opening like new petals,
O silence humming with coos & shrieks,
O rays revving cells in a single juniper needle!
Midsummer
Night
thru vast yellow wheatfields & green corn stretching
beyond treelines at the horizon,
nuclear power lines hum in forcefields from
tower to tower—farmers herd cows
to the troughs as I pass, lost among distant
friends in crisis. the evening
breeze is soft, the light rich & yellow.
home, my children race among spruce
& pine, fairies in a midsummer night’s dream,
blessings in a sea of sadness. here,
someone’s put a door on the old grange house,
raised a frame for a room to be
attached, boarded windows that last week were
open to the careless winds.
rotted boards are piled by the road, where
two girls are walking hand in hand,
arms swinging, their smiles only for each other.
half moon above—already passions turn
like seasons—love, hold your shaky course.