Helix #10
A blue enameled dutch oven
A locomotive’s slurred whistle thru a humid night
A mailbox on a post against a white sky
A propane truck marooned on a dirt road
A bottomless skyblue skyhigh June day
So this is the vew from forever
A name you’ve despised since childhood
A field of Black-Eyed Susans & Indian Paintbrush
An adjective an adverb a proper noun
A fireworks display at the valley’s southern
extreme A sky folding its violet petals
So this is what forever looks like from here
A bruised July sky thru interminable twilight
You were gone & you were so sad
A white sundress a white cumulous cloud
A white t-shirt white cigarette paper a white car
So this is the view from forever
A dogwood blooming a quarter mile distant
A white plate a white page speckled with words
Snow on Council Mountain dyed orange at sunset
A redwinged blackbird’s slurred whistle
A poem that doesn’t get written
A blue-green eucalyptus next to Fell Street
A verb an adverb a proper name
A black paperback a blue jumper a white shirt
A pergola exploding with pink roses
You want to be believed a white page
So this is the vew from forever
So this is what forever looks like from here
So this is what we mean when we say
Helix #11
A green rowboat
A flowering quince beside stone steps
A 5:00 a.m. silence punctuated with keystrokes
A large steel mailbox a trellised breezeway
A matchstick shade against the eastern sky
A portion of silence
A green August twilight a whippoorwill’s yodel
A whole tone scale on a console piano
You are here & you are not here
A radio signal traveling beyond the solar system
Ranch lights glinting green along the ridge
An Eb drone on a haromonium
You are here & you are not
A magnolia leaf fallen glossy on the walkway
A white car a sky of white cirrus an anxiety disorder
An instance of silence in motion
A cell tower on the mesa against a melon sunrise
A sound wave cycling in a square white room
You are here the melon sunrise over Lake Erie
You are walking you are driving your car
A sound wave cycling an unsolvable laughter
An instance of recognition as always uncanny
A crepe myrtle giddy with blossoms
A street lamp rooted in concrete
A barbed wire fence leaning from snow weight
A film’s blue ghost light a red theater chair
A sign stating You are here
Jack Hayes
© 2010
[By the by: if you're interested in the Days of Wine & Roses book giveaway or if you'd like to hear my interview with the famed Lambchop, please check out Eberle's Monday post on Platypuss-in-Boots! If you'd like to enter the book giveaway, please be sure to leave a comment & to mention your interest in the giveaway in that comment. Comments on the contest may be left anytime from now thru Thursday!]
I love the way you can pick lines from these poems almost at random and enjoy them in their own right.
ReplyDeleteFell St. brought this to my quirky little head...
ReplyDeleteI do not like thee, Dr. Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.
I especially loved "bruised July sky" and "crepe myrtle giddy with blossoms".
I love the way you can pick lines from these poems almost at random and enjoy them in their own right.
ReplyDeleteI agree - each line and image contributes to the whole, but there are many that are just entire poems in and of themselves ("A sound wave cycling in a square white room","A dogwood blooming a quarter mile distant" are a couple of favorites)
@ willow
The Dr. Fell poem reminds me of the novel, Hannibal; Dr. Fell was Hannibal Lecter's alias...
Hi Alan, Willow & HKatz
ReplyDeleteAlan: Thanks! That's definitely part of the idea--fragmentary writing.
Willow: Funny! Of course, I mean the Fell St that runs along the Panhandle in San Francisco. Glad you liked it!
HKatz: Yes, as I mentioned to Alan above! Thanks for the comment--I like that sound wave line pretty well if I do say so myself.
I've told you before how much I like these Helix poems. (What's the plural?) No matter what you call them, I like the disparate images that somehow make sense to me.
ReplyDeleteHi Karen: I've been very gratified by the response to these, very much so, & I appreciate your kind words. I do think this sequence is close to an end--I even think there's some chance that #11 might be the last, tho I don't want to go out too far on a limb. There may be one or possibly two more.
ReplyDeleteHi, I just stumbled across you via TFE's blog, and have to say I like both these so much, particularly the first one-
ReplyDeleteSnow on Council Mountain dyed orange at sunset
A redwinged blackbird’s slurred whistle
are two of my favourite lines
Beautiful, and the images conjure up a incredibly vivid picture of a landscape much bigger than I'm used to dealing with here in Ireland.
Hi Pure Fiction: Thanks so much for stopping by & for choosing to follow! Always glad to have another reader in the homeland of my ancestors, & glad you liked the poems. I'll swing by your place for a look-see later on today!
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed these - especially the noisy Helix #11! You've got me imagining music for piano, harmonium and a shortwave radio(the sort of thing young John Cage did).
ReplyDeleteHi Dominic: Glad you liked them! This is officially the end of the sequence. Interesting what you say: Eberle has been thinking about setting some of this to music.
ReplyDelete