Mark DuCharme
Voyages
I did not go to Kingston in order to hear this
Though I am sure that something desolate will happen
While you’re out at sea.
The parlor man plays his mouth organ
Tenderly, as the recruitment fair is struck down
By dimwits who lag
In breezy comportment
When all the extroverts sing.
They sing “Holiday in Cambodia” with a sweetness that singes your arm hair.
I am also busy ignoring annotations
& Listening cagily to the beat of trombones.
A message arrives: ‘thingie’
Is not a word. Investigations
Follow.
Don’t be alarmed, Hilda. This
Iconic twittering
Is bound to rankle. Go softly, then
In the dark & wait
For the engineer’s instructions.
It seems I went nowhere last night.
How could I have been so sated?
What do you feel
When the engines run elsewhere
Reignited
By no one’s gain?
Things That Go Where Light Must Fade
Funny rope.
Poor rumor?
You, my ruined evening.
A walk-in facture
At the edge of amber. Go wispy
In the dark, where you might
Bend, in sulky procurement. All
Eyes on the besotted shirker
Slipping off the onramp. Judge not
Lest ye be disappointed. Ye
Or knee? It doesn’t tremble
Until you intend to whisper. The human
Enterprise has need of music
& Tender migration, to become itself.
Is the cat herself a household god?
Louis Zukofsky felt that poets work
On their work even when not writing it,
Whereas Wallace Stevens was just crazy,
Though often in a good way. In
The peacefulest sky that trees
Seem replete with. We are always &
Everywhere part of our histories. What’s the
Word for jouissance in Olde
Spanglish? Those birds must have
A nest under that beam. But after
The disaster, what have we learned? That a dozen
Or so trapped children are worth more in
Ad revenue than three thousand
Migrant ones? It’s a means to a
Myth— & I wish you’d linger
Under an ecstatic moon, listening
To “The Hand That Never Was.”
Mark DuCharme’s recent books of poetry include We, the Monstrous: Script for an Unrealizable Film (The Operating System, 2018), The Unfinished: Books I-VI (BlazeVox, 2013) and Answer (BlazeVox, 2011). Counter Fluencies 1-20 appeared as part of the print journal The Lune (2017), and other work is recent or forthcoming in Caliban Online, Colorado Review, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Ethel, Human Repair Kit, Monday Night, New American Writing, Unlikely Stories, Word For/Word and Noon: An Anthology of Short Poems (Isobar Press: due 2019). He lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
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Voyages
I did not go to Kingston in order to hear this
Though I am sure that something desolate will happen
While you’re out at sea.
The parlor man plays his mouth organ
Tenderly, as the recruitment fair is struck down
By dimwits who lag
In breezy comportment
When all the extroverts sing.
They sing “Holiday in Cambodia” with a sweetness that singes your arm hair.
I am also busy ignoring annotations
& Listening cagily to the beat of trombones.
A message arrives: ‘thingie’
Is not a word. Investigations
Follow.
Don’t be alarmed, Hilda. This
Iconic twittering
Is bound to rankle. Go softly, then
In the dark & wait
For the engineer’s instructions.
It seems I went nowhere last night.
How could I have been so sated?
What do you feel
When the engines run elsewhere
Reignited
By no one’s gain?
Things That Go Where Light Must Fade
Funny rope.
Poor rumor?
You, my ruined evening.
A walk-in facture
At the edge of amber. Go wispy
In the dark, where you might
Bend, in sulky procurement. All
Eyes on the besotted shirker
Slipping off the onramp. Judge not
Lest ye be disappointed. Ye
Or knee? It doesn’t tremble
Until you intend to whisper. The human
Enterprise has need of music
& Tender migration, to become itself.
Is the cat herself a household god?
Louis Zukofsky felt that poets work
On their work even when not writing it,
Whereas Wallace Stevens was just crazy,
Though often in a good way. In
The peacefulest sky that trees
Seem replete with. We are always &
Everywhere part of our histories. What’s the
Word for jouissance in Olde
Spanglish? Those birds must have
A nest under that beam. But after
The disaster, what have we learned? That a dozen
Or so trapped children are worth more in
Ad revenue than three thousand
Migrant ones? It’s a means to a
Myth— & I wish you’d linger
Under an ecstatic moon, listening
To “The Hand That Never Was.”
Mark DuCharme’s recent books of poetry include We, the Monstrous: Script for an Unrealizable Film (The Operating System, 2018), The Unfinished: Books I-VI (BlazeVox, 2013) and Answer (BlazeVox, 2011). Counter Fluencies 1-20 appeared as part of the print journal The Lune (2017), and other work is recent or forthcoming in Caliban Online, Colorado Review, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Ethel, Human Repair Kit, Monday Night, New American Writing, Unlikely Stories, Word For/Word and Noon: An Anthology of Short Poems (Isobar Press: due 2019). He lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.