Featured Poet: March 1998

"Spring."

Liquid Sunshine
Soft Comforts
Causeway
In The Distance
Passerby
Impotence
Spring
Wheat Hula

Liquid Sunshine

I almost started a fire this morning.
As the sun poured through the high vase
With sunflower.
It was sharpened to a fine pitch-
Magnified.

I could smell the smoke as I read.
I could see it wafting up
In the room with the stained-glass-on-cloth
Lampshade,
The 12 X 6-foot canvas,
The red dining chairs,
The red and yellow chaise lounge,
Navy futons,
Or the gummy bear jar.
Against the Matisse 'Le Clown' card,
On the cork star,
Through 'Eternal Vigilance,' the sun poured.

Soft Comforts

There is something here
Lost to words
Listed in columns.
Such do not create images
Anymore.

A mind fraught with abbreviations
Finds poetry's clattering voice
(Its brevity) lacking.

In the information-laden universe,
Words leak from the poet's mouth
As drivel.

We need the soft comforts
Of sentences, paragraphs, and pages
After battered by conversations
Or television and its
Shortened language.

Perhaps there is less room for reading
Between the lines of prose.
All the transitions
Are provided, every
Implication inserted,
Connotation and denotation
Lying there,
As fat women injecting
Chocolates in their heads.

Poetry's death correlates
To the difficulty it takes
To bring many implications
To single words.
How a poet, like a
Cowboy, can rope the savage
Bull of language to mean
Without exception,
Pure and perfect
The best example.
An incident wide with
Winter, trees without
Leaves, a sky of gray, and
Rain's only notification is a
Sound coming from tires.
What winter without language?
Cautious, careful dance
Of appropriate and inappropriate?
What way to describe the biker in blue,
The beige Caravan, the motorcyclist with
Rock protector, and cars with aerodynamic
Storage bins?
I can stand here and tell you with just a few
Words the entire circus of what's in
Front.
On days like this however, the
Color scheme is bleak: Yellows,
Reds, Greens, Browns, and forms of
White.

And yet within the confines,
Of a Monday morning,
There is much to tell.
Here people have excuses-destinations, changes
From their weekend realizations,
That their other selves make them bored,
Depressed.
Each must be told what to do,
Have purposes given to them.
Because for them to decide what's important,
Many a man must go there.
It takes a slow, quiet mind to know
Everyone needn't.

I don't know anymore
hearing myself in others' voices
about big buildings
or directions.
What we say to each other
is wasted breath?
From the individuals who say, "Fucker"
more than pause,
from the opinions
that ring incessant...

Causeway

I dare not open
What breezes blow in
Concentric circles, nor
disallow the whirling leaves
That wrap around the invisible
Arc of a genie.

Wishful thinking I am amid the
Whipping wind's hand coiled,
Drawn with this morning's
Alarm clock of sound.

It is a dance of trees and bushes.
It is the sight of a rising sun,
Where the Diamond Head-like
Silhouette of a mountain
Is seen from a San Souci
Position along the causeway
Of nature's indiscretion.

The entire view is lit
With the spaces between
Branches and the leaves are
Acting like birds.
Except for the yellow leaves and the houses,
I see rows and rows of an uneven green.

In The Distance

In early afternoon,
The angel,
Earth-colored girl
Her back against sunlight,
Black jacket,
Off-white turtle-neck,
Pants of refined green,
Rolled the paper
Around the Sandwich
And poked it with a toothpick.
Never saying 'Good-bye'
Never saying 'Hello,"
Only facing
At our luncheon,
At separate tables,
Without words,
Without ability,
Without memory
Except with a sudden end
That lingers-
Dream unrealized,
Hope twisted
In fragments of
"What I should have done."
What I should have done,
I haven't tried.
Instead, sideways-looking,
As if she could see me-
Some deeply concerted face-
In the atmosphere,
Here in daylight,
In the deli,
In the distance.

Passerby

Season's Bread and butter man comes coughing at
Rockridge.
I see the $550 per-month apartment.
Life's hellish weeks open to these bright days,
When my hands are clenched
And high above my head I sing.
So torturous, the back stiffens
With tension enough to keep the good roommates
Thinking:
"Maybe not."
No roommate, no studio, no one-bedroom,
But the sticky bun and cappuccino
On this day off-a Saturday of sun and
Celebration.
So far you and I have come with difficulty
That tightens our resolve,
Makes certain our ambitions.
In these moments, death is unrecognizable.
Clothed in a lovely blue,
With silver ear rings,
Hat, and a curvaceous body,
Everything about death springs forth hope.
We will change for the better.

My love for you is this friendship
Of everything that is good.
I think of you amid the high points,
and the lowest,
I know these are the best times.

I love,
I love again myself
As sharp as the pin-prickly day
When winter leaves have come and gone,
When winter's chilly weather keeps me fast
The Passerby.

Impotence

I am walking along a river -
The Mary Poppins of my day
With big, brown boots
And a black shirt and sleeves.
My umbrella is black,
My coat and pants are black,
As is my hair.
But my heart is singing slightly
With her perfume reaching up from my jacket,
Where the letter sits
And her words are slightly
Smudged -
Diluted by the cruel advancement of the spill.
Perfume falls everywhere,
Shiny and fresh,
But transparent and cold are the drops.
All of it leaks from the mountains
And flows straight to the sea -
The great divider -
Truth serum -
Great expanse only miracles can walk over.
It is as I expected,
Truth is no easier to take
Than are silent utterances of acknowledgment,
Or coined phrases of impenetrability.
Yet, you had the audacity
To 'never' let me see.

Spring

Showered by Cherry blossoms
Of the faintest pink.
Man on podium-
A Telegraphic silhouette
Against the eclectic line.

Wheat Hula

I go no further on Sundays than into meadows, into the images of tall wheat
and sun.
There I am no one but the vista.
No one but the sashay of wheat hula.
Wind makes no other noise than as a presence obstacling through these
monochromatic fields.

Copyright: Mario Savioni, 1999