Robert Klein Engler

  Robert Klein Engler lives in Chicago. His poems and stories have appeared in Borderlands, Evergreen Chronicles, Hyphen, Christopher Street, The James White Review, American Letters and Commentary, Literal Latte, and many other magazines, journals and online e-zines. His books of poetry, Shoreline and Medicine Signs, are published by Alphabeta Press. He was the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards for his poem "Three Poems for Kabbalah," which appeared in Fish Stories Collective 2. His drawings appear online in Black Elvis, Rio, and other e-zines.

E-mail Robert at GayPoet312@all.com

DEPARTURES

The Poor Boy Reaches After Wisdom

Around and around and around goes the carousel
of books, palmed from generation to generation,
digested, spit up, and chewed again ... the same train
tunneling the darkness, the same shrapnel of stars.

It takes so long to learn the words ... before these
glass and steel towers there were blocks of ink
and maps of chalk and slate, before there was a broken
heart and brittle rods of anger there was a book

that told the story of lost books; before the knot
of personality, before the deeds and decline,
desire was written on a porch under the full moon
when the fresh odor of balsam purified the night.

Later, his marriage was sealed by a ring of shadows.
Now the same walls he never saw behind, the same
rooms he never visited, the same embroidered
bolts are still locked to his stumbling letters.

When his mother died, she left him her mirror of ice.
The lotion of his lover's skin was as smooth
as a kiss, so he goes reading again in the well of eyes,
where sacrifice opens the dry land of his heart.

Listen, the honing of steel wheels against steel rails
is the sound of power grinding anonymous lives;
yet in a courtyard the fountain lulls the hours,
and a bird whistles, then flutters from the branch.


This world is so bright, so attractive, how can it be
only provisional? See the black wings of a crow
glint in the sunlight as it settles on a high building.
No one shows an orphan where to place his love.

There were hopes; he held a house, a car, a man,
but they did evaporate, as flowers bend to dust.
Sleepy now, the pages fan through his fingers
and absence prays the prayer he cannot pray.



The Poor Boy Gives Up the Burden of Being Good

High above the Illinois prairie a jet flies eastward.
A man sets his drink down on the tray in front of him
and looks out the window at an expanse of snow.
He sees the skyline of Chicago in the distance below.

Perfect love drives out fear, yet who affords to be perfect?
Once a year a dove's wing brushes against Golgatha.
The land is in the grip of a great winter, even above it,
the cold persists and the reach of ice seems infinite.

Robert Frost says that freedom is simply departure.
The plastic cup with soda vibrates from the engines.
Little bubbles, like worlds, rise with effervescent fire.
We carry a long time desire and the memory of desire.

A vapor trail draws out a white arc across the sky.
Turn from the window and look at your dry hands.
The execution is over-a guard cleans his fingernail.
Seat belt on. We'll be landing soon. Relax. Why so pale?

The Poor Boy Realizes an End to America

What new continent without God or brotherhood
looms circuits of silicone, now that the liberal state
is dead and quotas rule our gated neighborhood?

The sense of ocean and old trees lingering about
ancient books will never again repeat tea in Boston
harbor or skyrockets blazing bright, then out!

While the huddled masses clutch sheets and slumber,
I think to call "Freedom," and complain: I dial,
then hear the digital voice exclaim, "Wrong number."

The blimp that circles slow above the Super Dome
assembles points of light so we may read
the prophecy that Vietnam has now come home.

What to say upon the frosted city's battlement,
last words? "Indians," "Trombones," "Rosebud,"
or, "the Second Coming came and went."

A higher consciousness remains our fleeting goal,
alien autopsies and lights that hover in the sky,
and hell, yes hell, is matter for an opinion poll.

Descending stairs of oil and mud I follow down.
What matters if I know the secret to the world?
If given free, without the pain, I am the clown.

To move among Americans and witness Liberty
as a kind of Zen, or measure our community
by machines, this is now the profitable perfidy.


Even the dwelling we make in the evening air
is crowded with rank somnambulists-
silly me, I expected the government to be fair.

When in the course of human events, history ends,
and stand-up comics are our only shallow wits,
imagine a man like jade who breaks but never bends.

The Poor Boy Tries to Rhyme His Way Out of Trouble

>From behind a row trees rises the echo of drums.
A school band practices for the march that comes,
yet it could be the youth of Athens ready for war,
or another world balanced on a metaphor.

You have seen the way clouds pass across the sky.
That is how the history of men passes by.
A young prince rides out, bright with health,
but the snow comes and covers his rusted wealth.

What prayer removes the burden from our back?
Perhaps it's therapy and regular doses of Prozac.
Or maybe it is just a simple saying of the truth.
He'll have his martini with a splash of vermouth.

Can you believe it, after thirty years, he still can say
the words that sent him stuttering off to Bombay.
Furthermore, he staked his job and lost the bet,
and spends his morning surfing porno on the internet.

Another man walks in a blizzard of circumstance.
A fog of incense rises to the arches in a spiral dance.
Behold the light between tall buildings like feldspar-
it's enough to say God finds us where we are.

The Poor Boy Decides to Go It Alone

Move the weeping-couch by the window,
I am tired of tears. Let what I do stand the test
of light. The long history of reading and the long
history of flesh reaching for flesh is of a piece.

Why remember songs? In the coffins, row on row,
the bones need no company. What more is living
safe, but fold, staple, duplicate? The great "O"
in love, round as the moon, passes ever so soon.

They go on ahead, one by one, and at best teach
us how to read shapes in the fog: there by the stone
arch, the flash of a Roman sword, or there, caught
in the cypress above the swamp, are they eyes?

A monk trims the wick of a candle, wind blows
snow against the bolted door. The book of Mark
begins by citing another book, and so it goes,
father after father, son after son, knife after knife.

A waltz plays and the satellite floats from the shuttle
as if it were a nude descending the stairs.
Is there no end to the confusion-look, who left
that garbage bag of dirty clothes in the subway car?

Get up. However you do it, the world is still here.
A man will stumble plodding up or down the slope.
Words cure, but who among the Kapos stop to hear?
Have your morning coffee with or without hope.