This chapbook of poetry is published by Garlic Press

44 Lookout Lane Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Copyright © Gerald Duffy 2009

Motley World

Motley Poems

Poetry by Gerald Duffy

T here was a man who lost his way. He wandered for years, but wherever he went, no place seemed just right.

The weather was either too hot, too cold, or too rainy. The people were either too surly or too friendly and superficial. The landscape and towns were either too boring or relent-lessly picturesque. The cost of medical insurance was either exorbitant or the free doctors were completely incompetent. One day, he wrote his first poem. That too was unsatisfac-tory, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter. So he wrote an-other and another and another and before he knew it, he had enough poems to fill a book, unsatisfactory to be sure, but nevertheless populated with his deepest longings and filled with enough nourishment to make him love every single unsatisfactory day.

Also by the author: “Spiral of Second Chances” 2009

First Edition: 2007 Second Edition: 2009

Published by Garlic Press 44 Lookout Lane,

Portsmouth, New Hampshire Copyright © Gerald Duffy 2009

43

and the pond, steady shimmering, the moon etches

a promise on her body, on the water, humbles

the male heart, signs an epitaph to daylight

and the serenade fades.

42

Turning Down the Volume for Carl Haarer

Once upon a green evening in the twilight bar

I made small talk with an Hawaiian shirt.

Like yours, I said, my life is a brass band, calls

attention to itself in golden, blaring ecstasy

cherubs on every trumpet, but secretly I thought

we men are just roosters, strutting, puffing things

loud and vulnerable to the table-drumming of bored

fingers and every slow blink of a lizard’s eye.

I dream of chameleon skies over the cemetery

where the finest days become a mantle of grief

and the darkest hours with their slanting rain

can sprout new grass. And who stole the angel

from Frank Jone’s tomb? Maybe the black-clad

bikers rapping in the shadows or the madcap poet

who poses his beauty, skin smooth and brown

just out of high school. Light falls across her face

Table of Contents

1. E-World 2. Balancing Act

4. My Unusual Love Affairs 6. What Nature Is Really Like – Part I

7. What Nature Is Really Like – Part I I 8. Der Panther (by Rainer Maria Rilke)

9. The Panther (translation) 10. Ten Voices

12. Adult Education 13. Quiver

15. Geography Master 17. Calabria

18. Humber Collage 22. Blessing of the Dog

24. Beech Grove – Germany 25. Plan B

32. Parish of St. Dymphna 34. Monarch of the Fields

35. Three Haikus 36. Sabbatical 38. New Year

40. Land by the Sea 41. The Twelfth Croissant

42. Turning Down the Volume

For Effie and Sam with love.

41

The Twelfth Croissant

For Mekeel McBride

This is the twelfth croissant of the baker

who refused to believe in thirteen and rabbits’

feet hanging from his slender chain of luck.

Who closed the oven before the word surplus

made his lips pucker with the promise of profit.

It was okay for a loaf to fail and for banana peels

to send ordinary bakers like him into the air

like acrobats and brief falling stars.

He would take his chances with the vagaries

of yeast and the impenetrable wonders of heat

and rising dough. He could believe his fingers

when they told him that he had the lightest touch.

40

Land by the Sea

People who live atop great cliffs

know that rolling surf gathers a song.

The old women attend to their needles.

My mother was one of them.

If her finger bled, she licked it.

I still hear the voices of blackberries

behind our dense cottage garden.

The ocean whirs as it has always done,

its abutments home to nesting birds.

I was born here and I never left.

I was born here many times.

How jealously we guard our secrets.

E-World

Because he was the century’s child

Because the world is filament

Because signals fill Indra’s Cosmic Net

Because holographic tendrils reach for light

Because even the static is dynamic

Because the blogs are holy diaries

Because the venom seeps away

Because salutations and sign-offs copulate

Because his death blazed through the ether

Because the news of it spun lightning fast

Because his fingers touched continents

Because he was happy and sang

Because there is so much to celebrate

Because love finds a million orbits

Because the tender places are here

Because the tender places are there

Because grief can be encompassed

Because we pray in solemn fonts

Because it is because it is.

1

2

Balancing Act

For Sam Duffy, Age 12

When the demolition gang

swings by with handy sticks,

the stones tumble to the base.

My son and his friends

upset the rocks I balanced

on a granite post.

No rebukes, I always restack

because I want them to see

how we can bounce back

from destruction, from vandal

mischief, from almost everything.

And then, their wild-boy yells

call me back to that age

I think: bite your lip, just let it go.

A future cairn will hold its own

when my son’s absence leaves us

with a calm not entirely wanted.

39

in my mind, a tattoo

on rachel’s thigh

Cea celtic cross, blue

no bigger than a quarter

the half darkness arc

of rachel’s back soft.

beads of love-sweat

salty, traveling slow

a web of acts and promise

last year ends

the first we had.

38

New Year

city park, our place

by winter’s river

bird’s curve of her throat

echoes of rachel’s mouth.

saturday night was upbeat

fireworks finale pounded

the sky’s taut skin

crystal rain fell

beyond the trees.

hands on her hips now

her rant taxes the hour

joins morning’s melody

with wrong notes.

I try to tune them out

watch a pair of swans

slip the current

coast in slack water

double themselves

in the river’s mirror.

3

These young animators of stones

must soon assemble their own

loose elements from the world’s

turbulence, rebuild towers

leave their mark on peaks,

bury their friends, listen to words

they may not want to hear:

the caution of shifting moments,

the sudden squalls, the need

to fashion a bespoke passage.

This is one day, this is the work,

correction is the wrong voice.

After all, the damage is small

and reasonable: they are boys

and stones to them were never

meant to sleep out their days

undisturbed.

4

My Unusual Love Affairs

My first love was an armadillo

She hardly spoke upon the pillow

That dead-pan look, the panzer skin

She never really let me in.

My second love, a platypus

Our courtship stirred up quite a fuss

But many times we were ecstatic

Myself and that duck-billed aquatic.

My third love was a three-toed sloth

She hung loose all day, love pleased us both

Though finally such flings must end

Her scratching drove me round the bend.

My fourth love was a manatee

Her fleshiness was bliss to me

She loved to swim, a natural leader

She broke my heart, that bottom-feeder.

37

placed for separate friends,

him, him, and her. Tonight

the shades are open,

whorls of light measure

the spacing of stars,

steamed potatoes scent the air.

Sleep-starved in my cot one night

my heart turned to face its age.

In the distance, a wild bird called.

36

Sabbatical

This year I prefer to stave off

complexity, company grown tiresome,

the flat hype of industry.

I reside with the oxen.

Mail is an hour’s drive distant,

the usual powers are not present.

Natives here are known

for their cuts in the hair’s domain,

chestnut eyes, chants laced

with the deeper tones of sex

and wisdom about the habits

of sows and the fuss of bees.

The impassive face of night

is rising again. I can report

three lanterns on my porch

5

My fifth love was a pangolin

Her parents frowned (we lived in sin)

Her taste for bugs made our love tricky

Her tongue didn’t help, so long and sticky.

My last love is a pigmy shrew

And people say: a fine howdy-do

But I bend, she rises, when we’re kissing

For height is all my sweetheart’s missing.

6

What Nature Is Really Like – Part I

An old crow whittles a branch

in the shape of a tuning fork,

humming a ballad he once heard.

The poor oak doesn’t know how

to complain about this visitor,

is thankful crows can’t dig.

A nearby sullen squirrel studies

the newspaper a tourist left behind.

Nothing about nuts: squirrel yawns.

Worms assemble for a town meeting

but it’s always the same story,

one old worm hogging the mike.

A farmer is asleep on a haystack

dreaming of beheading the hills.

A barnyard rooster spreads the word.

The cows move towards the oak

because people expect it of them

when storm clouds threaten.

35

Three Haikus

my father at rest

arguments fallen away

like spent old clothes.

~

live dangerously! file taxes after deadline without extension.

~

SPAM of my childhood you root me out even here on the Internet.

34

Monarch of the Fields

I am the monarch of wheat

presiding over the cereal ear’s

awns and glumes.

Life dances in my realm

and I pay with gold coins.

Vigorous, my rule provides

the full goodness of soil.

I exact no tax of tears

and still my subjects suffer.

The dry August blazes now

ruffled with coral clouds.

Bears search for edible roots

tougher than flesh.

Insects jostle for their favorite buds.

The black sores beetles leave

I forgive with the verdicts

tolerant and bright

I have repeated for centuries.

7

What Nature Is Really Like – Part II

The rabbit wears a crimson cowl

blesses a muttering vole, tells him

to pray, rise and avoid television.

In the dense weeds by the river

a frog blows his polished bugle.

Many other frogs are already deaf.

Starlings play chicken over the field

while a fox hopes for a head-on crash.

The store is closed, he’s feeling peckish.

Badger delivers a lecture to his fans.

Weasels who under cover of dark

come to exchange philosophies.

Even the weevils can’t resist the ride

high on the windblown corn stalks

with no attendants collecting money.

A freight train hoots beyond the hills.

That big rude bird, the swallows say

and go back to their poker hands.

8

Der Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe

so müd geworden, dass er nichts mehr hält.

Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe

und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.

Der weiche Gang geschmiedig starker Schritte,

der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,

ist wie ein Tanz um eine Mitte,

in der betäubt ein grosser Wille steht.

Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille

sich lautlos auf -. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,

geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille -

und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.

33

I passed a room of infants, their bawling muted

by the thick transparency of unstained glass. I found you

Franz Wright and we strode together down the main aisle

to make our offerings and breathe wisps of terebinth

and the sweetness of the Lord.

Where are we going, Franz Wright? This mass

will soon end. Which songs will you sing tonight?

(I carry your book as a talisman). Will we stroll together

in the evening drizzle through alleyways and parks?

The never-far-off night lies ahead. Will we cross sure-footed

the pavements where songs can still rise, dedicated and great?

Ah, my friend, brink-returner, humble deep-voiced believer

your lines displayed for all to see. You say poetry is your cure.

It may be, Brother Wright, you bring news of my destiny.

32

Parish of Saint Dymphna After Alan Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” For Franz Wright

What thoughts I have of you today, Franz Wright

for I slipped again into ash and dark acres, sorrowed

gut churning, confined in the clouded dome of night.

In desperation and scouring for a handhold I turned

and saw a chapel door, recalled your deep confessions

and litanies. What sweet incense! What gilded swirls!

Inside, the faithful stooped in the arc of prayer

pews of silhouettes, families clustered , the single,

the widowed, votive flames, infants disquieted!

I saw you, Franz Wright, kindler of hope, courageous

passing the collection plate, tucking your smile and

blessing the fallen crests of last week’s work. I watched

you lean toward others and whisper your kindnesses:

Know there are more like you!

Your life has retreated into the folds

of your darkest thoughts

but wait, you too can return -

you too may be cured!

9

The Panther

Translation of Der Panther by Rilke

The pacing past the bars, the steady stare,

a tiredness grown so nothing holds him here,

of a thousand iron bars he seems aware,

a thousand bars, no world beyond this sphere.

With supple strength, with soft and gentle mode

he turns in smallest circles about his flank.

It’s like a dance of power around a node,

his great volition standing stunned and blank.

Sometimes his eyelids rise so he can sense

a picture spread across the moment’s chart,

descend through limbs of sinew, silent, tense

and thinning, fading, cease within his heart.

10

Ten Voices one has a voice like the best of milk

the softness of cream freed and seeking

some form like a bowl or a spoon.

two has a voice like a jar of salty peanuts

the lick of ocean when it comes ashore

nodules whose skin gives way to butter.

three – a phone operator from the South

has a voice like pantyhose stretched so tight

the ripping sound is just a call away.

four has a voice like a blue ceramic bowl

filled with crescents of fresh-sliced melon

cool air from the porch beading their moisture.

five – in the tenor section – has a voice

like a pair of Doc Martins polished to a high gloss

I say she can sing any song she pleases.

31

so here’s my idea for what happens next:

you stand up on your wobbly legs, Mr. B

let the bar stool breathe a little

take the dance floor with me, Mr. B

and let’s jump around and cavort

like the dreamy fools we are

I don’t mind your beery breath, Mr. B

I don’t even mind if you step on my toes

for we are blessed indeed.

30

every saint and soldier is alone

and we have this thing in common

we have this thing in common

it is what we amount to.

So we stare at one another

across tables, across pillows and oceans

across streets and dreams

across supermarket checkouts

and we stare across years

we stare at one another in wonderment

and awe and we sing and dance

write poems and watch TV, we fight

work, and sleep, hate, fuck, love and drink

eat and come to celebrate this common thing

that amounts to us.

And maybe we can learn this

and know it – like it knows us

and know it – like it always knew us

oh, Mr. B, we are so blessed.

You served up some great poems

Mr. B, and you earned them all

11

six has a voice like a blue-jay feather

that strokes my eyelids while I sleep

and touches me lightly and so deep.

seven has a voice like a Persian rug

woven with a map of pastel geometries

its stippled imprint on my naked back.

eight has a voice like a veil of flying sand

wind pounds against basilicas of red rock

seeking an opening, a channel for her song.

nine has a voice like marsh grass in November

russet hatching across the last of autumn

the orchards already picked, sleepy for snow.

ten is the voice of another’s percussion

a song I heard before I entered this world

the beat instructs me still, and still, I listen.

12

Adult Education

A man of simple feeling

never

snow bending the spruce

branches, almost to

breaking point

the sight of my mother’s stockinged

thigh, breathing never simple again

how can we stop breaking

before we even know how?

my father in some factory

pressing out mold after mold

I would reach back for him

and bring him to another place

perhaps here

among these trees black against the snow.

29

no, Mr. B, I slip, the me I’ve worn

for decades like a dark suit

and now I slough it off like an old skin

and I am pedaling naked under the stars

just a piece of mind in the mind of all minds

and the limp and scruffy suit I left in the dust

calls after me: “But aren’t you afraid?”

and I say: “No. No need.”

You see, Mr. B, I was far, far from lonely

like a cell dancing with its billion cousins

among the many, just alone

and all my friends are alone

and all my lovers and my brothers

and my sisters are alone

and all the fathers and the mothers are alone

and every soul in a mosque or cathedral is alone

and every swaying kid at a concert is alone

and every child is alone

and every old man and woman

parked in a wheelchair in a nursing home is alone

and every CEO is alone

and every janitor is alone

28

like a hive God the beekeeper tends.

If I tried to be a bar-fly like you, Mr. B

fate would swat me so fast and so hard

you’d barely have time to hear the splat.

So on those mornings when I wake up

and I know nothing about anything, Mr. B

here’s what I do: I pitch my mind back

to early one summer morning in Germany

(the country where you could draw more fans

than a reading by Guenter Grass)

picture me Mr. B, on my bicycle

and it’s still dark because it is still early

and in the fields dew beads up

on tobacco leaves and tall corn stalks

and night has cleared out the clouds

and I ride along a stream past a reservoir

dark round hills crowd the valley

and I can see the amber rim

of the day ahead – and then I slip

and then I slip – not off the bicycle, Mr. B

no, the wheels still hold me vertical and safe

13

Quiver

For the young archer

a dream quiver

of burnished leather

jacket-back rubbed

through a child time

of robinhooding around

marmaduke street or

queens gate terrace

near gobstopper clearing

and the sweet shop

with its aniseed balls

licorice etcetera

the arrows cut from

best-we-could-do bamboo

still, pointed enough

to puncture the sheriff

of cholmley street

or prince john from

prince’s avenue

14

too young an incarnation

to sport a goatee

nevertheless evil

through and through

and deserving of arrows

drawn one by one

from an archer’s quiver

deep in the forest.

27

I want so badly to harvest

some goodwill from the lighter side

of my own heart and from

all the good hearts on this planet

and eat the warm bread

that people of goodwill will make.

And tell me, Mr. B, what do you do

on those mornings after those nights

when your moorings come loose

when your senses tangle

and your submerged kinfolk

toss you around all night

like a beach ball?

On those mornings when your blindness

gropes its way to the bathroom

and you’ve forgotten all the passwords

that unlock your toothpaste and coffee maker

and all the codes that would give you

free and happy access to the world

you’d love to join, you’d love to join

the world that starts its daily buzz

26

you two got the paper, you two got the pen

you two got the desk, and then again

you two got barrels full of moxie.

Mr. B, this poem in search of moxie

is bursting from the river under my skin

it’s writing me, Mr. B, and I can’t help it.

Once, I found myself in a bad place, Mr. B

no shady glade in which to recover

not even a naked light bulb to guide me.

Crouched in the basement under the stairs

curled up like some monastic seeker praying

praying for that holy connection

I know is out there with my name on it

praying for that holy connection

I know is out there with my name on it.

I listen, I listen, I listen

I listen, I listen, I listen

Mr. B, I’d welcome anything

to fill a soul-sucking space like this

where the words I swallow burn

and the poems stick in my throat.

15

Geography Master

Before class began and our master entered

the geography room, we’d already found a way

when his hometown rugby team had lost

to taunt him by chalking up the score

on the blackboard. A black-robed lay teacher

of the earth’s wide skin, he didn’t mind our jibes

rarely caned our fingertips.

A small area behind our desks, a work table

with rubber rollers, ink and pads

where we ink-rolled paper maps

for every far continent, printed the Great Lakes

the long ribbon of the Mississippi River.

I dreamed of cities, Chicago, Minneapolis

Cincinnati, names with sounds

that belonged in some foreign opera.

He taught us language to conjure

bold topographies: chalk escarpments

16

cuspate forelands, submergent coastlines

pebble spits, and long shore drift.

Years before I ever crossed

Indiana’s summer fields I crudely mapped

the corn belt and saw its rising heat

already part of my imaginary America.

25

Plan B Hey, Mr. Bukowski, I got the paper

I got the pen, I got the desk

but then again: do I have the moxie?

Say, Mr. Bukowski, maybe you got me pegged:

snoozer poems from another insecure asshole

but I got the paper, I got the pen

I got the desk, and then again

I might have some limey asshole moxie.

Watch out, Mr. B, because here comes

my fellow countryman, Bill Shakespeare

the poet you couldn’t/wouldn’t read

and is that a grapefruit in his codpiece

or is he just happy to see you?

He takes you to his local pub, The Golden Nib

so you two can drink from the same goblet

two ballsy genius bards telling jokes

about everything from mad monarchs

to relishing a beer shit and the whores in L.A.

I can hear the sausage-link sentences

of the English language already sizzling.

24

Beech Grove – German Pastorale

Twigs breaking underfoot on sweet woodruff’s dappled mat

the forest floor, an old beech grove and horses bones below.

Long since gone, a country home, its glade and gliding swallows

stamping hooves, bright saddled steeds in neighboring stable stalls.

Who could doubt the cool shade buzz of summer’s sizzling days

soothed armor-weary skin, a Roman soldier’s hideaway, his leave.

Before the Romans, vocal Celts, their song and swirly smoking den

frost and pelts and frozen breath, the ridge where antlers spread.

Now a distant tractor chugs, bee hives in a copse, the trees grown in

a signpost, plaque and picnic place brush older lives aside.

17

Calabria

Our coffee maker is a church bell.

Here, no one ever drinks cappuccino.

Turbid, humming, bittersweet, smoky,

trembling, it calls to me for a visit.

Bernardo and I caroused in Calabria

where everyone drinks cappuccino.

That summer we spent each morning

on the veranda. The town below

had narrow alleyways, the moon made

every stray cat sing. Silvery shoals

streaked the sea, the coast rock solid.

The ferry of dreams carried me away.

Fertile ground helps Bernardo and I

see our tussles through. Stray cats

of course, they rarely sleep. Listen:

con te partiro, con te partiro.

Stray cats seldom sing a phrase just once.

18

Humber Collage

For Matilda Ferguson

Estuary breeze off the North Sea

the shore’s mud flats, shallows

beyond staunch city quays, now home

to docked and rusting trawlers:

sad to see what flourished sidelined.

For want of better pranks

young boys hang fish-heads

from the garden washing line

next to Aunt Sylvia’s bloomers

billowing and snapping in the gusts,

like the sails of a schooner moving

through sheltered waters, kind tides

leading all vessels to the sea.

The wind waves across the lawn

and footings of an old greenhouse

circled by terraced houses— home.

23

the same ball in the

same way with unfailing

enthusiasm more times

than we can understand

or the flushed game birds

across the ochre salt-water

marsh or the tail wagged

with complete surprise

every single evening of

your dog’s life, when

you drag your sad ass

across the threshold,

work satchel stuffed,

sagging and you still

cloaked in fatigue,

seeing the mutt in the

hallway, hearing the

wife and kids in the

TV-room and seeing

God himself on the stairs?

22

Blessing of the Dog After Alicia Ostriker

It’s hard for dyslexics

to make out God from

dog but there’s surely

some of each in each.

Otherwise, how to

account for the

mountain rescues

the best brandy

in a snow drift or

the blind woman

leashed back from

the pungent wheels

of a light-jumping

garbage truck or

the resilient vigil held

near the fallen-ill

master or the absurd

delight in retrieving

19

In the wooden loft in the garden

pigeons puff-strut coo their melodies.

A red homing circle painted high

on the back wall beckons them

each evening through cloud-fissures

silver columns in the scattering dusk.

They spiral down, come back to roost.

Aunt Sylvia is dying in the guest room

her cries from a childhood barn

in Northumbrian heathered hills

spiral around an eternity clock.

Glass-domed, brass workings spin

a muffled mechanical pulse.

On her dresser beside the clock

an armadillo skin latched tail to snout

soft parts now a blue velvet pad

for her pins and sowing needles.

20

In a frame above her bed

a flower garden deep in bloom:

cornflower, rose, lupine, phlox

a woman’s face under the shade

of a broad-brim straw hat.

Things you see while you listen

to stories of explorers and circuses.

By the old gray church the boy’s eye

sights along the barrel of a BB gun

a pellet splits a sparrow’s heart,

paralysis wing over wing slowly

slipping down the dark slate roof.

On this flattened patch of earth

wartime bomb sites are strewn

with empty paint drums, soot piles

like burial mounds, blocks and rubble.

Behind shrubbery under gable ends

young swap looks at private parts

21

girls dream of gowns, boys a touch

of silk and seedling passion

all ears for the life of whispers.

Outside Aunt Sylvia’s window

mist conceals the tucked wings

of patent-leather crows.

Work-day ends, brick dust settles.

She stirs, turns on her pillows

beyond praise now, beyond sounds

of daily homecomings, beyond banter

on the street, the dockworkers’ clogs

striking the pavement and echoing

applause from every flagstone.