Conversing with Hayden

Conversing with Hayden (Carruth)

How much I value this friendship!

I raise my glass of ice-cold chardonnay.

—Hayden Carruth from “Conversing” p29 Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey

An old man before my time
and sans the wisdom of greybeards

 

I toss my two cents on the smooth surface,
break the waters of your docile pond. Frogs croak

 

their songs regardless. And you,
you speak to me of my own madness

 

across years and distances never reached
over but by poets in boats of verse.

 

David M Pitchford
25 April 2009

First Draft

Burning Souvenirs

This was the poetry I wrote her
when we thought we were in love.
And this fifty sheets, poems I penned
thinking to win back something lost.

 
This is the desk her son made me
one year for Christmas—
like me, he had a tendency not to
finish things, not to see things
through to the end . . .

 
Here are the hats I wore,
gifts for father’s days
I’ve unearned in my errant
disinheritance of abandonment.

 
Here in the multi-colored tongues of flame,
these are paintings she forced on me
when I left her that fateful New Years Eve.
A wonderful rendering of Proserpine,
and one named Sirens in Vermillion
after a sonnet I wrote during my internship.

 
Alongside those, falling now to ash,
are books of poetry we wrote together—
one published, the others mere manuscripts.
And with them, drafts to feed the flames
give air to my impotent inferno—
conflagration of my impotence.

 
And, yes, there in the dying embers,
you can almost make out the evenings
of passion and conversation we shared,
the dreams and desires and hopes and
fears we never could live beyond:
interesting how they smolder so,
dimming from passion-red
to graveside grays and death-white.

 
Of course these things would not
burn of themselves; how many bottles
of vodka and whiskey and rum and cognac
I’ve fueled this fire with I cannot account,
but I know they number in hundreds or more—
or at least I take it so from my legends . . .

 
This is the card from our first anniversary
and the accompanying nine.
These are cards she mailed me,
to home or office, to remind me
how everlasting was her love,
her faith and eternal devotion.

 
These are the letters of my own
betrayal to a love I proclaimed for-
ever. Broken promises not worth
keeping (as in, clutching obstinately).

 
That in the violet flame,
that is the hand with which I held
hers our wedding day, spewing vows
like the love-stricken fool I was.
And beside that, the convoluted heart
with its too-many chambers
that held faith and betrayal both—
presence and absence, arrival and departure.

 
Those smoldering ruins,
those are the scholarly papers,
essays I thought at the time brilliant—
note how dim their flame,
how acrid their stinking smoke.

 
This is the sweater knitted for me
by a nameless love twice forgotten.
These are the shreds of woven poetry
that never quite fit the loom.

 
This is a patch, dragonfly, given
by a twice treacher—
it’s the scars I bear that won’t burn
until the final pyre of my obscene,
incandescence of final cremation.

 
And these last, these are official letters,
notices from attorneys whom I owe
many dollars which I never will repay,
and with them the debts
I will never admit to owe. 

David M Pitchford

25 April 2009

I Play Don Quixote

The Quixote Experience

What’s madness but nobility of soul

at odds with circumstance? . . .

—Theodore Roethke, “In a Dark Time”

What is nobility of soul
but circumstance at odds with madness?

 
How great was that maiden’s need
for a knight, some noble soul, to rescue her!

 
My Rosinante was a U-Haul
a thousand miles I rode in one night
for my fair friend was beset by Hydra*—
not my wife, my true love, but that
muse of yesterday’s madness I thought true love—
yet it mattered not who she be, for I
I was Quixote on route to deliver that damsel
from Hydra and its many horrid heads.

 
First was a flight to tilt demons of despair:
veni vidi vici! I tilted and they fell to my lance,
my noble heart, words, deeds conquered many terrors
in her name to save her and her flaxen locks.
Yet no head of the Hydra could I confront,
and so a woman of the North, of snowy hair
and eyes brilliant as icebergs, whose knowledge
was much greater than mine, stabbed
that mighty Hydra. And it was good.

 
Yet Hydra persisted beyond that piercing.
Soon after I rode in on Rosinante, we
visited the site that we might know Hydra’s fate,
and lo! another vicious head it reared!
A terror more unjust than the first for its
unexpected coming. And so, too, did the demons
I’d slain resurrect to torture my fair maiden.

I was pierced by their army of influenza,
lay dying in fever and fevered of dying . . .

Meanwhile, my sweet nameless love conspired
with her husband to reunite. And on the third morning,
I awoke from a fever broke sometime in the night
to find words of commitment turned back from me
to him whom she had formerly sworn. It was just,
seemed to me the wiser path for her, and yet
I was stripped now of Rosinante, caught in a place
foreign and friendless except for that fair maiden
and her dual-minded mate, whose hate was now
assuaged, and yet at moments bright as fire . . .

Now in time’s passage, I am absent from her,
and she has lost the time of day for me.

 
And I, I seek another Rosinante, another lance,
that I might to my former lands return as foreigner. 

17 April 2009

 

Addendum: 23 April 2009

 
Hydra is slain. We got the news today!
Heads all severed and cauterized, the beast
is no more. Victorious, though not of my self,
I accept the maiden’s final hug, tearstung eyes
filled with the happiest sorrow one can know,
and take from her that proffered garland,
likeness of Ulysses Grant (another whiskey drinker)
gracefully etched upon its heart, and walk away.
 
Where now shall I ride my noble Rosinante?
Back again to the land of my former home,
or to some foreign hill upon which waits
another shining maiden with tear-stained
cheeks, under great duress, in need of a hero?
No kingdom for a horse I offer—merely a ‘noble soul’. 

David M Pitchford

 

*Hydra in this poem in analogous to the Arachnoid Cyst growing in the brain of a very dear friend.

On a Stephen Crane Poem

On Stephen Crane’s #23
(The Black Riders and Other Lines)

 
Places among the stars,
Soft gardens near the sun,
Keep your distant beauty;
Shed no beams upon my weak heart.
Since she is here
In a place of blackness,
Not your golden days
Nor your silver nights
Can call me to you.
Since she is here
In a place of blackness,
Here I stay and wait.

 

Because I could shed no candle-watt of flame
to light or heat your darkness, because I
failed to warm you in your cold hell, to light
any path from that black oblivion,
because I am helpless to rescue you
who know not how to rescue your own life,
your heart, your soul—because I could not
convince you to open yourself to light
and love and the beauty of the cosmos,
I shall stay with you in oblivion
and shun the sun with its gardens of bloom,
its incense-bearing blossoms, its golden
rays and soft stars; yes, no more silver nights
nor those nightingale notes shall call to me.

 

David M Pitchford
16 April 2009

Late April Snow

Denver’s Late April Snow

Days like this one, Rocky Mountain snow falls
white specks from white skies, I sit at my desk
facing this patio window/door and
contemplate its peace. Inside, this turmoil,
life and mind and life of the mind turning
impossible gravities, magnetic storms
of grief and question, imagination
and its myriad pictures floating in
Colorado air, thin but healthy, cold
but with spring’s promise tomorrow changes-
the sun shall return. Tigers of regret
stalk my mind, disregard snow and white sky,
and rend my heart with guilt for sins past, sins
committed, sins omitted, sins merely
contemplated in the dark of my mind,
iron anchors that threaten to sink me
in oceans of remorse. I shun them, shed
guilt and recriminations like these trees
shed wet-heavy snows in April’s spasm
of dying winter, spring’s strivings toward
new life and optimism of greenings.

Lions of hope chase off those white tigers,
territorial and hoping to make
lasting dens within this mild wilderness,
my soul. Peace somehow captures its turmoils,
shakes cold and wet alike to dry and warm
my imagination, recolor black
abysmal thoughts, red ANTs* and their
fiery bite. Rainbow captures hopes, seeds fields
of wonder throughout my essence to heal
what consequence has sundered, bad decisions
have wrought their tsunamis of misery.
Optimism creeps throughout my dismal
heart, grape hyacinth straining through icy
ground to add its brilliant purple and green
despite all the flakes of that fallen sky.

 *ANT=Automatic Negative Thought

17 April 2009
David M Pitchford

After W. D. Snodgrass

April Inventory

A year it’s been, since last April shined in green boughs.
What have I accomplished but mischief?
A few poems—sonnets mostly on Bouguereau,
and a few of love to a woman from whom I’m parted
and bitter—bitter was our parting, for I was the fool
trading a diamond for a stone of no worth, though
that worth only now comes dimming through shadows
of her malice, ungrateful and with a tongue razored
with spite. Other poems of the banal and of little
matter—(of their substance I shall let others judge).

Fortunes wasted never tasted; I spent what little
I had on tilting windmills and an Odyssey unworthy
even of a poetaster’s meager verse. No Ulysses, I
dwelt in the arms of Circe, thinking a promise
might hold as though weather were not fickle
as the deserts’ shifting sands, oceans’ meander
of tides and streams, currents and upheavals.
At first her bed was warm and full of pleasures
worthy of Kubla’s dome, but too soon health
and her love deserted me to demons of fevered grief. 

Too much time spent in self-absorbed misery,
drunken rages filled with wasted words, knives
with which I pinioned those innocent of my sorrow—
I pray they forgive me, not that I be consoled
but that they may find peace within themselves,
some tranquility I am unqualified to teach.
Too much time spent drunk on grief, raging ‘gainst
waters far down life’s stream and rains that never
fell to bless, to fertilize these green pastures
turned ochre in the barren fields of heart and soul. 

And now I am Jack with my packet of seeds,
hoping to plant the ivy, the vine, the stair-tree
to a sky in which to find fortunes, or reap some
heroic demise, or rob some giant in the sky
of his golden candlestick. The trees gather their snow,
bend with its tragic weight, and yet green they remain-
leading the way to that optimism of a green season:
I hone my tongue to dull passivity, open my heart
to gentler thoughts, sentiments of now, and toss
the bottle sidelong into the running stream of time. 

David M Pitchford
17 April 2009

You

You, My Reef

How beautiful and multi-hued
your coral beauty, your sublime
attraction. This I saw in you:
promise and past treachery
turned to beauty and rainbow
beneath blue waves that call
ever to the sailor in my soul. 

At your siren call, I sailed
and great was my ship
and wondrous my journey.
Yet the true sailor knows
danger among the reefs
the emergence of corals
tear asunder stoutest hulls.

You, my reef, tore my ship
to shreds; and I, fool, swam
clinging in futile hope to one
oaken plank as your coral
edges cut my legs and belly.
Now the sharks come hungry
drawn by the scent of blood. 

David M Pitchford
17 April 2009

Caveat

Caution to Readers

My heart knows of despair,
my mind keenly perceives tragedy.
Lines I write speak of these many
black moments, these desolations.
And yet the light in my eyes remains,
for they recognize as well each silver
lining, each lesson to learn of failure,
each hope concealed in shadow:

it is the heart’s purpose to pump blood
out into the world, to bleed into life,
and it is also the heart’s purpose to pump
blood from the world into the flesh
that the flesh might recover, might heal,
might retain its ruddy resilience.

David M Pitchford
17 April 2009