David Crews poems

Text Box: Every Atom of Your Learned and Disordered Flesh —Kenneth Rexroth Are voyages back in time really scent-enduring? Do you remember the cool, pollened air of our youth, sitting in the backyard among the tiger lily asking only to hear how long certain sparrows held certain songs? From tree to tree into evening, and then, into sleep, rising toward a world as boundless as the heart’s mind, and still, that beautiful child who never could have come from your body remains beautiful. Who really knows what images befall the dark elms at night. It was when we discovered we ourselves were the language— when we hurled words into the dark the way children throw stones, and the lake always called back—name, memory, incantation. I can hear, now, your nighttime breath soft and warm and close. A man, blind, must touch the world like a woman. And the world like a woman rains. Published in The Red Clay Review Up Every Atom of Your Learned and Disorder Flesh from Kenneth Rexroth’s “Andrée Rexroth” (The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth, Copper Canyon Press, 2002) “when we discovered we ourselves were the language” from Valzhyna Mort’s “Belarusian I” (Factory of Tears, translated by Elizabeth Wright and Franz Wright, Copper Canyon Press, 2008) Poem in Flux As if incandescence imitates inertia, the self-hurl at angles into what was if for a minute the air. From flight, behold as it would the incestuous dive into clear cold pools of language, words that sink into the silt of tissue, cell, and brain, seep into the chant of requiem. Be silent. This world will resound in aria, the starlings descend—black songs in the mouth of dawn. Published in The Red Clay Review Up Lightning Bugs Lightning bugs rise from twilight grass like little fireworks. There’s a reason for their light. The rhythms attract mates the way we too send out subtle signals of love. How often we flutter through the cool night only to be trapped in the glass grasp of an eight year-old’s imagination. We pace the clear walls saying to ourselves we must go we must go we must go. Published in Insanity’s Horse Up Arriving Home Touring the eastern seaboard in the same brown Torino wagon, I was my father’s copilot. I followed blue and red lines through colonial towns, past state parks. It was my calculation of seventeen miles till New Paltz. When we finally reached the green signs of our own turnpike, my father would look at me and ask What time will we arrive home? I would make more calculations, insist we would get there exactly 9:45— funny, how he always took a higher number—9:48 I argued would be a tie. And how I yelled as my father rolled down our street, foot off the gas, the green digital clock flashing 46, 47. Often we unpacked the car in the dark, in silence. He drives a Cadillac now and the only real places we go are football games and family barbecues, and how those minutes seemed much longer then, dangling my legs over the ripped vinyl that always seemed to scratch the back of my knees. Published in Exit 13 Up The Traveler Man is a being of distances. –Jean-Paul Sartre 1 My asylum is emerald green not white and the walls have a convex feel. I know because I have run my fingers along its skin, I have felt the pores. It lives as I breathe. 2 Walking at night the great live oaks slowly pull me toward shadows their outstretched gangling limbs cover my eyes I hear faint whispers— do not go your place is here take hold. Published in the Rattlesnake Review Up Spring Song Sitting over poetry steam from my coffee eludes the dining room chandelier near where the dog dozes and the sun’s rays lick the windowsill The song sparrows nesting in the vent above the bathroom downstairs shuffle and chant within plaster and darkness their dalliances scatter a pile of dried twigs and still I tiptoe the toiletseat to peer through the fan Their movements slow the dog’s ears grow out and the first dancing daffodil winks her golden eyelashes like a songstress at the Cotton Club Green Heron Poetry Project Winner 2009 Up

Every Atom of Your Learned and Disordered Flesh

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“Tefilah” (looking within)

painting by Carol Buchman