Three Poems by Steve Dalachinsky


2 dead crows

i wanted to leave but felt trapped within the Q & A
fine full blades of grass crept up thru the clefts
of the ruins
& a field of roses surrounded the colonades
trapped within its chassis

we need not create a world i mutter something to jim

used to be so’s one could walk within the garden
w/o seeking solutions

h.w.’s pretty wife left him for a rich young free mason
anti-all-the-rest where will all the poems & rhetoric
go now bad enough in any season but this one so interchangeable
with the last
he’s closing up shop for dollar & health ( c.z. not a bad looker )
will not see that statue where emma lay
rise up before her again

we sat in the truck it wreaked of sullen & free
crammed with colonades & no license to bear them

i muttered something to jim
what is free mason & does he still exist
slave revolt he says disguised as wild orgy
something tells me then tells someone else same

what’s meant by all the pony i asks is all that philosophy ya speaks of is it useful
say’s useful as a poem there’s the rubout climbing toward the tops of it

i insist on leaving but only to myself. i am seated in a corner trapped within the Q & A.
i’m not easy to read though i always think i am so i say here this is what i am read me hey
don’t read me i’ll do it for you h.w. says she left him & his funds & health are failing.
oh, stinking fucking rotten world where an uncontrolled grope comes so natural.
cider in the corner coffee’s not so good here anyhow none’s the music either

it’s all the same anyway. 2 dead crows in the little basket with a lid...they’ve been showing us them for decades i mutter something to jim i could have left hours ago
but instead munch another carrot the Q & A is over i ask WHY...



lost letters & mores


my wife does tai chi in the cramped space
of the living room
shamisen reeling on the
radio humanity reeling along with it
to feel that much of it penetrate the skin
pierce the very soul
as if i myself were the guilty party
party perhaps
doctors displeased with the test results
never know the singers in a kind of
howl kabuki ensemble
frenzy of sort controlled historical drama
clappers clacking away
distorting industrialism down to its very very
mad foundations

why the cruel heart unaware of reproaches
hovers like a walking stick on a branch
above me
is beyond my feeble
senses to figure
she manuevering between bags & chairs & glossy shadows
flute & drum as foreground as this border-on-grace pantomime
continues for the sake of love for the sake of love
i the husband no less dutiful no more filled yet “obsessed with death & the abiding
sadness of human beings” their blood their insanity
& insane needs their sunsets & rich full moons

she’s left the room when i was unawares a slow sweeping gesture still remains where
last she touched air.



5. bird dream (From Deam Book)


652

timbre of doow
long shadows
bad weather
so afraid
the red speckled bird
downing
it is raining lightly
i am shooting a rabbit

feed that bites the hand
atroph inbelment w(one)
excuse be perferated
prefer to eat the foot for luck
tin whilt good temper ate meant
in all things


Steve Dalachinsky is a New York downtown poet orginally from Brooklyn. He is active in the poetry, music, art and music- Free jazz scene. His books include "A Superintendent's Eyes" (Hozomeen Press 2000), his PEN Award Winning book The Final Nite & Other Poems: Complete Notes From A Charles Gayle Notebook 1987-2006 (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006), "Logos and Language", co-authored with pianist Matthew Shipp (RogueArt 2008) and Reaching Into The Unknown, a collaboration with French photographer Jacques Bisceglia (RogueArt 2009). He has written extensively for the Brooklyn Rail, has published several chapbooks and has work appearing in many print and online publications.