Rain

Spring: kind thunder mutters on the mountains. In my room
Candlelight stretches, then falls loose,
As though the candlelight breaths; as though
something is trying, like a breathing lake, to be merciful.

Soon the merciful rain will come, soon,
Causing tiny wet volcano shapes
Quick in the dark water on the dark slick street.

A man and a woman will laugh in this rain together
And go home and take of their wet clothes together --
To light a candle together 

And in their friendly bed mutter together like friendly thunder
How they dream and melt in the feel and the fragrance of each other.
The flowing night will certainly approve.

 David Barnett
(for Judith and Tom DeMattos)

Studies in Grey

Again, the butcher's gossiping drip drip drip:
My life bleeding into itself --

Terry, a garrulous grizzly man, shirtless,
Asks me the time.
He does this once each day
At the same time.

The landlady, grey, ovwerweight,
captivated by her appetites,
Sits in the kitchen in a swath of food
And masticates, 

            and I
Have chewed and battered over and over
My fossil wind-harp:
That letter I did not pen.
You have my marrow, and wanted more.

 Solitude can be a worm with claws,
Wrapping around the breath,
And fondness a fearless girl without feet --
Ankles ending on a canary-colored floor.

David Barnett

the other path

the fire is ours, make no mistake of that.
all the wan throats which would prevent
are nothing; shouted down by worms?
my rowdy tongue could lap their world apart. 

ferocity and glee
combine with kindness to create nobility.
the rest we hear from plants and the humble wind.
sadly, the planet of men has little to say.

David Barnett
(for Doug)

Thirst

Recall, even before your name,
The nerve inside the temple
Rubbed red by poems --
By the thorned manacle
Of this thirst for poems --

 A thirst like dust in a sorrowing hall
With a thin carpet and small moths
And a bad light worming in the walls --

 A thirst like an urgent trout
Puppying upstream over your sacred tongue --

 Does your beloved dream?
Make her a dream more succulent than mine
If you can.

David Barnett

Translation From the Original

A silk mockup of a makeshift man
Wee on a matchstick raft in a baffled ocean
While the gold sky sways and melts --
I was a hale and ready lover once,
A voice in my stone brain says.

The orphan sun sleeps now, and the faces of my loves
Are melting away past the horizon's wet rim.
They are vivid beyond words, all of them.
Music slips down the sky like milk.
There is no longer anyone here.

David Barnett

troth

I've been lucky in love, but cannot see

how apt I have or have not been

at loving.

at being loved

I have been more crude

than life or God or native clumsiness

can excuse ever.

you who cherished me once --

have your whims and bones forgiven?

look.

my whole stricken spectrum is still yours --

it is still yours --

and is as true, finally, as my betrayal.

David Barnett

Untouchables

Behold us.
We are doomed.
You cannot rescue us.

We are legion. Like mice
We skulk among you,
Stalking your crumbs.

Don’t worry. Our filthy hands,
Our filthy needs,
Will not soil you.
We are not coming for you.
We do not beckon you.

We will not filch your wallet
Nor paw your pretty children. But
We rape your trash bags, hunger-driven,
Gobbling what you set out to rot.

A few hours of collecting cans,
Bowing down in garbage bins,
Will buy enough sweet wine
To let us dull for a small stubborn time
What sweetly might have been.
Yes. We too once loved.

You have designated even your toilets
“For Customers Only,” so
Behind your houses, furtively,
Or in stinking doorways in secluded alleys,
Shamed, we squat.

This life drives us humbly mad.
The word “help” has wriggled out of our language.
We know we are too filthy to even ask.
David Barnett

Two Men With No Feet

<strong>1. Greetings</strong>

I push the chrome rail on the door, dimly noticing
The etched glass oval in it. The bar is called “The Retreat.”
I went in to be cool, and found
A few garrulous retirees who bought me drinks.
Fearing the heat, I stayed much longer than I’d meant to.
One hundred twelve degrees in Sacramento, humidity
Ninety-six percent. I walk into the street,
Past the lush barbered parks and quasi-regal edifices
Of the State Capitol of California, not going anywhere,
Just lonesome and irksome in the drenching heat.
My shirt sticks to my whole back. Sweat scuttles down my legs.
In my shoes, my feet are wet with sweat.

Three or four blocks from the visible might of the state
The neighborhood is shabby, poor.
Houses and sidewalks alike bulge and crack.
I notice a driveway, sloping upward to a garage door.
Parked at the top is a man in a wheelchair.
He is asleep, or passed out, in the sun.
His head droops sideways. The stumps of his thighs
Protrude from his shorts. They are raw with sunburn.
His left hand holds a bottle in his lap.
His face is the color of a dusty grape, or a new scar.
His hair, whiskers, and clothing
All look like they might have been used to swab a dirty floor.
I look at him for what seems a long time.
I touch a car. It is too hot to touch.
I look at him some more. Can I help him? No.
I imagine him, some forty-five years ago,
Opening a letter:
Greetings from the President of the United States.
<strong>2. Another BoJangles</strong>

This man with no feet wears thick shoes.
His face and his hands are a little browner, darker than his shoes.
He struggles upstreet on his stout brown cane
Like a badly worked puppet or a stepped-on bug
Serene, odd-gaited on false legs.

He is never without a smile and a sweet greeting
For any passerby
In the sanctuary and society of his sidewalk.
I have never seen pain or anger on his face.
Only weariness, sometimes.

He can’t walk, and yet he does walk,
And, walking, smiles.
A Mister BoJangles who cannot dance,
He walks more than I do. I see him often
In my neighborhood — sometimes downtown — walking, walking.

My late-afternoon light is like wet cement.
With two good legs, I limp in it.
I try to rehearse his perfect simple smile.
I think I might give up my legs
To be able to wear such a smile.
David Barnett

Turtles

1.
(look over your shoulder.
a brat God is mocking us.

nuclear weapons?
we can’t even throw rocks right.)

Hey! You! God! Wake up!
We don’t need this.

We need a sweet senior partner;
a little more coaching
in how to have fun.

You equipped us for ecstasy,
then let us teach each other it was foul.

2.
Baby turtles warm up from the sand
and flap, addled, down to the certain surf.

few live. Most are grist
for brutal Nature.

Predatory birds, fish, mammals,
gnash and rend and gobble. Some survive,
to mate and climb the sand again,
and lay blind eggs, and perish.

Man, you have invented nothing,
except, perhaps, tenderness, and awe.
Cherish these. Do well.
David Barnett

Way

Though I don’t agree with myself
I am a jealous man.
Jealous of food, possesions, dollars, fondness,
time; time and things. If I could share
and not feel shut out, surely I would; but
this world enjoins us to preferences.

I am supposed to love you more than her, or him.
No. Somehow we must stop this:
let each other’s sweet fiber speak.
I know the goal. Sadly, I don’t know the way.
David Barnett