Robert Mueller says: A writer’s life is a give-and-take between writing about others and on the backs of others, and writing with originality and in the shape of originality. For Robert Mueller what this commonplace best expresses is how language, chiefly written language with its scores of absorption and power, takes the form of many languages, a circumstance that feeds originality and is its own beastly burden. Mr. Mueller has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Brown University and has written, in his published essays, on Plato, Spenser, Hegel, Barbara Guest, Horace, Susan Wheeler and John Ashbery, to name a few charged and relentless authors. His poems, now playful (if you like) and now pressing and fearless (perhaps), can be found in "First Intensity," "American Letters & Commentary" and forthcoming online in "Spinozablue.”

 You May Now

 

This is the jazz

                 and this is the style,

and her heart warms over.

                 These are the babes

you walk country mile,

                 stubbing your toes in stirrups.

These are some caballeros,

                 and these mugs mouthing bratwursts,

all cold and color

                 and glue.

Which would you choose to be?

                 What would you do?

See sexy gathering hoo-loo,

                 implements are in your hand

like frozen daggers,

                 as if you had enough,

enough soft touch.

                 But the weather warms over,

pain is not frightening,

                 it is emblem

of touching confusions

                 and it betters your trusting

like sallow in the pitch and press.

                 Say Shakespeare’s love is a madness,

so is the world of fear,

                 and so it is time to quit.

Olives and petals, preen-buds

                 widen their hips in harvest

thrashing, a cusp

                 of felt-clear loosens.

A sticking in bosom,

                 this is rotten, the articles

of defenestration

                 are not cool on leaf’s trips

peeling to scatter off the ground;

                 look your sorry ass around,

take these steps,

                 wiggle your carcass a bit

like a darling fool,

                 and the bitter, the stammer,

comes a buck, clock

                 clucks, you may now take

it away, you may bay the yips,

                 for now and for after.

Hey, you may now catch on!

                 Hey, little pigeon!

Hey, little form

                 of the munching ball, shook

like the darling buds in May,

               little boom, you may now pasture.

 

 

Penitent in better world

Schubert, next day, thoughts and thoughts: Thursday

   afternoon, September 6, 2007

A contemplating, feeling feeling the next morning, at

   home, on way, at workplace

Edits and add six lines to end: Friday, September 7, 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Would That I Knew

 

A shackledaisy is a kind of creature,

and I knew once, blew through it.

Harvest poppygolds and stretched sliced worms

of fig-n-plum’s teeth, would that I knew.

I resisted crawlers for hawk-nosed

turpentine relievers, I came into

the collection-plate hand-around.

Bad were the boys made a puny sound

when they were birched, so I scared

for lake, tread the perch-bones.

Now is life like hungry scones,

on the mouth of mist;

and scissors in whippoorwill who struggles

become tolerant,

last some year through.

Or I wish I had the time.

Or I wish I had the call to clear you

for mingling with invertebrates,

and tasty lumps where sand-hips screw and

call too, My Luminous.

Will the balls of yarn of tip-toe come

awaiting, rooks doubled the staking,

coffers over, trying out last night,

bedeviled of wind with its fat besom?

On the outer-edge schoolroom

will you note the fine-tingly gestures?

By their thoughts will you aim,

throats up, down, capture diddles?

 

 

 

Inspired by Robert Bly’s “Morning Poems”

   not in the morning

5:09 p.m., Sunday, April 15, 2007

Change with title arranging day, maybe St. Mark’s

   later: 2:12 p.m., Monday, April 16, 2007

Going back from college class reunion on Metro-North

Saturday night, June 2, 2007

“fat besom,” other changes on smoky subway platform and in

   car: mid-day, Monday, January 28, 2008