Matt Hart & Noelle Kocot
June 2012
MH & NK
Possum Poem
This be the entrance
It deepened in my sleep
Of all the nervous structures
of wheat and Cincinnati,
or amusements
both colossal and tossed
on the lawn,
I’ve been given this one
The cat comes to pass
its last days in the dark
with a half-broken cardinal that it carried to the attic—-
some positive, then negative, then positive charge
All flights on hold…..Now
crashing the pavement
ruining the white carpet
breaking all the jars lined up
along the window
The whole of this and more I don’t know—-
occurrence/reoccurrence, the owls
what they do know
The orange’s orange
Heart’s race to the finish
I sparkle the air like everybody else
The possum runs away when she sees it
MH & NK
Town
Time & solace,
The essence best remembered.
Unto a hill,
A lone squirrel sits.
The town and the dance
Of the town
Creep softly—-
There is no other refuge,
And the yearning
For it,
Is difficult.
The old lady looks smaller
With her long gray hair,
And those who have
Turned away
Become quick water
In the freezing sun.
MH & NK
Fixt Star
The streets don’t feel
important The brooms
don’t feel important
The marigolds lift
their faces up, same as the girl
on the swingset’s phlox
Look and you will find
the several signals
in frost The frost
is not important
The streets don’t feel
The brooms don’t feel
The tattooed man
with the pink umbrella
fixes clouds He is a cloud
fixer The clouds
are not important
The tattoos don’t feel
significant But they are
felt in the twitters
and fractions of lions
Lions are important
they are vast and flickering
constellations of water,
some freshly bearded
and ready for the fight
They feel us and they feel us
Their faces conduct us
through dust and tall grasses,
Suns forming suns
forming suns
MH & NK
Aurora
If life begins with an
If,
If this bedding, and
This marred soul,
Are one,
Maybe nothing is
The most beautiful,
Or the most correct.
Feeble and tangled
In the flowers,
The music which
Stops
Inside the serious
Brain goes
From gold to silver,
As we listen to
The weight of
What is.
The heart hammered
By the nails
In the spirit,
This walking into a gentle
Mystery,
Something has happened,
Do I need to rehash it?
No.
Pride has gone to torment
Something else,
As the life runs through me
Like chyme,
While menial tongues
Lick the salt from my skin.
MH & NK
Mungo Park
A tang of fresh lemons,
may I never wake up
My life across the street
like a vast unmapped continent—-
one I’ve roamed for many years
without ever glimpsing
its creamy-sweet interior Absently,
I stumble on my backyard’s
tree In all the world
I used to be, in all the world
I used to But some days
even juice is a heartbreaking
commitment I am only
one man doing forceful
clean work. I walk behind
the lawnmower and wonder
to wander It’s dawn
when I never wake up
MH & NK
The Hippopotamus
That hippopotamus in
The daylight
Is my only friend.
Trestles glare
Back at me from
Inside the tunnel.
What is left, only
A hazy moon
Can say, faceless
In the hazard night.
The aftershock of a
Funnel
Is loud and aberrant.
Trust it once,
And then go forth,
Friend,
And I will wait for you,
Forty years,
A thousand if I have to.
I will wait
Until the howling yellow
Spiders
Still clinging to some
Branch
Fly apart like leaves.
MH & NK
By Jowls
Home after work, my spirits
ascending, I lay in the grass
with a big glass of ice—-
a big glass of beer—-but the sun
will erase it Tomorrow
is summer By design
I will waste it I dream
the petunias, and then
their independence, swine
curled beside me like cottony
fences I like being
friends more than anything
else Samuel Taylor Coleridge
and the air is blue because of him
I float in a raindrop of blood
in his image
MH & NK
Conduit
No hummingbirds in the feeder,
Drip
Drip
Without sunglasses,
I am just an oaf,
An overgrown woman—-
Child
Making her way,
With no thought
Of my wares
Being of any value.
If I say, I have failed,
It is only because
I’m unwilling
To accept the tiny
Swag of laurel
Granted me,
In this day, this hour,
That falls
Like the memories of blood.
MH & NK
White Hart Inn
By jowls by jowls and a swag wreath of laurel,
I am listening
to the cream-
colored air
I am spying
through my water
glass: Vacancy/No
Vacancy
and the golden coats
of starlets, the buff
construction
workers, woofers
and tweeters,
dogs and birds,
retrograde hustlers
of infinite Nature,
the songs all so anthemic
I am screaming along
with a rare white hart,
the two of us beaming
through a floodlight
of panic
…………We break
as the trucks zipper
slowly to the ocean,
their powdery wigs
there to heap
on the beach
I ask at the desk,
Are the rocks
complimentary
…………The child
nods her head,
falls asleep
MH & NK
Ohio
Can’t believe I was intimidated by—-
Well, you know.
The little fires go out
Around our feet,
The heart of the gestures
Are cut,
Are cut.
In the ruins of November,
Always November,
I stand there
With her,
Whispering curses,
Weaving spells,
And rising,
Rising,
I think,
Toward heaven.