Rochester Poems - Poems about Rochester

You tried to lead me (surely) by the hand across the shallows but we were both too drunk and the stones too slick so we slid stumbling and laughing, falling toward each other all the way across and upriver (rocks bruising our feet) until we were concealed by the night. We held each other close in the dark noisy water that swirled lovingly over our skin like a mother’s...

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It was an early fall day, some decades ago, When three of my boys were still young. Looking forward that year to the Rochester Fair, An event that was always good fun. A promise from me I would transport them forth And attend this yearly event, Where the food and the rides and the animal barns, Made my limited...

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A small stretch of bar to call my own: I cover it with my paper and a thin book of poems - Most I don't understand at all Some, unfortunately, I understand too well. A TV in the corner tut tuts 20 thousand screaming Yankee fans into a shushing murmur that drifts amongst the guests like an oversolicitous maitre' d. I discuss...

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When the freedom fighter Leaves the forest The tongue Is not the greatest glitter In sun hope or moon desire For now the land that hid the shadows Carried comrades in its arms Laughed in the brain Like an alien treasure Must be plowed and torn Must open its belly to take The seed of the corn The gut must grit a grander pain Must push,...

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Wind, word, sail The helm is turned On the oar of the tongue Against the tide of laws The righteous cause Will its litany and prevail O could the dock Materialize again Out of the euphoria of the brain O could not relay of metered sound Measure out spoon by empty spoon The empty wait And the immediacy of the state You were a tower Better than Babel or...

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From here I see again - not property Men mangled and maimed by history Not the shadows in chains Chipping and hauling wooden flesh Creation with more license Than God on the silver skin Carried its cargo before the wind Of meaninglessness - Here looks across the shining city The muted mist of history And here stand only as man Nonnegotiable, nothing less....

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March 17 in eighteen sixty three Will spin and pivot Ancestry As the fulcrum of this country It is the unholy fire Baal's tongue licking at the bones Defied by desire O but the ash is better balm Then endless years Where freedom wilts A seedling watered by the salt of tears...

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You in the white cathedrals of joy Do you ever stop To be the bouquet in the morgue of morning A Christmas wreath you lay At inn where the door is bolted Where crawls the maggot In the living flesh And balm the heart in selfishness I tell you the baby you celebrate Is in the pangs that nature feels The urgency on a...

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