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Robert Warlov Poem
(On the state of American Poetry- A Non-Poem Poem )
I'm Poet Laureate Of Main Street.
They voted. I won.
' came down to me and the kid whose dog craps on everyone's lawns.
His poem was about a missing red crayon; mine: the stop-sign someone stole from the corner of Elm and Main (I think I know who did it too).
Is it coincident both poems are about loss?
Probably not. Poetry is at it's best when expressing loss.
He'll probably win the position back next year with a weepy poem about not having been chosen Poet Laureate Of Main Street.
That's fine with me, as long as he keeps that damn dog in his own yard.
Copyright © Robert Warlov | Year Posted 2016
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Robert Warlov Poem
Your Invitation
You wanna from New York-
talk skin-teeth stories
b|tch brick-falling buildings
knive bus choking fumes-
Proud-over cracked sidewalks
holy street-people
and cracked-dreams?
You wanna scar of alley cans and
rooftop bums who eat
lost pink Spaldin® balls?
You coo city-drums and garbage-glory-
Swag-shoulder every party-
Shoe your claim by kitchen-fame...
Then GO THERE!
New York will school your past and
take your part.
Copyright © Robert Warlov | Year Posted 2016
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Robert Warlov Poem
In China once
under a patched
sail canopy
at tables and stools
and later
alone
remembering days
when all
seemed all
important
the politics with friends
by day
and how the breeze
by night conspired
with
her golden hair.
Now I watch
the honey-draped fishing-dingies
return
like strays
of twilight
they glide in
sad-silence
finally to settle
in place
where they rock
gently
all night
under a surrender of stars.
Everything moving to its orbit
everything seperating in time
alone
all the mistakes
the misunderstandings
off on their own trajectories
fullfilling their own destinies
all but the waitress here
who moves still
like a silken dream
across the sea-dimmed floor
bringing pots of hot
chinese-tea
all night long
never saying a word
not a single word
just smiling
her knowing smile.
Copyright © Robert Warlov | Year Posted 2016
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Robert Warlov Poem
( An inquiry into form )
_____________________
There- Not here?
Start over . . . A planet and good for YOU! maybe-
' bigger than a breadbox?
So- vegetable! GREEN like ex spec tations
HERE- n OT THERE?
Not again?! therefore "we see"?
NO Justa s p a c e (maybe)
with a shape! Like mathematicians
l
(they gather in blue confusion) so? l
i
So a word with a Sumar• add• dress• h
A summer address?
· The cats break-open the weeping kitchen · e
h
BROWN then like perfect patterns just over t
and
E = Q = U = A = L
Copyright © Robert Warlov | Year Posted 2016
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Robert Warlov Poem
( For Deena ~ A.K.A. 'Blushing Blonde'. An invitation to inspiration.)
Tickle my black brook
when foolish drinkers go
hide me in the sentinal green
secret my eyes by the bank
where I watch for you
and when you come
we will match our whispers
to the washed stone
holding hands in the envious fern
We will dress our forest
in echoes of cathedral-light
and sleep in the holy-turning of stars
_____________________
©© 2000
Copyright © Robert Warlov | Year Posted 2019
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Robert Warlov Poem
Green
the confusing reverence of the place
the holy-waters of the gulf
white eucharist sand trucked-in sunday anew
and flowers ever fresh
renew the question
I watch clouds west
overrun
spilling sun
in the horizon
and comes rain each day warm
same time
same slow way
like the same song
then I think
such simple acts
as prayer hands together press
or happiness
gone to hearts reach again.
Unable to feel these overtures of sky and air and light yet
might I find reason here to live
if
at all
_________________
©© 2000
Copyright © Robert Warlov | Year Posted 2020
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Robert Warlov Poem
Where will I find that one-best thing
to say in that way that is best
better words keep falling to paper
and falling but
say I find you instead
and falling in love I keep falling
and falling
what better hoped for or said
Love is always its best
Copyright © Robert Warlov | Year Posted 2018
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Robert Warlov Poem
( "Write the truest sentence you know." - F. Scott Fitzgerald )
Variant plurals suffering suffixation's whims;
fly-tomatoes and the valley boo-mouse,
when the sheep alumnus in a mother-in-law seed,
animosity-cat tiptoes in the church alchemy,
genetic forty-winks sing noun names; brag and blame.
Go to the spy picnic early, the heavy earth hides,
the shy long-cot swings over the screeching pond.
She wont let me say the words; I love her,
an ice-cream non-communist with a gypsy-grace and a smorgasbord-rub,
( I have tone-deaf toothpaste and my megawatt chow miens)
It’s enough to make you gang your hemihedral in a jolt-wagon.
Someone aught to have better sea-sense. Not me-
I’m palm-crucified. My bulls-eye is a hearse!
She might marry me to a multi-syllabic drainage or I might climb the scrupulous oak.
Copyright © Robert Warlov | Year Posted 2016
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Robert Warlov Poem
( For Janice · Last Gift · A metaphor )
Thank you for throwing me away-
rolled like a ball- cast to confusion.
I've passed through dew-struck fields-of-hope;
languished in echos of forest night,
to arrive first-light above the quiet valley,
as morning-smoke lifts to radiant clouds.
This gift of loneliness is all I take.
I watch the hawk make slow-circles in the air.
Copyright © Robert Warlov | Year Posted 2016
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Robert Warlov Poem
( fr. The Tape Recordings · An Incantation )
There is a road
there is a road
there is a road
there is a road
a road and i'd say
if it were black
if it were mine
and say
if there were time
There is a road Blue Sky!
a road and blue sky
and once
there was time
time that had time
enough to hide
Time is time
here in a road that is not Not Mine
In a tree in one dead limb
a dead tree
its dead arm and the great nest
of a great bird Now Gone
and the great gray pinnacle rising from it
______
Copyright © Robert Warlov | Year Posted 2016
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