Reflected Bursts

Reflected Bursts

Reflected Bursts

Poems by Richard Alan Spiegel

© 2009 R. A. Spiegel

Prelude to Reflected Bursts

Originally composed and/or written on paper between 1973 and 1979; in 2008-9 these poems were revised under intense electrical online scrutiny. They were published in a blog that was fed into Facebook, then after a year of blogging, the lines appeared (140 characters at a time) on Twitter. Now they’ve been reassembled in the form of this small ebook enroute to their future existence as a very limited edition chapbook.

---Richard Alan Spiegel

Contents

Reflected Bursts 1 Sought Solace 2 Rambling Dream 3 About the Man in the Bowler Hat 3 Circles in the Air 4 Venerable Bead 4 Pausing in Time 5 The Workday Began 5 Impressed 6 She Was Alone in Florida 7 She Was Losing Her Memory 8 Harbor 9-11 Breathing 12 The Body as Reflection 13 Bathing at Coney 14 Reflection 15 Walking 16-17 Dancing in the Grip of Gravity 18

Reflected Bursts

Emerald and topaz moss cover two large roots, spread like legs above the ground. Splintered lips hold back the birth of the word: Go . . . to the lake where the sensual come; build on the backs of honey scented babes pyramids, columns, arcs, & helices. We step apart to make our mark upon the earth, and judge each other: incarcerating races, tribes, gangs, and communes. In slumber the lumbering Christ of Molecules... in the myriad lens of the bee’s eye minuscule Messiahs mend their tallises. Can you see the scars in a drop of life? Rubies drop into the fortune teller’s crystal lap. Tarot cards fall one by one. Can you drop your fears in a sea of life? Our waiting, working hours spellbound as the hammer’s final blow blows us to our knees and tears from the depths of our eyes--the babe comes home.

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Sought Solace Warm blanket woven with my fears, cover my dreams from the world’s unrest. Ragged fabric of threads time tears, expose the pride of this bare breast. Pacing long and cluttered halls, watching the dust collect on walls, searching in circles for the measures of my heart, I sought solace in the murmurs of my art. Wait for me my wild companions; let us slice this stagnant air. Just as the rivers carved their canyons, let the thunders lead us where Aurora lives in liquid skies and silence sings in silken sighs.

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Rambling Dreams

It’s easy to slip past incomplete sentences. With my back pressed against the chair, I stare at the ceiling. Rambling dreams fall out my head and pull me past the moment. Is Richard Richard? Rains seep into the ground. A storm approaches. My fingers cannot phrase my mind. I slip forward with ideas, urges, and transient codas. About the Man in the Bowler Hat The bowler which I wore to the dinner party, I saw in the window of a store in Lower Manhattan and eyed it for weeks before going in one afternoon with Barbara urging me to try it on. R. A. Spiegel

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Circles in the Air My pen hovered over the notebook, tracing circles in the air. The dense space between nib and page was swollen with ideas, perceptions, and fantasies. I dove through it. Swam the page with the strokes of a pen. And, reached the other side so you might pull me out. Venerable Bead May the art of my wrist untangle the tock. If I’m lost in the midst of words, pinpoint me here: a bead of time hung from the tap, ripening.

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Pausing in Time

Sweetie, looking up a tree she called, Sweetie. The lawn mowers sang and church bells rang. Children danced. Dreams slid across the sky, and a black plastic garbage bag blew by. Sunday morning journalists spun the media. A terrified tongue tore at the hem of authority. Words in the air resonated a sublime notion, then dropped delusions in the field. Take me to your ache and shout me back. Musicians jammed on the Internet, pausing in time and fracturing the flow of thought. The Workday Began

Read the news, solved the crossword puzzle, Read e-mail, browsed facebook, and twittered Time away. By four that afternoon, Still on the Net, the computer thanked The House for calling, though all Representatives Were currently busy. We continued To hold, though our batteries were low. R. A. Spiegel

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Impressed Undifferentiated cathexes swirled. Electromagnetic forces attracted and repelled. Libidinal energies impressed themselves into memory. The unkempt god, Khepri, turned the corner, stared at his reflection, and shot a string of stars into the universe.

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She Was Alone in Florida.

Her neighbors were concerned. He was mugged in a bar.

At the hospital, they xrayed and stitched his head. The next morning he packed for the trip to his grandmother’s condo.

She’s blood, he said — worried she wouldn’t know him when he arrived. He was so happy. You know he came with all these things on

his forehead. I didn’t know he was mugged. He told me he fell. So I said, “How did you fall on the head?” And he said, “Let’s not talk about it.” The next day he took the bandage off.

Then he told me — they took his money. They took everything.

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She Was Losing Her Memory

Heron and sandpiper played in the afternoon grass. In her yellow bathrobe, the small woman walked on her porch and dreamt she was on a cruise without end. Look at him. He’s looking out there and typing. She laughed. Are you reading everything properly? He looks so proud. He’s a good typist. You’re not hitting all

the right keys. — Where did you put the paper? There’s no paper. The machine is storing information. When we get home he attaches a printer; and the printer

prints it out. — He goes fast, but not too accurately. He puts his fingers on the wrong keys. — I had a friend who wrote a novel, but his fingers hit all the wrong keys. R. A. Spiegel

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Harbor

Clam chowder, fish chowder, mussels, raw fish wrapped in sea weed: the bell for chow rings. The crew gathers. Water pulls at life below; all who journey the sea await departure (harbor the ruins of another time). Out there sanctuary seemed to exist only in our mind; the reality was sea, only sea.

Oceans separated our lives when liners had not yet parted the waters for human passage to harbor.

We stand before those who once waded ashore, wet with the waters of their voyage. Harbor refuge from torrent for those who have rested here.

A clipper catching hold of the wind: it seems there are unexpected harbors in the New World.

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Voyagers crash; thrown by unpredictable currents. So far we have survived the storms.

Looking like rain today at harbor. Gulls glide by. My future in port seems uncertain amid these loud protests.

Rain continues. Traffic moves; and we read the news. City keeping us company. Harbor forgotten dreams here: children, subway system, park with its castles, rambles, lakes and playground. The harbor master wants to know my intentions, “How long do you plan to berth here?”

This is not the end of the world which all keep in view as they search the seas. Masts gathered along shoreline one beside another and the cities grew: London, Amsterdam, New York.

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Ports for vessels of commerce, coexisted, attending to the dilemmas of their own edification. Moored to docks: voyages were chartered. Maps were better, though the sea reacted the same to hulls that cut across her surface. Waiting, passing time in port, exploring, while visiting vulnerability and hardened experience.

Waters turn idly by docks, splashing ambivalent comments, humored by bone white foam. I recall a vessel abandoned by its crew in the Hudson. Hudson was abandoned by crew set afloat with his son in the Hudson. Harbor all boats here: liners, barges, tankers, trawlers, wreckage, floating salvaged boats.

Words pour or slowly seep through the mind form constant waters bordered by beach. R. A. Spiegel

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Breathing Air is composed with the greatest of ease. Respiration and inspiration conspire. Better breathing takes practice. The quality of our breath flows into our lungs, keeping company with our heart. Tightening my grip I write, celebrating the breath that produces the sound of words. The air holds my lines — word after word. The inner air, fresh from the lungs’ blood, makes a noise, an equation of trope.

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The Body As Reflection Here, amid the uncertain, is the certain coming into the world. Step after step, the city’s undertow returns the body to sea of bodies crossing avenues and crowding squares. The many moments (in the certainty of time) bring form and responsibility. I am, not the body, but an idea in Brownian motion rising, shimmering, weaving about the fluid dissolve. The forms of thought bounce before me on the page, as my mind twists under the limbs of the possible. Songs for Beatrice and Laura reach beyond isolated lives to the returning morning of children singing anew art.

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Bathing at Coney I come to build sand castles, to romp in and wrestle the tides; the girl and the smile and the beach beneath the sun; I come.

Around, around, around the whirling wheels turn; around, around the whirling world; the oyster in the sea.

This rides me up and throws me down. Your fantasies cling to me, splinter into me, stick to me like the sand at the beach; I come here amusing myself, a grain in the dream.

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Reflection Expecting the world to happen in accord with the words, a word worker rose to speak all there is to say. Amity, anger, and awe were seriously spelled into being. Humility was a blank page upon which the words rested.

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Walking

Learning to walk, his weak ankles needed braces. He grew to six foot four and strode past the long embrace of childhood polio. Taking long walks through Manhattan, the walker found footing.

After midnight, a chess game, and dinner, they began a walk uptown from the East Village. By the Union Square statue of George Washington (mounted, looking south to the British advance), they looked south to the World Trade Towers. Past Herald Square, the Hotel McAlpin, and the Empire State Building; they walked up Sixth Avenue, stopping to speak with security at Rockefeller Center and into an early a.m. breakfast at an Upper West Side diner. One foot in front of another— one two one two one two—counting the steps. Walking breaks the world in two — one two one two one two. Feet move upon the curve of terrain.

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Sick with malaria, he walked in the warm West African rain. While one walked upon lush soil, another stepped on the moon’s surface, walking without gravity—awakened in the wilderness. What was inner looked out. Form blended with the blowing winds, while traffic flowed above, beside, and beneath.

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Dancing in the Grip of Gravity

Circling bodies break past all forms and dance free. In the pulse of time, the future dances with the distant past. Pixels and words dance to the music of the jukebox in the Star Bar. The darkness couches the memory of fingers dancing on these keys. The dance moves through the intricacies of the tongue. Children amend creation amid bright corpuscular bursts. Devouring thrills are choreographed against the grave forces that turn the world indifferent seasons. Beyond the words that parse the nuance of thought—voice the mourning, blessing, praise, or condemnation—is the look of surprised recognition in your eyes. In the random rush I find redemption when my artless attempts to relate rest in your eyes.

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Reservoir Lights by Richard Alan Spiegel

detcelfeR stsruB Reflected Bursts