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The Kilogram

Click on poem to enlarge.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/

The Great Responsibilities of Air and Light in Manhattan

- 2006, 2007

Three Haiku on the Dartmouth College Green in Spring

the clouds think above
webster hall that echoed before –
my water soon is potable

lincoln center resemblances
while kids and I read schiller under ball of light:
the slow, mighty breeze

the Baker library lawn
the noiselessness of distant croquet players
overconfidence

- 2006

Raging Feather

After playing with words and twisting thought,
My pen drops on sand as fist clenches.
My back bends to vomit, my throat taut.
Oh God, I think the rage in me dances.

I use a ballpoint to reopen wounds; to rage, release.
To my right, a bottle cries for lips.
But I let blood flow a little more; to some, disease.
To my left, an ocean dies, no ships.

Scabs, scabs, scabs.
Scabs on sand and water.
Never to heal - always to the slaughter.

Philippine Panorama, April, 1993

Declaiming Ashbery to Lake Ontario

-2006, 2007

Cincinnati

There is nothing as transitory as these:

From middle seat through airplane window,
Drizzle on runway below.
05:57:31.
Delta to Logan at 09:00:00.

Shops to open in a while.
Thoughtless air fills huge terminal.
Outside, just cloudy.
In the smoking area, smell of tar.

But beyond the clouds,
Bonaparte crosses Berezina,

40,000 souls frozen in winter altitudes,

Socrates sends Xantippe away,
Persephone, and VV Cephei Alpha,

The largest star in space.

- 2004, 2007

Resume, A Template

- 2007

T. S. Eliot at Lloyd’s

“I had never really relished the smithing of words.
Actually, I had always wanted to be a banker,
A splendid sorcerer of the great INCs, invoking
The power of the number. But at university
Strange spells put such dreams to sleep, gently.
And the dreadful truths of poem, play and essay
Lent addictive ease to wakefulness. And then,
The first years: exultation so bleak, so bizarre
With the fierce beauty of being so close to
The Substance! I still dread to be a maker.

Then Vivien came to me, with all the hardiness
Of an agreeable realism. I, exalted, became heat
Of a sunless, humid day and its small agonies -
And its sweat. That is when I joined Lloyd’s.
And reality flowed through me like a dream :
As fast as thoughts flee; as strange and lovely
As the random faces and spaces, persuading;
And as magical as a candlelit and disappointing
Night of Love with you, dear darling Viv -
Enchantress! All I wanted was a mild affair.

‘Lord, forgive me for feasting on the fruit of
The tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Lord, forgive me for feeding a courage
To fight my rightful share of little deaths.
Lord, forgive me for feeling frightened
Of walking in darkness, eyes calmly shut.
Lord, forgive me for loving another more
Than You. Break my bow, O Jehovah, say I,
King Nimrod, for the heart of things
Is too hard to bear! Amen, my Lord, Amen.’”

- 2003
- one of "Seven Exemplary Workshop Poems" in Edith L. Tiempo's "Six Poetry Formats and the Transforming Image: A Monograph on Free Verse," University of the Philippines, 2007.

Ursula Andres, San Lorenzo Village, Philippines, 1965

How like the iris of Zoroaster, her nipples—
white of prophetic eyeball, areola regarding

the cloudless, hot Ahura Mazda blue, golden she
from grasping composition of sun and brownness

from the payolas and neutrino hordes. But Pedro,
the gardener, Ben, the driver from the other

house, and the eleven construction workers they
called in from the unfinished mansion nearby:

they did not perceive these. All they saw was
Ursula sunbathing by Helen Small’s California-

style swimming pool, her rather thickly-haired
brown vagina, tits, four sets of ribs that clearly

showed through, and her sad mouth through the
peephole in the perimeter concrete. After all,

each only had his allotted ten seconds, which
wasn’t much. Today, 40 years later, Mrs. Small

has kept her house and pool exactly the same
as when Ursula Andres sunbathed (relaxing—

in between sequences with John Derek in a bad
World War II film set in ravaged Manila) though

Helen is elderly now, and few come to visit. Even
the peephole still exists, as all-seeing as ever.

- first draft
- 2007

Charcoal of Buttocks on Ana’s Bathroom Door Facing the Toilet

Just four black strokes, brusquely run upon
artists’ bond. Long line curving,

straightening then, falling—ending in the
beginning (or hint) of a new curve. Opposite,

the outline of a radio telescope concave
to it, listening to the Pharisees of Love no

matter how far away in the outer darkness, or how
insufferable they were, yakking about the mint,

the dill and the cumin. Was the other line then
the exosphere— blue giving way to indigo

giving way to the gnashing imperceptibly?
Or, was this line the leg of Ana, long, warm,

immovable despite my nouveau riche psycho-
kinesis? But most important, as I defecated that

effervescent afternoon in her Manila mansion,
were the eight or so other strokes beside these

buttocks: p - i - c - c - a - s - o. “Oh,”
Ana said to me after, “No. It’s not a print.”

- first draft, 2007

Welcome to Eggy's Principia

Hi! This site is an open workshop and journal for the development of poems, drama and other related writings. Everyone is invited to comment on the drafts, which may reappear in revised incarnations.