Poems by Joseph F. Mailander

Written by Joseph F. Mailander

Friday, 01 January 2010 00:00

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The Six of Cups

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Joseph F. Mailander

poet and writer

Their families, known for weepy speeches,
took short naps with wristwatches on;
they folded dough, computed profit; now,

the aura of Aeneas, shining on the new land
like a coming coffee break, glitters,
awes them all; they sour

over their athletes who won their games

and their sisters who lost their names,
their frozen vessels, their cracked kraters,
their little fissures of age,

they are worn thin around the eyes;
they are worn brittly by the library;
they are worn like Lisbon statuary—

Everything says to them: Look forward, angel,
Even your family, even humankind;
But as for you, my real angel,

all your dreams and all your boats

all your poems and all your buttercups,
everything is a nostalgia to you and I; not a weepy one,
a nostalgia for a future that is full.

Solo Concert

Solitude starts off
a wounded bird, chirping
a hurt melody,
slinking away to die, unfinished;
an oxygen-deficit-driven
Czerny scale; the
practice room; a school
of velocity with no
metronome to tick off
the lost moment

sunnily sleeping
napping near dark in summer,
curled up
on the bed that was
your most personal lost chord,
the very last things, the very last notes,
all private to you as though
the universe's secret algorithm
were speaking to you alone,
were speaking like you alone—
you alone,
making gerunds by the sea

da da da the things
that come in threes are
tonic, harmonic; in four
they are regular, square; in two
there is perfect communion; but
all alone?

Solitude: You are tethered
to Nobody---and also
on rare
occasions, when it matters,
drowsily dropping, or intense, afire:
Everyone. You take your
time to do
the work of the world, unseen.
The audience
is all yours, breathless and
eternal. You could walk
down a sunny street, forever.