Daniel f. Bradley


How to Efficiently Dull the Edges off Poetry

(a bunch of pages)

That's me.
no movies for months after.
The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.
in your palm, the ripe weight.
And the woman calling.
vision.
I wish I was here in Nebraska
straight up, blood red, into the light again.

in mine.
Over the eyes.
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.
A white and shapeless mass.
out
Safe from the wolf's black jaw and the dull ass's hoof.

it's procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down.
The shadow that everything casts.
And makes me furiously glad and fills me up with serious pleasure.
I kissed my father.
Hearing the King's translation.
for you, you hungry thing.
Put the kettle on for tea and whisper it to me.
which, cutting across the empty air, direct themselves at something noiseless over there.

a woolgather dark.
before it is too late.
flowers of volcanic thought
for us, to us, tonight.
I crawled into an open pore and entered your bloodstream.
the soil that wants for nothing and yields and yields.

the day.
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
the rain soak through my shirt and was unharmed.
and which night's recitation is secretly mere wind—
And in your fragrant bosom dies.
and one of them, the taller one minus the straw hat, is me.
to cut our losses.
this man with my own face.

crowding out everything else.
handed him the plate.
of the forming crystal.
The heart is sensual, though five eyes break.
maybe even race.
I've lost her, I thought, and called for the bill.

As what he loves may never like too much.
so suited—would my enemy do otherwise?
And found assurance in the perfect star.
and that's all there is to it.
the day of quatorz'juillet
undone.
don't tell me deluge. don't tell me heat, too damned much heat
Not like an edge of land coming over the sea!

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
a world without a heartbeat but it stays
the palace, the sky, everything.
to hold another patron's drink.
It is a flower. On this mountainside it is dying.
we no longer control could drag us back.

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
rouged by the fluvial light of six o'clock.
his hands barely touching a breast.
and find that it can stop and go no deeper.
or I will leave you.
The sort of shit that it demanded.
and laugh and dry your damp flesh if you came.
one of them wonders what time I am coming home.

are dripping milk into their open mouths.
even hailstones in the strawberry fields.
its voice touches and parts the air of summer.
And Life steps almost straight.
Of God: and some young, piteous, murdered face.
Has come and scattered all my path with flowers.

First touch of hand in hand – Did one but know!
And with God be the rest!
A fair mouth's broken tooth.
hardened in a leaf?
I want to learn the faith of the indifferent.
In Flanders fields.
Fallen cold and dead.
like a bishop's, surging to its point.

No lover I courted my sleep.
And myself.
But is for others undiminished somewhere.
are brown, after all.
at the world's end the graves are green.
Still painting waves on the walls of the Palazzo Ducale.

crash. What reaches him except disaster?
they don't think they have.
through which the current chortles an intimate tune.
a god. And I pray you into life. Into flesh.
An offered covenant—love that gives them each a name.
and laugh and dry your damp flesh if you came.
weaving me, a mixed-blood grandson, into them.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Despairing cried, "There is no God."
when you could be grieving for heaven?
to open the openness over all.
each rib shuttling drops of liquid light.
sun moon stars rain
all the places they might shine.

it will never get here
we tell him. And Josey tips him. She tips him well.
reconciliation & pardon. They don't last.
speaking and listening: that was the contradiction.
For the weary poet withering on the husk.
but, down on down, the uninhabitable sorrow.
and returns.
his living name.

Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.
had willed it.
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.
the smiles of those who once were blessed.
less, unadorned.

Somebody loves us all.
Are covered in snow.
perfect in the dew
and for everything.
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
and dart from world to world.
For she knows that God is her savior.
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Move my eyes from one sight to the next.
If they should lose or last the night.
always a coyote.
as an empty hive, and she is breathing.
maybe eighty-seven.
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

Will bury their own, don't worry.
Zarfs to both your names in the Great Book of Life.
bagging gold for the cold days to come.
A book of portents terrible to read.
of his hands and fingers, we know nothing.
of the living.
woven to something else.
a perfect birthday moon.

Stop, don't poke your finger up my tail!
the only thing that would grieve with me.
And all their language babble and disgust.
is higher than the sky
I just can't catch.
for this particular silence.

if the bird overwhelms the old playground.
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
must now keep looking in.
But each leaf is fringed with silver.
and the wind keeps carrying my words away
I was mute wood. Now I am dead I sing.
about circles, the concept of, and Leonardo da Vinci.
for joy ...

Or whistling, I am not a little boy.
have noticed me.
They can shake their boodies but they can't shake you.
heading west, just like the sun, hidden in smoke.
Slipping — is Crashe's law —
was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which I lived?
give you treats.
That was me.
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
17. a mother's joy & clutched breath
forgets.
for these vines.
your turn you are next
vast reach of all that is not, and still something is.

I have been her kind.
girl in the iron bird? is the clue to the girl in the locket?
“They shall overcome.”
How lost I would feel, and how dangerous.
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.
between his world and mine.

other, apart from.
they are not
How could you ever be for me what I myself am?
Into Trend's shadow because our money always followed.
to it, it is my hope.
Faded like my lost Youth, that no bright Spring renews.
All that's ahead and behind.
of everything that is and isn't.

theirs. Is it not marvelous to be forgetful?
Thousands have died in a nod.
nothing much to buy.
The bridegroom wished he knew.
Tío Berto was the last to leave.
On the darkening Green.

how faithful are your branches.
that, by all rights, should have been mine.
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.
comfortless, so let evening come.
until you forgot everything you once knew.
Men who march away.
it makes for you to wear
You must be somewhere, right?

The winter cannot touch and no touch tarnish.
I fast and pray and ride.
To Disgrace of Price –
then pushed her over the edge into the river.
Hail & farewell!
into snow.




Daniel f. Bradley – "Hi. I have been involved in making books and poems visuals and not for a number of years. For those interested I have a tumblr of goodies @ https://fdriveshsaid.tumblr.com/ and a Instagram of street level visual poetry @ https://www.instagram.com/bradley.danielf/.

"The poem above is from a considerably longer poem. That poem is a harvest of final lines of deadest poems sent out and about and scurried into one of my false email accounts I set up for just such purpose. The emails sender is the Emperor and the Emperor’s New Clothes."
 
 
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