Two Poems by Stephen Mead

Going Under

 

It won't be so bad you know.

Perhaps a nice light rain, almost warm,

the droplets enough hush

to keep focus centered, no sliding

off of calm. Of course

motion is a must, to simply keep walking, one step,

then the next, every breath well-

placed to avoid surrendering

will and blacking out.

This bed of liquid asks at least

for deliberation, nothing else

really, a few strategically de­posited stones

and shoes left

as markers just outside the

tide's reach. Also,

song is essential, some music

either hummed or imagined to fill ears, senses,

so the nostrils, mouth, lungs

remain stationed in a sphere

of cognizant preparation,

the rationale of fingers,

limbs dancing submerged.

 

 

Facing Disappointment

 

Rarely easy money:

nerves entangled,

catgut on cobblestone,

birds pecking:

a lovely sight.

 

Melt, melt back

to the empty air space of fervor.

Now first visions accept defeat.

 

Who can resist it, this almost bag

lady in her backwards blouse, costume pearls,

hair barely combed, rescued, if you want to call it that,

by her dead husband's pension,

all the lost change of some posh 1950s gentlemen's room

in an historic Iowan hotel.

 

Her features tell the story.

Ours' too, chin up, eyes hot, blinked clear,

defying break down.

Stephen Mead

Three Poems by Stephen Mead

The Walking

(Thanks to Jane Siberry)

 

Echo

from over the shoulder lifted by wind

when somebody went face down in a stream-----

How dreamily, further on, rapt, steadfast Narcissus

becomes more enamored with his own lovely reflection.

 

When night arrives, from the bottom, stars, cabbage-white,

unfold and rise.

Look, they seem to whisper.  See.

 

Is the distance crying?

 

Bells peal.

 

Don't answer.

Walk mute, constant among strangers.

Pretend clarity when friends ask.

Fake assurance as knowledge

to what keeps repeating itself.

 

 

Above Eyes

 

Dreams exist in a sleepwalker's dilemma, a field of force.

How to ever retrieve, reel the entirety back, when still

in training wheels, though seventy-five?

 

Maybe there's been a mistake.

True, true enough, plans, speculations breed,

feed off of us, turn to nourishment or flotsam.

 

Which will intention get: accident claiming impulse,

a cause of digression, or the target vibrating on contact

as a lover is suddenly the index for every next thought?

 

No, be a besieged city.

Erect stones, sandbags of blankets,

then pretend waiting's only nominal.

Better forget. Clean the fridge.

 

So why do these breaths, these visitations, descend,

pelt, hook in anxious of children as if

the hovering afterwards

was the matter life depends on?

 

 

Instinct

 

This is painting in near dark,

not even eyesight for light.

More like fingertip probes.

More like radar lips.

Can you read me?

Over.  Stand by.

 

By & by, baby, knowing only words,

I grow more illiterate, grow into a form

of clay, clay as flesh entering the paint.

It's symbiotic, each feeding, taking away,

open veins pulsing with the shapes of touch.

 

The shapes of touch are color,

energy depletion reaching a main circuit,

arcs of volts calm as lighting with thundering

echoes...

 

Make no mistake.  The flashes are real.

So I give you this riddle, our gestures

of instinct homing in, a primitive source

 

dark may see the arch, the frame through

which paintings speak.

 

 

Stephen Mead