Connecting Light

BY PAUL FORD

A collection of poems by Frank B. Ford

A collection of poems by Frank B. Ford

Copyright and AcknowledgementsCopyright  © 1990, Frank B. Ford. all rights reserved 1st ed. published 1990 by The Orange Street Press. Media, Pennsylvania 2nd ed. published 2001 by Turk's Head Review, West Chester, Pennsylvania. 3rd ed. published 2001 by Ftrain.com, Brooklyn, NY, by kind permission of Turk's Head Review. "Scoring" appeared in Fullmoon "Prayer to My Daughter" appeared in The Widener Review "Those Two Again" appeared in The Dekalb Literary Arts Journal "Sung To the Tune of Anything At All" appeared in Parnassus "Nighthawks, after Hopper" appeared in Gryphon "Running To Light" appeared in Mad Hatter Cover illustration: "Young Italian Girl Resting on Her Elbow" by Paul Cezanne.
Dedicationto my sons
Young Italian Girl Resting On Her Elbow - CezanneSuch indolence becomes the light encounter-     ing her and him and us. What is the art of years but connecting                 light?
Running to Lightthe river and the snow are taken by their shadows becoming darkness                 with a sound                 searching light:                 finding the moon it thrashes it to ribbons. Rewound at an eddy then revolving whole and cold.
Clothesline VisitationShe releases sheets to wind. They snap brilliances rowing the swollen green- blue earth to sudden Him, a nave radiating blacks a-                 gainst hot, belly-                     ing waves.
TrioWhat has fallen? Most obviously along the wet floor of the woods, trees, but of what human sense,                 spirit? In our walk, words dessicating mid-syllable what once was labeled a far-away look, a man and a woman,                 something is being done with a tree.
Linking the Miracleslight sung round the chalice and round the priest thrusting up the host, sunbright her face exploding the front row.
At The Elevationof the Host St Mary's paint smell mixed                 with cloying cold cream + HEAT pipes HAMMERED you out of           drifted sleep CLAMMY and there IT         is BAD BOY and                 growing on 12! oh my GOD                 and what NOW?
Two MetEach turns the glow to knife between o hold us dark cupped, sun- set-rimmed. Spin us free when we have drunk this shimmering between.
Wherethe curve flows to become everywhere people walk in fields amid the flaring stones and trees, the grasses described by birds, and each is what touches.
The PlanWe go our separate ways to separate our ways to go our ways separate to separate our going to ways of separate ways of going separate we go our separate ways of going separate to our separate ways of separate going to our ways separate we go we separate we go separate to separate to go our separate ways.
CivilizationOn the playing fields of Eton I assumed my fair turn in New Haven Yalie bells held us as in a vise, through mine fields since missing the notices haphazardly posted a- mong the swells of cricketeers and footballers, the rise of dust in dusk, cool-edged. There's a good chap when you miss your middle-class leg.
BurstedAt the library display brown ink, browner-splotched page in application for a pedlar's license: "gun bursted" and he could thus no longer farm, that one arm hanging useless. Rushing! some farm wife and kids, she the point of V towards the lurch and buzz and rattle of his coming down their lane. Oh she at any rate would know the meaning of the stoutest pot he sold and yet this slightest fabric for a dress would float to her the more she kept ahead of paddlers through that brilliant dust - their muffled, fussy cries. Those crazed from life should sell to us.
Nighthawks, after HopperThe world, of course, is dead.                 It was my father's as this could be Nickel Charlie's, the all-night restaurant next to Loew's Poli in New Haven where he'd repair after the graveyard shift on the Journal-Courier.                 A linotype operator his fingers swam beside a window propped up by Four Roses against a smothering night. Wasn't, though, this lead and whiskey universe he died from since he retired punching the copy out of tape under                 a livid, technical flourescence - which is of my world of course. And I must                 sit among these waiting nighthawks to become the one who shows a slice of face and who observes                 the hard-edged guy, nondescript in the dark suit of his time with gray fe-                 dora and black band. I wear it too, sniffing the coffee, hearing the chromium hiss                 of the polished urns, watching the redhead                 check her nails. Diner of the Heart. A blondish counterman thrusts down his arms                 like old women washing clothes in the rivers which erode exhausted cities.                 The redhead played 367 for a year and it came out the day she stopped. I say nothing, having myself run out of numbers, bad luck entombed in the wool of my suit. But then I mumble past                 the obligation of our unconcern that I'll play it, three, six, seven staring out at nothing from the bright space                 of terror. She says play a quarter for me.
Viewed as Dramathe war's a                 disappointment thus said D. W. Griffith,                 FILMMAKER. Anthony Sangrossa,                 BUTCHER, rocks his cleaver, its                 discs of dreamy light.
Way It'safter shooting the redundant general and staring in the mirror how old I look
To Tamzen On Her Fortieth BirthdayUndoubtedly you'll get this crap from others: Life begins @ 40 etc...you're not getting older you're getting better - yeah all the Hallmark cliches showering down                 to spice the big day up.                 Right! Uh huh. (I hear your edged voice) The heart at any rate is not as clever as the cards; it knows itself                 moment by moment                                 in love and in hate is not as clever as the cards; it knows itself                 moment by moment                                 in love and in hate and in loneliness, despair, and joy. . . so often also in that ravaging war within itself.                 Your blood plunges on to its own beat, mocking time to let you taste a memory more real than now, the memory of a child. And I alone among your friends can speak to you, that little girl,                 about your Father's world, for I have breathed                 the air of those same places, like Kimpo Air Base                                 where he must have touched down at the least,                 and where I stood in rain that iced the brilliant spotlights to hear a shivering, incomprehensible Scot read                 my name from a list containing many who would die.                 And I am twenty and could be dead soon and am                 totally unafraid. I have money for women and booze and yet, too, I want to get to Tokyo to stay alone in a hotel that Frank Lloyd Wright designed, earthquake-proof, floating on a sea of mud - and just to say I stayed there. I love that wild and shy and scholarly young man                 both for his sins and his sweet intents. And I embrace him as you must embrace yourself today. I am twenty then,half your years,and if                 in the midst of a magic space we meet, both at that age,and touch fingertips to fingertips and stare into each other's eyes,perhaps that selfsame magic can extract some pain from the ensuing years           and even bring your Daddy back to you borne up by love on some pure sea of vision.           I know. I know. Images crazy and fanciful. Get real,           Frank! I invent your voice again. It stops me, for           what it really says is never give your heart away.           But it changes nothing. Our voices change nothing. What sustains us is our power to love and nothing else. Only that will take that grudge you cannot purge from out your heart,those wry distrusts. Then will you float lovely as you are upon your life, but not before. When you are still and know. Then will you float lovely as you are upon your life, but not before. When you are still and know.
Streamour part in stopping forever fails, I place the boat mid- spring past a wave of light blossoms by your glistening wrist always desire trails it back, the mind listening, listening
The Matter With UsIt is cold we have made once more narrowing the blaze to this still point to turn and to ponder dispassionately concentrating grains of fire-sung ice keen as the much folded tip of a Japanese sword.
From dark the floatingvoice where I had gone                 to feel more alone, thinking           I was, and then our                 sergeant's words,                         the straining wind off ropes outside the tent. "You okay now?" Yeah they said little flu. Pills they give me. "Others. Gone." I know. "No. Hit mine. Got word. Radio." "Others. Gone." I know. "No. Hit mine. Got word. Radio." Shoving us boys up onto the throbbing truck, renewing all the giggling by hauling me                 back off then for the medics--"His war be-                         gins tomorrow!" But on they jeered                                 and hooted and are still                                         lurching away from the sun,                                         faces like singing grapefruit.
The German LessonThe women in one camp fucked the guards for toilet paper. (To what base uses do we all etc.?) To see us mincing proudly now so coy and FAT.
Human PotentialWe want the language                                                 as a friend who'll tell a gentle joke                                 We'll always go out for coffee forgetting                                                 to eye the gauges:                                                 The leaders must hold this engraved.                                 Well, our own friend's actual head is gone. Anybody can't hear           jokes is quite exact.                                                 The leaders must hold this engraved.                                 Well, our own friend's actual head is gone. Anybody can't hear           jokes is quite exact.
Kamikaziemeans divine wind.                 On trains the young men                               carried a ball of rice in leaves, they headlong, reverent, would have the shit blown out of them, war being this sort of capital concern as now                                         a drink by the same name                                 by the same name.
Prayer To My DaughterWhat I'd like to have for you is a good liar only he can tell the truth with conviction since evidently he knows what it is as contrasted to his obvious duplicity refusing to lie to himself. So therefore when you have him you really got something true and more solid than an alleged good man like your father who unfortunately doesn't have a daughter.
The Peach BoyI bring my GI Orient and Paul, 4, his dubbed cartoon of Saturday morn- ing monsters in outer space yet he hasn't much to lose as I                 exclude Sigmund's and Carl's inner-space hardware store cause                                 the play opens with the father discovering this great peach in a stream,                                 and once home the old couple uncover                 a baby inside as samisens bridge my life                                 in sound back to a small dim room of a Tokyo club where a guy picks a tune from this white                                 baby grand and I'm in raw company                 alone then, with my girl better and worse I'm tearing at a steak and throwing back Nip- pon beer. Cocksure, but she's hushing me now, because the guy composes,                 the pale lid floating inclined on his                 smoky progressions                 in my sliding mind the Peach Boy has grown up, is prowling the audience                 when from his silk, peach light widens over                 little Paul beautifully glow meets glow.                 Where's the dragon? he asks                 just so                       we're all peach                 children, grand babies born to save                 the world, rope the ogres round. Now the Peach Boy's finally up to that onstage.                 The witch knifing in she's run through                 for her trouble. It has to be to move us to a place                         where a far dark house and tree                         press moon and clouds between.                         Water spreads to us from there.                         In the muted air and soft-lit spill                         are all of my selves still                         with Paul's. We name all we see                         and think eternally, a lake.
Black FrostThe kiss among diving trees as from the jack-o-lantern                                 house the dread- ful speeches of our other out-                 wreathing in a cone. Shadows harrowing the stones,                 we dream ourselves in breath.
Against the Deckshe was thin in ways ay she was as thin in places aces were wider, snide reluctant queens and fat jacks held their spots; lots of pain rained on hands and has.
Living NonsenseWho can treat the meaning- lessness? No doctor or priest                 telling you you're not the first, thrusting whatever text through emptiness of air, that                 air where you are indeed                                 first: Alpha in the hollows                 whistling your name. It's important not to think                 because you never know                                 what might start you out from the white scarves. As like the weather, it's, than any idea, something like                a wave comes in time                or doesn't.
Mineral Baths - Bursa, TurkeySteam lifts                 to the rotunda, its           art of running arabesques                 around windows thick and old,                         aswarm with aurioles.                         Down here the men soon draw                 apart, spurning visionary air                         for modesty. The wives           within their separate rooms                 play fast and loose                                                                         with luminosity, stream in flesh                         inseparable               from light. Paradise may be a place                                         we never know                  where things leave off.                                 I know a mo-                                                                       ment swims in                 sight, those misted baths in Bursa where Woman flows                                                         as light.
Sung To the Tune of Anything At AllThe sailor danced the whole insinuated night, went along home, hers, to his dismay. Her apparatus like his own, though greater, he beat to death this epicine coquette. Papers made a lot of it, asking who is safe, but at the trial he swung the hirsute jury by detail. A college town thus used to universals, it rankled to a man, both black and blond: First to be deceived, and then outdone.
Using Airof a buttered morning a coed in legwarmers bound for Poly Sci and yet they signal rasping practice boards be- neath an icy glow, ad- junct not to art but pain splayed out after a rag doll flop. The newest anything jives sweaty trial and its impure collapse.                 A stylish hat                 is softly cool in form- ing light. The old heart             heaves to burn- ing work.
ReplyYou said I was pretty that evening of a thousand birds, their wings beat darkly up from your soft mouth, sweeping the moon away. The few who come here now drop at odds. Querulous. Chatter. Old old old! So your sighing friend has journeyed from your new village asking me to write you after...too long. The moon, just having risen, trembling- edged upon the water in his cedar cup. She is dead then? Those who have died are as a swarm of hands beckoning an older moon this long white evening to drown our shadows.
Departure at TwilightSoft airs raise the women, each face a swinging blaze, their earrings swaying glimmers into cars suspended in a cold liquidity. Sinking to a knee, a gold surrounded man, struck through this first time to his heart of hearts.
At Sounionof a morning woven over stone I bump camera then smock. We share a mist wherein I must refuse, no dreamy photographs desired: my- self and nothing. Stavros, he of ghosty smock, is ticked at me.                 It rises as a litany                 to an imagined sun. I jab along the slippery rocks for cooler idioms, finally to divine                 lovers (Byron's one) who have scratched their hearts to ruins. Spooners weave through our academies                 shunning all the moves to set their dreaming steps to music more appropriate.                 Or so I later feel with ouzo at the shivering cafe before sun fairly rockets through               and temple can assert in flame,                 informing wave on wave of rain the wisdom of arrangment past                 this opalescent glass.
Three ShortstopsFeat you've gotten the intellectual shove: reasons for everything and no love. Corona River You a- nother. Centuries: which? The Necessity of Sleaze in Language I looked up her dress in the Sears' catalog
Scoring
From the Fishing Pier (Nam Decade)Far out the surfers start their ride. The day is gloss and wind and wide And I have come to get a rest From Time and Kodachromes of death. The wind makes dervishes of sand And bathers shroud their shiny tans, The surfers now are coming fast, Upright, tight, then slickly past. The clouds would seem to shred the sun, The sea threads white and slides down spun, The last wave peaks and surfers sag While plunging into rubber bags.
GenerationJoe and Madeline graduated Cornell & went on to Ph (got married) Ds @ NYU. gestured intensively as they rapped a concept till it, surrounded, surrendered. Somehow though it galled their living for thought the rent was scrounged up & the bread got bought, bed often enough made & unmade etc. Two kids bridged their discussions like afterthoughts. They tuned out Joe and Madeline's mouth.
The TerroristI wait as have others. You strike at your wish or may not I know your demands and have al- ways.
The Plain AnswerThe logic of a dream is in it, you learn but needn't then. The walking life cannot play fair with its burden of desire. So how find the dream of a day? Enter the rose, ask how it knows.
At the UniversityStrutting memorial stones a pigeon fantails between                 boy scholars untrue                 to anything might take looking into, girls aswing with a something nothing can propound, bi- cyclists boring under the latest shit on man falling out the window.
Farce AvertedWill she live with her little panties here? Walk around in her underwear? I'm not so mature that the shadow                 of her snatch won't make a fearful difference thus                 with all dark images it must be left at that: No Chance.
Those Two AgainSnow is crystalgeometrics fused to hood a knobby world. In art things turned are fired to glaze, perfect, caught there right before a crazed drunk wrecks the shop, must be dealt with, giv- en booze and meat to keep his unkempt soul till snow confides once more outside the window, sticks around to smooth hung- over light.
Calling It a DayThe Surrender to the Fools was effected with mimimum pomp - to their sheerest miff for they had arrived in fool regalia: gowns and suits and hoods and badges, bright chains of office. Instead their capitulators gave wry, exhausted speeches...out of order, off in pace but the snapped-back fools smiled grandly through them all, surrounding each whistling irony and wish- ing everybody all the best elsewhere, knowing there's no such place.
HomeWhere I come from we never really lived (so we said and did) and here I'm stranger still for some place won't answer. There's pleasure on paths that birds blur ahead. They're joining us to song.
Coastal Graveyard in Branford, ConnecticutThe frugal spaces as if Yankees embraced the dirt down un- to them. Above, salt-scoured markers rippling in exhaust from DATSUN & McDONALDS. (We must seem to ripple too inside the supermarket's window.) A stone shakes at the end of vision. OFF THE COAST OF BRAZIL we had earlier browsed. The girl scans barcodes off our frozen food. Where water is the jungle, bronze and green, shrieking birds of teal-streaked apricot throng massive heat, drop hushed in ribbons past the dripping palms. Through swollen calm, thence shadowing a dusk- smoked wave which slides, an amorist's shoulder.
4th of JulyKetchup Corvette cradling this winking blonde bangs at the light with my shuddering Dart hey big wink for real? mid shimmers of SUN-         OCO & EXXON & GULF & WESTERN CLOTHING SOLD HERE               PIZZA KING BEER BURGER BOY WENDYS the para- bolic piss of those Golden Arches & ARBYS fries         onions busting through these coarse grains my A-               merican Blonde shouldering diesels hiss in               stinks of asphalt oil & grease glossy ex-         plosions of a thousand cars in shiny black         parking lots puddling suns O my America & O my         new girl quick inside your own raw wave         hey America I'm your native son hanging in         there hard in army pants neon-nylon               jacket rocking my self-destructing motor in a                                                 ***ROUTE 1 ECSTASY*** she's off @ spectral green         stands on the brakes then lays down               rubber fishtailing into BUSTERS             WATER HOLE her hair snaps acetylene.
Beer and Sandwich On the RoadI'M THE GREATEST POLACK EVER INVENTED WHAT'RE YOU? American. HUH! YOU AINT NO FUCKIN IND-IAN! Then Irish extraction I'll have to say. YOU'LL HAVE TO SAY SHIT! DON'T USE NO 50-CENT WORDS ON ME! IRISH: SHIT IN BED AND KICK IT OUT SO DON'T GIVE ME NO POLACK JOKES NEITHER I HEARD EM ALL AND I DON'T TAKE EM SERIOUS - NOT STUPID ENOUGH.
OverheardI aint no CHURCH person you know what I MEAN? All that STUFF! I gotta get OUTA there. But everybody should go.
Language and the Marketplacesee can you say                                 she should rather essay honest work for her coin, but's lacking the mere what?                                     Push? Guts? Not the latter certainly: Beings courageous                               omit the metaphor                               we fearfuls live with                                         and are, therefore.
There'll Always Be UsEat beans AMERICA needs the gas, and in the event of nuclear attack, put your head between your legs                 and kiss your ass goodbye. The people'll save us, yes after all the politicians' twirling                 lies, their suck- ing dry the public tit, it's the love of the people makes light of the world.
The ChanceFEW TIMES I CAN AFFORD DELTA I WATCH PARTS OF MY FATHER'S DYING IN HOLLYWOOD FLORIDA CAUSE BIG C GOT HIM OH YEAH NO APPEAL & HE ASKS ME TO FIX UP THE DART GET IT INSPECTED YOU KNOW SO HE CAN DRIVE WHEN HE KNEW HE NEVER WOULD & THEN THE MECHANIC TELLING ME THE ONE EDGEY THING. WASN'T SURE BRAKES'D PASS. YOU DRIVE AROUND IN THERE & THEY TEST THINGS TELL YOU SOMETHING TO DO & THEY READ A DIAL BUT STAY AWAKE & WHEN THEY SAY BRAKES REALLY HIT EM! SOMETIMES IF YOU... & I'M STANDING OUT IN BACK THERE WHILE HE AIMS THE HEADLIGHTS AT A CHART INSIDE & I'M WATCHING HIS BODY MAN HAMMER SUN INTO BLOTCHES OF OIL IT LOOKED A WHOLE AWFUL JUMBLE OF DUSTY WEEDS & JUNK PARTS SHAKING ON THE HEAT & THERE'S NO WAY & NEVER COULD BE ANY WAY TO TELL YOU GREG HOW GLORIOUSLY I STOMPED ON THE FUCKERS!
DentistHe explains decay in morning light, I phrase colors of the corrugated shed                 three stories down, changing the language as light changes and when it stops, the words must continue in order to save us. We say too much and yet at a still point are graced. He says his speech again - no use to talk to me. But then I listen since we are all of us forgiven.
The TerritoryA current phrase or two having to do with finding oneself. What                               acquire? What own?         The danger of both.
Shythe shy experience daily pain those moments so benign to others               are really Being                               forced to Crisis and even knowing that this too shall pass                 they do eventually wear thin,                                 then breathe a bit before they breathe their last Amen
Defining HopeKneel on stones from whence                 blood was almost scoured. (All acts following this       as useless.) Nearby, a petal down                     a stream...petals, showering onto a stream, a stream of petals.
AyThere is and is not a rub. It has acquired your wearing thin. Times you thought you gave up. Dreams are in themselves arguments.
The MomentEvening is a river               of shadows rushing                           the trees un- till you hear water                 and are not sure that it is wind         or that dark itself can run.         Knowing that you can't be sure                of anything             alone                     then, breathe         your question.
In Our Cold StarsAn old car waits in the terrific sun. We turn away a moment to adjust our shapeless clothes                 and stand                 for it, the                 camera, dreaming and haste in our mouths. We want no part of it now, this ferocity of self. We have terror in our mouths. The wind blows stinging grit.                               Where is it from?                               We must find out. It is not history, It is not photographs.
The Hand In the FutureWe are composing ourselves as the photographer composes.                                 Our being                                                 guided and                                                 guiding him and each solely directing such                 limited chaos making us                                                       free in a way                                                     of the result. For one certainly can't hand it to the photographer. The moment shown over and over must not be For one certainly can't hand it to the photographer. The moment shown over and over must not be an accident or the prejudice of         one eye and one waving arm. But to say it is us we were vital- ly promising everyone. everyone.
Directing The SceneThis night river breaks the grasses.                 I touch air enough to hear                 children in the fragrances,                                 in the river-wind                         woods holding seige, their voices fire against the trees.         The children become a music.             The river is a darker music. I thrust my hand in it                                 it bends everything together. everything together.
The GroveThose leaning pines with sparse and floating branches, the sea behind thinned here and there by light: A Japanese print before I'd seen one. Does the scene exist before the artist makes it so? He makes another and he makes it too. As I do once again listening to music. I don't think such nonsense at 20 at that sea-brushed Imperial Navy Hotel as then the giggling maids clean up after Americans. I know they giggle more at us than they ever did at them, the cultural differences - the way we laugh at signs like NOT TO BE SAFETY OF SWIMM. I can't put Galway out of that young place woven like the fragrances off sand and pine through notes running from my record here, his flute clean-cut along the trees and sea and funny signs.                                                 Weaving in and out of time. Folk melodies from turn-of-century Japan he plays and I sense that scattered grove a century before hotels and such, a farmer hums a tune from his own life         and that is history. The wind in from the sea is not benign. But one day it is again and the painter sets his easel up. He has had his coffee and needs nothing more today than the trying to make art the way and not the way the wind is music the way and not the way the light informs. Whatever we find out there is there for us and despite us and despite the heartbreak years. Tell the composer at Auschwitz, the dancer at Hiroshima,                                 all your fine ideas.
Visions of the Yale Librarywhere a sari insinuates scholars, in hunches, eyes above blond glasses diving then to proof as she is by and by the checker, dour enthroned: both subsumed as the doorway widens to mercury noon. At lunch she'll laugh away a junior's suave ennui at George and Harry's, nod on cue, wring teabag a- gainst spoon. His Despair slouching towards Elegance she stares past...outside bright cars contend... and past that old penultimately randy inference, thence right to breathing tea wherein a somebody unfocusses his gravest evidence in time to glimpse along a scintillant, inner eye a spiritual dress.