Born in Portland, Ore., on Oct. 20, 1923, Mr. Whalen grew up in The Dalles on the Columbia River.
– San Francisco Chronicle obit, Thursday, June 27, 2002
I listen
as I eat the street for supper
listen to the pain songs
of Mexico.
Flashes of returning
come with the birds.
– Joseph Ceravolo
Back of feeling
not feeling
that day might bring
best parts
gone horribly
wrong
_____________
Love and for no good reason
- A. Notley)
between feeling and not
we do what we do
_____________
By grace few
along the rail creating cycle
_____________
Through white slits of mountaintops
tips of pines below
off heights drawn from wind
feathered wings soaring know
_____________
What prior hands gripped
choral discipline deficit
_____________
Thing is map
world a globe
no concern prior
loss of it
_____________
List the things we do
List the names we know
List the birds of song
List to list again
_____________
Care now
the here
the air
we breathe
_____________
Miss Consideration
there’s the rub
smother the mask
and behind the eyes
hide thy wit
_____________
Spit or spew
song comes
_____________
Opposable thumb
brain digits rolling biz
_____________
Trucking it a la Rimbaud
pain of scarcity
_____________
How the tail
transforms easily
to a left thing
the animal must handle
as though the appendage
itself were migrant
_____________
Alive in all this wet heat
_____________
Come upon a pair of eyes
on the page
_____________
Thing for thing
among whorls of word
_____________
Plain day speech
played against light
dark words bare
_____________
Slender tinged fern tip
bright with excitement
_____________
Among the flowers a child
in the early morning light
_____________
No word
for before
that moment
no more
_____________
Oxy hydra drawl
ennobles night’s
symphonic glut
_____________
Typing listening
_____________
Mired wing-down in tuber
deep sound
_____________
Voices in the head
preferable
to no voices at all
_____________
You are gone
in spaces left
an image persists
_____________
To tree to sky
day come
_____________
As ever & again
doing the same
day turns to day
_____________
As though words
had hopes extant
_____________
Earth turns flesh
deliberate poles of purpose
_____________
Kitty breaths
dear to be near
_____________
Moving vowels
bristling motors
the lawn goes wild
_____________
More bombs
bomb the world
the world I’m in
missing you more
bombs the world
missing you
_____________
Fiery inchoate
_____________
Were I not I
no such thing
now would be
_____________
O body o ghoul
render free
the fantastic chorus
_____________
Night lights shine
aural era discipline
_____________
Inside of Milton heroic
couples stroll paths
in valley’s lush green
bright echo of day
_____________
I seems incredible
_____________
Sweet singular
joyous expression
back of breath
_____________
It’s not easy
doing this while
that goes
all the while
_____________
Alone
traipsing a field of white
_____________
Avatar of cove & briar
_____________
Squirrel hops from branch to quivering
_____________
May all of it come again
every day every day
_____________
for O
Wing of bird dipped low
upon the horizon
_____________
Poet be poet let
it be that poet
love poet let it
be that
_____________
“...it’s all the same fucking day”
o Joplin o bright day
_____________
Poetry who cares hooray!
_____________
Polished stone working-class
understanding
_____________
Poiesis verb flaneur
bait plays patience
_____________
Hundreds of years for shards
of once moved-in space
_____________
Nothing past her hesitant kitty moment of becoming
_____________
Statement alone is not enough
inlet the subject
_____________
Behind words sound
again again
in the middle of everything
_____________
Edible visual stimulus
_____________
“Consult a spiritual lawyer”
_____________
21st Century ventriloquism
from confusion rises consciousness
annihilation of common sense
_____________
Mid arch hi-flier
honeyed out
_____________
Moonlight isn’t like
‘in the movies’ the stars
don’t ‘look good’
_____________
Names calling out a world
for parts of a whole
_____________
Wreaking havoc abroad
havoc at home havoc in
the stars would they
_____________
Eyes is words
abstraction of math
dark path to walk
engaging vicious sun
_____________
The poem
the poem alone
the poem alone attests
the poem
_____________
From a woman I knew
not how to talk to:
“a ghost of the real
inhabits me as well as you”
_____________
Father no address farther
than I have come
_____________
Light between the shades
for a portion
of the long run day
_____________
Get tongue unraveled
chords to blow
_____________
o was there song
worth praise when high
above it all
the shit came clean
_____________
Thing enough
specimen
_____________
Anything but complete
useless sounds
as if eternal
now the feeling
_____________
Only the voices
recognized
become known
and implanted
the rest go down
by way of the shore
tossing gold coins through the air
