Category: Responding To Walt Whitman

If you are reading this poem
Congratulations
You’re not dead

If you are dead
Congratulations
You’ll never have to read it

-T. Weeks
(A response to “True Conquerors“)

Hey little skunk
Did you enjoy our yard
We worked on it all summer
Now the grass is long
The patio furniture looks lost
And there’s really no food
You’ll have better luck down by the pond
Waddle now into the night
Your stripes a magnet for shadows
Until curiosity returns you
And we meet in Rumi’s field

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Small the Theme of My Chant“)

There are answers up ahead
Between me and there
I see myself many times over
Asking the same questions
Many times over
Frustrated
I’m always in the way
If only I could see past them/me
Yet I am a river
I am Siddhartha
Flowing downhill
Filling the folds in the hills
On my journey to the sea
I am at the beginning
I am at the destination
I am the river

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Going Somewhere”)

Who am I asked the sparrow
Contemplating dark roofs
And the black rivers between

It’s a wonder a miracle
The geometry of order
But what does it mean

The builders must have a plan
Will I be ready when they call
Towards what end do I fly

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Life”)

Where is the native
Wise and cryptic and vacant
Who left this place to me
Books partly read
Frames filled with strange smiles
Meals never made
And a sticky note
Marooned on the refrigerator
“Yonnondio”
In my own handwriting

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Yonnondio”)

Rusted joy interred long ago
Beneath careers and ambitions
Pokes up through the path ahead
Strange artifact familiar in my hands
I remember leaving it here
But can’t remember why
Conjuring dormant rites
Atrophied muscles wince
It’s got good bones
With a little work it’ll be good as new

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Continuities”)

Three days past
Low was I
Three days hence
Once again
But today we crest
Throw our hands in the air
And scream

-T. Weeks
(A response to “The Dead Tenor”)

“She’s free — She’s on her last destination”
Words from the poet
From a man long since on his destination
How long did it take to form that thought
An instant a lifetime

If each star were a neuron firing in the void
Would the Milky Way be capable
Of forming such a thought in less than an eon
Or has it already done so
In the pen of a full sailed poet

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Old Salt Kossabone“)

Empty branches scribbled
Without order between me and sunset
Slithering chaotic silhouettes
Beautiful and black against the neon sky
Neither arranged by an artist
Nor blemishing the solar curtain call
But in the sky and of the sky
Priceless and meaningless

Black ink of musty words
Rises between me and me
Framing obscuring illuminating
The chaotic vaporous laser light
Of a setting self
Scratching at order and meaning
Echoing the songs of dead poets
Priceless and meaningless

-T. Weeks
(A response to “To Get the Final Lilt of Songs”)

Leaving town
Leaving the freeway
Leaving familiar signs
Leaving asphalt
Leaving the car
Leaving gravel
Leaving the trail
Smiles mist and mud

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Broadway”)