ZOOM ZAUM/IS WHAT YOU DID/DIGGING AT THE ORE OF LUST/ACROSS SEAS - Peter Grieco

ZOOM ZAUM

This commuting to work
in
private motor vehicles
is a
de-humanizing procedure
where
to humanize is to attune persons
in
greater sympathetic contact
with
other persons & the living environment.
Iso-
lation, insulated, self-aggrandizement
the lonely
man on foot has more of the universe
going
on with him than all these acclimatized
passengers.




IS WHAT YOU DID
for Bob

You stitched
& pressed
& packed
& drove    
a knife
through cheese.

You stopped
swayed backwards in a chair
laid down your clawish hand
put words away in a drawer.

You held up an electric torch
to someone’s face
to see what was there.

As long as things you see
don’t go pass you in a blur,
you’re okay.  Everything
pans out.  One line
brings up another.

You heard
a woodpecker
tapping in the dark
as wind
blew
through tall
bamboo.



DIGGING AT THE ORE OF LUST
for Anne Carson

Time goes whirling
through landscapes bent
on its agenda, endlessly making
an end of things

a passing shadow we follow like a needle
stitching together moments
of a blank nostalgia
a too soon afternoon of thunder

a brain chemistry of naked
injury & chronic despair.
Seduced into thinking we’re immortal,
suddenly the affair is over.





ACROSS SEAS

I love her as I love the unknown
pure & secret, without fault
the way our mothers used to wrestle
over the fence.  I love her the way
cabbages love kings on a sunny morn.

I love her as the beginning & end
of me, so troubled & alone—
I love her as down upon the ocean
& time across seas.  But what
of that, if we no more connect

than fast upon heat
or blue among gulls’ reckless passion?


The author is a former university writing instructor who has published around 100 poems over the past five years. He is currently studying mathematics in Buffalo, NY, his native city. He enjoys studying French and composing songs for the guitar. You can find some of his music at: http://www.youtube.com/user/pjgrieco and can contact him there as well