Circle Poem: A Hopeless Thought

A hopeless thought has sunk into my brain
And in my brain it finds a wealth of fuel
An unconsidered fuel made of disdain
As all disdain seems clever to the fool
I am the fool who yields the war unfought
For pain unfought becomes a soft refrain
An older, cold refrain that holds each thought
A hopeless thought has sunk into my brain

Circle Poem: The Secret of a Word

We never find the secret of a word
A perfect word to excavate the core
The plangent core, a frail and nervous bird
A bird that cannot know what it is for
Perhaps what it is for has left the mind
And so the mind is tangled and absurd
Thus tangled and absurd is what we find
We never find the secret of a word.

Circle Poem: Thyroid Scan

The tangled skein of fibers in the dark
That in the dark reveal themselves, benign
Or not benign when traveled by the spark
Of many sparks that fulminate the sign
Each isotope, a sign that forms the chain
The radiation chain that burns a mark
The surgeon finds the mark to peel the skein
The tangled skein of fibers in the dark

Circle Poem: A Song That Whitman Never Knew

I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.
                                           Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1883)

I sing a song that Whitman never knew
He never knew nor ever felt the din
Within the metalled din I answer to
With fiber-optic answers on my skin
This insulated skin that rides the ring
And in the ring remakes the matter true
More true than all the masters knew to sing
I sing a song that Whitman never knew

Circle Poem: The Old Man Writing Letters By The Fire

The old man writing letters by the fire
The quiet fire that pulses in the grate
The antique grate acquaintances admire
And thus admire the symbol of his fate
His lonely fate, obscured when he began
A boy, began in fullness of desire
Of pure desire now trapped within the man
The old man writing letters by the fire