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     --                               --
     --          poems from           --
     --                               --
     --             HOME              --
     --                               --
     --              by               --
     --                               --
     --          TOBY OLSON           --
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     2.

     It could surely become more involved: we'd
     say things about structure
     
     the sexual possibilities
     of every flat surface in the house
     
     and the round surfaces also
     and the pointed ones: all
     
     the possible pleasures of invention.
     There are new objects constantly:
     
     this week
     a table and a chest
     
     We walk out in our new coats:
     we become more involved with each other.



     4.

     I cannot altogether formulate what I mean
     Our love is bondage or a migraine
     headache we possess in common
           Slow poison of my stomach
     I cannot for long eat food in another place

     And then too, you come, sideways
     often at the wrong times into my life
           my thoughts
     Agent
     
     who would not like a fist fight
     with someone he did not know
     You have to touch them
     which is intimate.
     


     5.

     Sometimes, when we have spoken,
     you have carried those things with you,
     however foolish: to work
     in the lunch room -- I have

            taken them too: the specific
     touch of your body, whatever woman
     I talk to, and you
     
     are doing the same
     with the men: we
     
     enter the conversation
     together.



     6.

     Outside the wind is serious
     that which enters
     the cracked window
     is tentative. we believe that
     we have controlled something
     tangible. in our lives, we say
     we live in the eye
     of a hurricane.
                     down
     bay-side, the wind is furious.
     unaccountably: the ocean
     is flat and calm: at the same time
     in our lives, we say
     hard things to one another: hate,
     and then we love each other:
     out, at the Cape's end
     it comes together.



     17.

     Fresh blossoms
             as if it weren't enough
             that you left this morning
     and I discover them
     alone, and can't give them a name.

     It's Fall already
     the blossoms seem new though,
     yellow, possibly
     Queen Anne's Lace? or King Henry's
     Venerable Crawler --
                           who knows
     what evil lurks in a name?
     
     The wind
     is no longer warm
     it goes _through_ the weeds
     and not over them as before,
             tho the sun's still bright.
     
     Gone,
     and so I have to write this lament
     doubly for the two of us: myself yesterday
     and the one who is here now
     not knowing the names of flowers
     foreign in his posture
     bent down over them,
             a gesture of protest against
     absence.
     
     Who is it that shakes his head then
          and stands up?
                    the flowers
     yield to the fantasy
          of a name: Rag Weed, moves
     in the shared power
     of the wind.
     
     Miriam,
     there are platitudes so deep
     in the heart's core
     we can't speak them,
               the way even I stand here
               is conditional,
     call them
     matters of biology:
     
     flowers are brought up regardless
     of names,
               hearts do
     _cleave_ to one another
     beyond imagery. brutal
     & real, locked
     in the same skin
     is bondage.
     
     And you are my twin,
     converse of the face seen in these buds
     complement into symmetry
     light side of the shadow
              that falls over his shoulder now
     the clouds closing --
     
     it's Fall.
     I walk toward the house leaving
                the history of that gesture:
     the bent body, the look quizzical,
     the strange buds --
     
     and enter the door followed
     only, by the first drops of rain.
     
     

     21.
     
     Last summer, we put in many hours
     of work around the house.
     the other night
           with friends, we talked
     of all the work we'd done
     and other things
     
     such
         sad simplicity
     of time, that splits the distance. you
     were sitting on the couch, 
         our friends were there
     
     and gathered
     in the matrix
     of our talk
         a distance
     from the things we said
          and from each other
     
     yes
     in time, but also
     in the spaces of the room itself:
     the smoke that made it tangible.
     
     How hard a thing, and seldom
         that our faces
     make an imprint, other
     than in air   .   your hair
     keeps growing longer.
     what could I expect?
     but that last summer
     takes its measurement in hair:
     the length of it you carry
     in a changing way, a different
     tilting of your head
     your hand
          that brushes
          hair away from face.
     
     And of our friends, their talk.
     And of myself
     
     who's carried back these days
         to funerals.
     
     or of another friend
     who finds it hard to eat:
     
     that I can see such action in his face,
     that is his own,
                     but takes me back
     into my life: my father's
     inability to eat
     . . . and saw his death prefigured
     in his actual face.
     
     The sad
     simplicity of time
     we fill with gesturing
     and sex. the hair
     grows natural and like
     a forest
             or a tumor, is
     a kind of clock, and yet the words
     we think
             can form a closure
     as in sutures
     of the skull, or make a fusion
     as the smoke does
     standing
     in the air
          that only separates,
     defines the time as distance.
     
     And of these words I speak
     I'd form a matrix or a web
     
     . . . but not a web, no
     metaphor
              or image: but an action
     so to fix my friends and you
     in time.
     
              I do not mean this poem.
     I mean an insult or a real whip.
     
     We are our faces, certainly.
     
     we face each other
     when we talk
                  we love
     to put our faces close together.
     saving face
     or facing things
     that happen
        or another face, that we
     should think our faces sacred things,
     we cover
             or reveal
     ourselves. we sit in circles, so
     to see the faces
          of our friends, and yet,
     at times, the face is drained,
     turned inward
          into space and time: we make a face
     to hide it.
     
     my father's form was rocking
     in the chair.
     he was so thin and light
          the chair
     would barely move,
          his eyes would rock, and I
     would find that I was rocking too,
     
     our friend
     who finds it hard to eat
     was rocking also
     on the phone last night;

     his face is turned to distance
     we can't enter
                   though we try
     to form a web
     or matrix.
     
     The night before
     that call: our friends were here.
     we talked of all the work we'd done,
          and other things.
     It was no more than this:
     we spent a simple night together.
     
     I've been
     only speaking for myself.
     
     

     25.

     Whatever goes on with us is extendable:
     the rights of man
     and not as the crow flies.
     
         the gull's body in air
     fluctuates. the state of The Nation
     is measured in The Nation's garbage.
     
     my brother talks of the City
     as if he'd been there:
             men on the lookout for money only
     Depraved Seat of Power.
     
     a man in Detroit
     vacuums the City's sewers: diamonds
     false teeth, a string of pearls
     
            identification
     bracelet of fence
     where the crows sit.
     
     at the end of sight
     the gull's body
       floats on a solid object
             which is the air

     my brother taks of the cities he's been to
     I kiss your legs & knees in the City
     whatever goes on with us is extendable

     my brother talks of a fictional city,
     without you.
     
     

     35. _(the dead)_

     The nearness of you
           tho you've gone to work
     and I'm alone in these four rooms
     is evidenced
     in your blouse lying across the chair
     the placement of ashtrays & books, even
           the flat cool breeze sliding
     under the half-cracked window
     at my side.
                outside
     snow general all over the terrace
     in its drifts, the brick
     wall around it and the metal railing
     snow capped  .  Paul's
           too real picture & yours
     where my eyes go
     to the wall.
     
     nearness
     of friends dead and friends 
     gone to work
           in your new dress
     and boots (old boots
     in the closet
           a pair
     left in our house on the Cape
     where the snow also is general
           poles marking the land
           standing in drifts.

     reluctant to start
     a movement in real time,
     fixed line
           of a row of trees, a man
     stands in them as vector
     as gesture of open
     coat, wind down boulevards
           a row of low buildings
     passed on a Triumph
     in West Los Angeles
     Pasadena  .  Annie
     sleeping together
           waking
     together, in boredom, in real time.
     
     the mind goes in its junk
     to the wall: camera
     and man standing
     under a snow bridge
     in the middle of gesture,
     his nearness
     It is not himself. not
           that a camera lies;
     the eyes
     go to the wall --
          
           was of stone & blank face
           Sara
               holding the rope, Paul
           hanging below
           both
           watching the camera
               goofing. hat
           cocked on his head
           blind light in his glasses. serious
           Sara.
     
     the mind throws out junk
     objects
           gather in their places
     ash trays & books, your blouse
     the nearness of you.
     my mind's
     junk is a history of women
     in pictures
           all those things done wrongly.
     we live wrongly. but
     that we live _in_  these things,
     go to the wall --
     
           was of stone
           like a carved placque
           of the war dead, hand holes
           of the names in the letters
                    grave stone
           worn in the weather
           sight extension of my father's life
                    standing
           in his body in the general snow.
           he is 59 now.
           _click_.
     
     How then to extract myself
     from these dead
           "How rare, the move to center
                 where we live":
     the nearness of you

     to be home free of the mind's junk
     is a history of bondage
            pictures
     of women loved wrongly
     and men.
     
     Go to the wall then
     there is nothing there
            but flagellant
     but stone's message to stone
     vague scent of bodies in bed or on fire
     
     impossible elegance flesh has
     retreating from muscle and bone.
            a short distance
     so much bulk
     a bundle of sticks
     the loved corpse
     technician.
     
     
                   *
     
     the chair sits in the room's center
     it is free of the wall
     around it
     are fixed objects: books
     and the made bed,
     a shell on the table beside it
            In each case the agreement
     was contractual, "you
     stay, I'll go"
     Sun
     makes the chair beautiful
     sunlight enters the shell
     all these things are particular
     it is a lovely chair. the shell
     is made ridiculous by the light
     It is ourselves we love.
     
     
                   *


     I want constancy
     I want to live on in the face of death
            in the face of those dead
     I want my father
     I want my fingers
            gathered in the letters on the stone
     Want your body, your objects
     this fixed roof.
     
     the wall before me
            is empty
     beside these closed frames of photographs
     Isolate
            Faces of times that are dead now
            (you were a child then
     outside
     snow constant in drifts in the starlight
     
     the nearness of you: Home
     ceases to vibrate
     
     It's not the pale moon that excites me
     
     you return
     as the same one
     who left me.



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    HOME was published by Membrane Press, now 
    Light and Dust Books. Light and Dust Books 
    are available from the Grist On-Line Bookstore.
    Copyright (C) 1976 by Toby Olson.

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