Hollands Maandblad. Jaargang 1987 (470-481)

[p. 18]

Five jazz poems
Michael Carlson

Grey voice

The bright recurring dream whose wings glow with fire finds
A place behind your hands, moving as they begin to move,
Shadowing every splash of light their flapping reveals.
You are the surface of a mirror that has started
To fragment, a single crack reaching out from all
Four corners of the glass, without disturbing the reflection:
Either you, or me, or parts of both, or either, scarred.

Some time in silence

The phone line whines & crackles; nothing
But the play of hiss & static while
The things we've said sink in. I watch
A light bulb swaying in a non-existent breeze,
Watch my shadow bend in time to its shadow,
Even though I cannot move. Change is
A darkening pool spreading before us, it turns
Shallow as I take a step, then falls off
Into sudden depths whose cold terrifies me.
Thirty years disappear in a single gasp.
Look at me, curled up in myself, foetal, unable
To speak, staring at a reflection that shimmers
On the surface of an expanding pool. Is that
What all this time has gone to prove? Already
I've started to think about
The music I will play after you hang up.

Dakota recollections

Sunset stutters in the shadows of mountains.

We pile ourselves up

While the wind laughs through
The broken windows of our cars.

[p. 19]

...Listen

You're learning
something you've known
for a long time gone
crazy with the rain
falling in waves

& you're driving away

blinking

to the wipers' beat

trying to make her say
what you don't
want to hear

but needs to appear
& fill

the spaces between you,

so you will hurt enough to push
those thoughts of love into
a place you'll never have

to fill again, & drift

& drift away
away with
& drift away with
drift with
the rain.

The crossing place

Empty borders extend
All the way into the centre of the night.
I could be
Driving a heap through downtown Bridgeport
At 3am, snow falling & wipers
Rocking me to sleep. I know
If I sleep now, with this image in my mind
I will have dreams, & I will never wake
Again, across the ocean which divides me
From myself, never again be there
On the other side, where you were,
Waking, sleeping, peacefully, where
Falling snow makes a blanket, sparkling,
Then melting, to keep us warm.