Fred Nitsch

Eleven Poems

A Love Poem

It hurts in the same way that bombs explode
in the dreams of small children
Close my eyes and you jump back
into my memory and
          splash,
causing my whole being to quiver
     like
w  a  v e  s,  w  a  v  e  s,  w  a  v  e  s.

[ untitled ]

Twisted image
     flickers like old film
          shapes of myself
               collide and        split

distorted
                    by a bird

whose sleek body
               brushed against
            the surface.

The Loudspeaker

Feeling dull and worn and used, we sat until we were instructed to stop. Completely motionless, we were (except for a few twitches and sneezes). The voice on the loudspeaker watched over us, announced as well when the day was done. Every day. Our task, I am told, was the most difficult of all (we sat, feeling dull and worn and used, until we were instructed to stop). Men (the ones talking, we always heard them) beyond the blank room's walls must have wished to be like us - inside, sitting, waiting. I was once told a story, a man told me a story, of structures standing higher than a hundred men. Once, he told me, he had been inside one of those buildings, had lightly touched the smooth glass of a window, had traced invisible pictures with his hands. Not a word of it believed, he told me lies, I swear he lies

Requiem

the scene in front of the supermarket

an hour after closing time

in the dark

all alone

the bench is bare.

the moths swarm around
the solitary light

and inside

neatly stacked rows of soup cans
and cereal boxes

sing their joyous hymns

Cartography

There are four discolored patches on my wall

where I once kept a picture of the world

that now lives folded in the corner.

Outside, the sky is overcast. My room is dark.

Yet the day is bright with white light that runs

in faraway, stationary streams

down a cover of blue and grey.

[ untitled ]

Late. Or rather, getting late. Becoming
Further and further into the night. Only
To be pulled out by tomorrow. Or just
Pushed through to day. Slowly. Pushed
Slowly. A frame-by-frame intensity, grow
Somehow into light, from dark.

Tomorrow is here, or was there and gone, and
Now overcast and the water and the smoke
Billowing from the top of a building and the
Second-fading-to-third layer of slate in the sky,
Shades all, exactly the same grey and against
Are bursts of orange red yellow green topping tree
Trunks cut like smooth paint from a rough brush
Dabbed on canvas with myriad soft scratches.

Layering over themselves layering over the sky
Clouds fold layering over the grey faint blue and
Everything floats in stillness in motion as the sky
Wavers in the dying light, a dim mixture of hues
And, touched by the air, tips of trees flutter in all
Directions.

Rushing against this background, like dots of hues
Smudged on thin overlapping layers of charcoal
Moving through the night and the city twitches now
Here and there in the darkness, lights hazy from
A distance wander down the road and then back
Across the bridge over the water whose depths reflect
Blurred colors.

Modern Art

Steel rods and crossed iron sheets, still
strewn on the field, still
ready for building.

Small ripped scraps of fast-food boxes,
cigarette-butts, and threads
from old worn shirts.

Lost and fleeing remnants lightly lifted,
to heights above buildings and lives
where they were

first discarded.

Lone graffiti and barbed wire make this city street
with their bold colored lines
and their razor-blade edges.

Atop your roof, a pipe expels the smoke that slowly
killed the man next door,
by invading and corrupting his lungs.

Small heaps of empty bottles and plastic silverware speckle
the pools of sand and dirt,
and tiny colors glitter the ground.

The walls of an old apartment building -- home of the woman
in 6B, husband recently dead -- chip and
flake, so red peels off the off-white.

Rooftop gardens and fire escapes dazzle
in the early morning sun
and reflections of darkness and smog are gone,

for an instant.

Woman Across the Aisle Reads a Book

Little lines in her face crinkle and come together
as if each word might bring her to tears.

She is ready to cry or maybe she has already cried,
maybe she has read this all before maybe
she has wept over these pages a hundred times before
and this woman, this helpless woman, is about to cry
and nobody knows it.

How strange and pretty it makes her

[ untitled ]

When question marks mark,
marks play with insecurities, dance,

and uncertainty twirls the air,
tumultuously twisting the atmosphere

until abounding springs
shooting spouts of NO alone are felt until

what is, is felt, is simply: soon over, over soon, so no matter.

Draining life, with time, passing to kill,
ending suddenly, so then this,

unsure, to lose, always nothing. Less than, all yes,
so we know, no, tears

loss or blood, drip, among it all, never ending,
until the end.

These lips speak but none hear this voice as thought wells up,
overflowing, flowing over, but still, simply words. Like all,

a sound rises and speaks

                                        to nobody.

Feel the world, feel it, as what, you hate,
that you, must love, or else,

feel it all,

a lonely parade, moving beneath lives sprung,
unearthed only once, lives finding their final way home,

a way unto, into, a grave.

A Museum

Brush your small hands across the canvas

and touch the tickle of the willow's tears

and hear the water's quiet.

The brushstrokes in the background

betray this scene's sly little secret:

this picture has texture only when

I give it texture.

Foamy bubbles emerge and

POP

down in the lower left-hand corner.

Anxiety

The cool breeze
surely came

from the shattered window on the right side of the room.
In response to this subtle chill,
the young man huddled closer to the wall
and crossed his arms.

He turned his head slowly and scanned the room
the empty room, the quiet room,
the room that he had scanned
a thousand times before.

Splintering almost completely on top
untouched and smooth underneath,

a lone wooden crate stood
in the far corner.

The crate had not been moved in days. And,
as the young man never dared approach or touch it,
he wondered exactly how
it had become so worn.

Tormented,
the young man sat and waited for nobody
to come in and rescue him.

Up in the sky, past the confines of the room,
framed so nicely by the broken window,
a small bird glided in small circles
and then paused briefly
before swooping down

and out of sight.

<< Back to Issue 5, 2003