Auslander

by L. Ward Abel

Fields of water
steam with contrast.
Taking perfection for granted,
the Land wants a change.
While I commute across the body of God,
under redness and breeze,
this great Art gives its evidence
of flux
of immigrance
of no comfort in bedlam
of needing.
Yes, a need that alters all places.
Otherwise, there could be equilibrium,
but there being none, I seek to create calm,
a moment:
my own counter-need, my own thirst here
freezes change, immortal
on paper and canvas and landscape;
me, a painter, an alien with only a steering wheel.
Playing deity.

Copyright © L. Ward Abel 2005

North-Flowing Rivers

by L. Ward Abel

North-flowing rivers,
St. John, Nile and Rhine,
others, in their own way of doing
choose a more rarified course;
this method blazes
the unmarked cut everytime,
excepts-to-the-rule of south slopes being lower
than uplands above. And I like to think
that I am in those waters—
waters that don't care about the convention
of tilt, seeing gravity as an opportunity
for improv.

Copyright © L. Ward Abel 2005

Ballad of the Sleeping Giants

by L. Ward Abel

(A Band)

Turns out that some plans fail,
fail because they get mired in darkness
and wine, in weakness and fear.
I could only see the Dream as a foothold,
thinking that if I could only get to London
then everything else would take care of itself.
But Jim and I drank too much,
wouldn't play without a bass-man,
and "Stay-Gone," our manager,
worked so hard for nothing
as we mocked his daily, empty returns home
to the Catford flat. We counted our pints
like pirates with a stash, but treasure
was only mist. Even when Roy Orbison begged us
in his songs at Lewisham Hall, there was no hearing
his plea.

Then we went down to the sea one night
and it started to rain. Returning to the City found us
bloated, older, broke, hung-over, songless.
We did manage to survive the year,
but the sun set on our youth at Thames riverbank,
our garbage floating out to the Channel,
and beyond.

Copyright © L. Ward Abel 2005

Harborage, Saturday Afternoon

by L. Ward Abel

Containers
stacked all along port-dock foreground,
from each compartment
I knock
on the steel wall between,
between me and writings
untranslatable
painted on metal as long ago
as nineteen-eighty-one
or before, in Dutch or Russian.
I knock
tapping messages in Morse
from each and every
room,
while someone takes it down,
guessing
at how to spell coughs and grunts and sighs
phonetically
dutifully,
as my shadows
stretch
like rubber bands.

Copyright © L. Ward Abel 2005