Four poems by Allan Graubard: For Steve Dalachinsky, Ira Cohen, and Ronnie Burk

I have been waiting
He doesn’t come, only his voice
    In a dream, the light touch of an absent finger
The rustle of cotton across the black tar that drips from words

These words
Which carry his words

      Unctuous vowels of light
Nerves of luminous dark
Where sparks of meaning distill ancestral passions

Hatred as revenge
Love as guilt
Possession as freedom

On this planisphere rushing through time
        Suspended between continents, 32,000 feet

I have been waiting for him
An eternal moment
      Without momentum

Systole that spins about its own emptiness
Diastole that embodies and emboldens

There is a rhythm to waiting
An intimate script whose scenes dissolve
The second they appear
And which re-member
His voice

In the only words he has left: “Call me!”

— For Ira Cohen (February 3, 1935 – April 25, 2011)
between London-New York

Dear Ronnie,

I picked up your book and read it on the bus this morning floating through Times Square. For a moment I thought I was in San Francisco circa 1892 with its big brawling canine infused timber Gorgons swishing their huge barnacled tails down Market Street. But no I thought that couldn’t be true. I’m in Lisbon a day before the 1755 earthquake wondering why a Stryge wanders drunk through the Alfama muttering spells to herself and wringing her hands. Who knows where you are? The last time I saw you I wondered how you could sleep on that ancient green carpet that Ira never cleaned but then I realized that it wasn’t ancient at all but a photogram taken of a mosque in Granada as a waterspout shot its oily feathers, black and glistening, through the thirsty cracks in the roof. Ronnie I still have your last letters with that postcard of Rimbaud where you scribbled in anagrams the laughter of licorice and that shy hoarse drawl you pinned to a dark thick raincloud that hovered over you since you ripped your head off, scrambled your feet and began to burn with the same vivacious fusion as our sulfuric star.
     Ronnie, save me a seat on the sky boat that leaves tonight. I have a pack of baseball cards with Ty Cobb on the cover and I know you’ll want to compare his cosmic batting average with your delirious coke bottle dragnet…

Love,
a

— For Ronnie Burk (April 1, 1955-March 12, 2003)

I dreamed that I lost my notebook
I walked through several cities
With a blindfold woven from crow feathers and the sticky dust
That flakes from sheep hooves
I sleepwalked through the crowds and spun around corners
As if I were a top thrown by an angry child
Whose mother left her skin drying on the clothesline
In time I lost sense of who I was and where the notebook might be
This bound vellum casement from which I leaped toward myself
Inhabited by a shadow and that shadow by a thousand other shadows
Each searching for their notebook in foreign cities
That curve along rivers or meander out onto upswelling plains
Where mountains rise and eagles nest
I dreamed that I awoke on an empty street near a tree of light
That spoke every language ever known
Overwhelming music, beautiful and plenipotent
It rose to a crescendo, my ears throbbing
With the rhythms of time and history
Until it diminished to a low, slow whisper
Which was the sound of your breathing next to me
When I knew that I was no longer dreaming
And the tree of light
And the orchestra of words
And the shadow and their shadows’ shadow shadow
Were images
From a dream

I opened my eyes
And this poem
With one voice
Inhabiting one man
At 11:07
On a Monday morning
Was born