The Poetry of William Hammett

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

It’s no secret that the Sermon on the Mount
ended with shackles and nails.
Galaxies are flying away from each other
like bats out of Dante’s hell
and will die freeze-frame in the cold,
cosmic inflation at a bargain basement rate.

It’s all a matter of inertia until things become inert.

The job of the wizard is to provide the spoiler alert.

But is there any doubt that the Statue of Liberty

will one day wade in the water?

What a prophecy! What a tune!

God’s gonna trouble the water, children,

or maybe just his surrogate, but either way, ya know?

The weatherman busted a move

and gave us inconvenient truth.

As sure as the fairy leaves cash for a tooth,

the sea is going to rise and boil

and toss around unmultiplied fish.

It’s got its eyes on June.

Speaking of apocalypse, I must interject

that no one’s coming back to tidy up the store.

Ain’t no rapture, rubble, or rub

gonna bring down the curtain to satisfy the lore.

The shoeshine boy at the corner

knows it’s all about wine in a brown paper bag,

the cheap stuff to help the world get by

with its walkin’ blues.

All this scat is no longer on a strictly need-to-know.

We won’t make the turnaround jump shot

before the buzzer drowns the court.

If you want to know how the whole thing goes down,

a spoiler alert as to who’s left wearing the crown,

consult the stars or read your horoscope.

Six down is a four letter word for hope.

Doo-wop and well, well, well.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Hookers and Dimes

Hookers and dimes.
Hookers and dimes.
Both are found in the cheap seats
or struggling in sidewalk cracks
to claim some virgin real estate
to beat the cops, the pimps, and the heat.

Both are found in gutters and drains,

metal poetry slams with extemporaneous rhymes,

hanging out in sheets of city rain

or cozied up to the neon gas of night

for the sake of camouflage,

hiding in plain sight their vocations

to be hookers and dimes,

hookers and dimes.

The best laid plans of men and mice

break the dollar into silver shards of Roosevelt

that on any given night catch the moon,

break the leg bone that hits the pavement running,

streetwalkers stamping for hustle and glory.

The oldest profession lies above the fold:

“Rahab caught in Gotham subway story.”

Painted lips and powdered cheeks

hover like balloons above an angled hip

on which to hang a john or snatch a glance.

Everything is glitter and strobe,

sequins of red satin gambled for a ten-cent chance.

Perhaps collect these forsaken treasures

and bury them in a potter’s field

without so much as a marking stone.

It is the best laid plan of men and mice

to raid the dive bar, round up the herd,

then purchase the field for a silver dime—

purchase the lost and forbidden lot.

Go all in for the pearl of great price.

In God we trust.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, April 22, 2025

The Syntax of Solitude

There are moments of stillness, silence,
when the only thing happening is myself.
The sound of a distant wheeling hawk
is a comma separating nothing from nothing.
The empty syntax of solitude
is as easy as light rain falling,
as morning sun painting leaves,
patches of summer grass
with no sound at all.
I am a moment of naked now,
untroubled by the frivolous companions
of before and after, why or how.
I am an atom
in some vast expanding universe
moving towards something or other—
I don’t know what.
If my presence is ever demanded on stage,
I will slowly rise and say,
“My lord, he has arrived,”
and then return to sit in the wings
and be one of many varied things.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Just a Coincidence

Was it just a coincidence
that the cardinal sat on a branch
outside my morning window
to bring me news of the day?

Was it just a coincidence

that the full moon rose

and sat on the same branch

to brighten the night with its shine?

And is it just a coincidence

that there is a tree there at all

with branches to hold

the bird and the moon

and a thousand leaves

upon which are written

the everyday scriptures

of sun and wind and rain?

And is it just a coincidence

that the id of the universe,

so infinitely small

and so wonderfully wide,

allows you to sit here now

and read this simple poem?

Is it just a coincidence

that there is anything at all?

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025

The Year of the Black Limousine

It was the year when a black limousine
and a country lost its mind in Dallas,
the year when the Beatles started the decade late
and made it their very own
by driving in long black cars
coated with fab and undulating scream.

It was the year when the first helicopter

hit the Asian ground in man-eating jungles

that wrote a thousand history books

with and without the silence and the sound.

It was when I started picking strings and wood,

when the Village stole my heart

and showed my brain and fingers the could

before the long-awaited would and should.

It was the year I made a fledgling start

and read poems by Alfred Lord,

who whispered I wouldn’t always be alone,

though as for the promise of a peace accord,

I later loved and lost

someone I found by accident

and hung my heart on skin and bone.

Sixty-three was like nothing ever seen,

and like all the years that die yet live,

it became a grave with tilted marking stone.

It was the year of the black limousine.

~William Hammett

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Friday, April 4, 2025

With a Hey Nonny Nonny No

I do not know why laughter rings
so many bells and shakes snow and sun
from the life of green or lingering leaves.

I only know that late last week

happiness slipped around my spine

and pushed joy into my brain.

Kundalini light and ringing rain

and zephyrs refusing to toe the line

made wind chimes go happily insane.

Now freed from the belly of the whale,

I am left to tell the tale

with a hey nonny nonny no.

~William Hammett

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Monday, March 31, 2025

Singapore Sweeper

I saw the black woman,
missing one eye and a finger,
sweeping the airport in Singapore,
humming and smiling
as if she were a queen
or a monk minus the orange.
Instead of raking a gravel garden,
she moved dust this way and that,
swirling patterns of the cosmos
for all I know, spiral galaxies
or mandalas intended for the trash bin’s hat.
She saw me and bowed,
and I returned the vow
to the sisterhood that keeps time
and orders the accoutrements of place
so that every space may have a rhyme.
The wooden broom
was her shepherd’s crook,
her bandana a holy veil.
She was invisible to most,
but I suspect that she was revelation.
I know that she was God.

~William Hammett

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Monday, March 24, 2025

Merlin

I spied him in Wales
atop a broken castle, his cape
whipping in wizard wind
above pale parapet stones
ground into uneven history.
Other times I saw him
reflected in rainy day puddles,
a beard of brazen branches,
or white clouds dusting the moon.
Later, I saw him at a strip mall
in New Jersey, opening a magic shop,
his black robes embossed
with signs of the zodiac and caught
on the door of his rusted pickup truck.
He waved a satin scarf
and shook out dime store magic
for buck-tooth kids with lazy eyes
that hoped against hope it was real.
“Hard time for wizards?” I asked.
“I’m still on the clock,” he said.
“The wheel of time’s a bitch,
and the world has grown so blind.”
I walked away and turned. “Wales?”
He winked and pulled a crumb from his beard.
“A trick of the mind, son.
Like everything, a trick of the mind.”

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, March 18, 2025

The New Language of Love

There is the great dying of the day,
the falling of the bloated orange sun
into a sea that is too blue to be real,
the wafer dipped into the chalice, as it were.
Purple and violet fire breaks out along the horizon.
The day is quenched, and the steam
that rises from the line where water meets sky
becomes the blackest void, the empty mind of God
until a thousand million stars appear,
the brilliant but silent seraphim,
and it is all made possible because you and I,
holding hands and nothing more,
are standing barefoot on the sandy shore,
a light sea breeze tossing our hair
and teaching us the new language of love.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Dark Lady

A kiss
and a bottle of wine
are paired for love
that is wetter.

A kiss when your lips

are already dripping

with juice from the vineyard

is even better.

Here.

Take.

You have been kissed

with a vintage growing

under the lusty Italian sun

where the grapes

only get redder.

Here.

Take.

With my pen

dipped in sweet purple ink,

I send you this letter.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025

You and I

You are the breath and the breeze.
I am the tree you speak to.

You are silver streams of rain.

I am dark soil, waiting,

the seed that opens to hear the new tale told.

You are mystical energy.

I am the dreamcatcher who interprets

your vision, your words, your sight.

You are sunlight streaming through space.

I am a world waiting to live and catch fire.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Herons Visit Mary Oliver

Herons, ducks, and geese
rise in morning splendor
from a gold and violet dawn,
the sun giving them due notice
to migrate to the next best place
they are unaware of.

They will follow

the poetry of sky,

already sensing the pen

or pencil on the pad.

Wingtips dip unpolished silver water,

ascend to the great flapping and waving

of flight known only to an author

not in visible sight.

But oh, in time, in time.

In time

they land on her shoulders, knees,

on her hands and arms

and in her poems,

where they become

ink, cursive and swooping,

dipping on the off-white page

to describe the feathered meaning

of fowl.

They speak of sedge and reeds

and mud and the ether

that binds it all together as one.

The still words are moving,

the meaning set and yet undone

with the flapping of a page.

I wish I could live,

write, and see as one of these,

the little ones who form

a kingdom in search of a scribe

with words that may

or may not rhyme

depending on what she sees

at any particular time.

~William Hammett

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