Hanging from the Belt of Orion

Orion marches through December,
the bear always in front of him
despite a thousand years of pursuit.
It is the way he navigates the years.
I live alone in a cabin in the woods
with a fire, a bed, a stack of books,
and a long oak table and chairs.
It is the way I navigate life.
With a shotgun, I chased away naked St. Francis
because I dislike holy men lacking self-esteem.
The red cardinal speaks to me of philosophy.
He has no theology to speak of
and says God is the tree, the wind, the stream,
only that and no more,
though we have made him in our image
and pursued him for a thousand years.
I am an apprentice of Orion,
hanging from his jeweled belt
while tramping through the snow
in the long, cold, dark night
searching for a scripture only I can write.
It is the way I navigate the stars.

~William Hammett

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The Wind

The wind is everything and nothing.
It blows brown bags down the street
to keep the idea of carrying things
beyond the grasp of an already frazzled woman,
whips the hats off beggars who can ill afford
an affront from the Invisible man, of all people.
It knocks down perfectly good trees,
the schoolyard bully who taunts because he can.
It slams rain into windows like buckshot,
sends floodwater gushing into small towns
filled with Raggedy Ann and Andy people
now too limp to file the insurance forms.

But then, but then . . .

it tousles the hair of a scorned woman

who decides that her lover is an ass after all.

It drives clouds that look like sailing ships

over the schoolyard to fire imaginations

of little men and women who seek the sea

and dreams too tall for their present reach.

It spins the mind of a poet into a sonnet

about zephyrs and sprites and inspiration

blowing off Olympus with power too great

to be tamed by the hands of mortal men

who wish the air to cool fevered brows

and evaporate sweat worked up in the field.

 

It is a mystery.

It is nowhere to be seen and everywhere to be felt.

It is mistress, god, and sledgehammer

that can slam bones into powder and dust

or caress cheeks and make love to naked skin

bathing in a stream or daring to stand

in a garden like Adam minus sin.

I blink, turn my head, open my mouth,

and my head is full of rushing ether,

all my doors and windows open.

I do not know what soul this might be

or what it does except claim the right

to circle and swirl and hold the world

in its grasp or decide that it should go free.

~William Hammett

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Half-Lives

The half moon still governs the tides,
still washes the sand and evens the score.

A wink with one eye of two still lures the stranger

on the suburban train, a Venus on the half-shell.

 

Half a heart still attracts the soulmate

assuming the other half is waiting in the wings.

 

Half a song from the red breast in the tree

still sings of life and many wanton things.

 

We live by halves, never grasping the whole.

Long ago, the sons of Adam were instructed to slow the roll.

~William Hammett

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Dark Leaves

Dark leaves fly through December air,
a flock of birds startled from rest
by buckshot or the backfire of a car,
the horde of cold immigrants huddled by a fire
and driven to the hills by the season of ice.

They are dressed in the brown garb of monks,

spines all too visible from fasting in the fall,

who fly towards God or away from his wind.

We are the dry, dark leaves, a desperate flock

running away from entropy, the year, the clock.

 

We are the dry leaves.
We are the brown leaves.

We are the leaves rushing for safe haven.

We are the leaves.

~William Hammett

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Winter Dream

The woods are still.
Branches are brown, bare
arms, fingers, and twigs.
The ice shows no signs of thaw,
the land sleeping, dreaming
of shapes, forms, colors, times,
access to which is denied.
Or perhaps it is thinking
of epochs, the grand design
that winter plays close to the vest.
I do not know, I do not know.
I tramp through snow,
my head lowered, my thoughts quiet.
I am allowed to pass across a frozen stream,
though it is possible, I suppose,
that I am merely part of the dream.

~William Hammett

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Dissolving the Buddha

He sits serenely beneath the bodhi tree,
detaching himself from electrons
and the ocean’s endless rhythm roll,
from yoni and lingam and pleasure
squeezed like juice from a plum
lest longing nest in his soul like a lovebird
living in a constant state of desire.
Give me satin skin and a wine-flavored kiss.
Grant me the world, its hardness,
the here and now of its clawing roots
that break rich sod with the audacity of sin.
I’ll dine with courtesans and eat ripe fruit,
consort with astronomers who crave entire galaxies
though they be a billion light years away,
though they tease the eye with wanton light
beyond the grasp of all but refractory ways.
My eye is lusty for forbidden sights.
I would have more grain, bigger barns
and then eat, drink, and be merry for more.
Do not die to the self or extinguish the flame.
Rather, let it burn the bodhi tree,
erase the Buddha’s subtle, slippery smile.
The Sirens call, and I will not be chained to the mast.
Let them torment me with their island arts
until I moan, drunk with a life that was born to last.

~William Hammett

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Tell It to Coltrane

Spill your woes to Coltrane.
Let jazz put troubles into the funky fugue
and turn them into incense
rising from cigarettes in the club
where only the shadows of dead men play.
Give your grief to Beethoven.
His ninth is broad and bold enough
to swallow your rants and raves,
sound rising and pulsing rhythm
in an orgasm of strings and brass
hung on a score with a thousand staves.
Hang your bitching out to dry
with Shakespeare’s iambic play it on the fly.
After deliberation, Hamlet will stab your heartache,
Prince Escalus restore the butchered peace
to Verona after the star-crossed lovers die.
Bury your pain with the brush or pen,
with the saxophone playing the midnight den.
Scream like Edvard on the Oslo bridge
and let the Jumblies go to sea in a sieve.
Let canvas, page, and lute absorb your pain,
the fever pitch, your last damn nerve,
the witch-wife that mixes up the migraine.
Then sit by the pasture’s unnamed brook.
The world is not to die for, but to live.

~William Hammett

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In Your Heart

Forgive me for drifting away,
dark-haired lady of legend,
for leaving the clear running water
of your voice and its music
that sang of love and kisses
despite the demands of any given day.
I left for the mountains,
trudging through snow
in search of a lamasery
that would unpack all secrets,
bind up wounds that had been carved
before our eyes ever engaged
and danced what only we could dance
and see through long hours
of lounging in serendipity.
The only answer I needed was
in your heart,
in your heart.

~William Hammett

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Magi

The black man with the gold tooth
and the silver pocket watch he found
in a dumpster dive in Midtown Manhattan
smiles and exclaims, “Lordy, Lordy!
It’s a time for a change, ain’t it?
The Age of Aquarius—shit, that’s what time it is!”

In Philly, the hobo smells of Chanel and Charlie,
free spritzes from the glass altar at Bloomie’s.
He’s the dandy in red and blue silk scarves
shoplifted from the caravan cakewalk
through Central City where he fashions himself
King Candy, the magisterial leader of the mooks.

On the South Side of Chicago, Lou takes a hit
from the bong that blesses the sliding slum
with incense that vagabonds tending their flocks
inhale deep into browning bellows
before exhaling the plume to an unnamed god.

The spire and mooring mast, pulsing starbright
atop the Empire State Building, leads the trio
to Central Park, the Big Apple moldy with Eve.
Heavy with wine, they slumber in Claremont Arch
before taking the abandoned babe to the firehouse
for a five-alarm life with foster dudes.

It’s time to leave, to slip the long invisible leash
before Herod’s cops roust the teachers three.
They board the dog, the El, the boxcar rolling free.
It’s done and done. Go down, Moses and wake up Job.
There’s something happening here, something new—
for what it’s worth—on the goddamn dizzy globe.

~William Hammett

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Monkeys in the Temple

Cambodia breathes.
The jungle is dark green and hot,
thin yellow prison bars falling
through the canopy of Strangler Figs,
Mai-Sak, palms, Silk-Cottons.
The monsoons are a month away,
and the stone Buddha spikes a fever.
Ferns and bamboo choke the temple,
prana and kundalini strangled
below the crumbling sandstone and bricks.
A hundred yards away,
a fighter jet screaming Vietnam
hangs in the trees, a metal skeleton
with broken and rusted chakras
sacrificed to Charlie, G. I. Joe, the Cong.

Macaques climb the vines

twisting around the filigreed chedis,

clamber over the Buddha,

eyes closed as he ponders in peace

the fact that his left ear is gone

from rot or riotous cluster bombs.

The monkeys are inquisitive, demanding.

Who is the sandstone god?

Who is the prophet, the maker of worlds

consumed by artillery and missile strikes?

Where are the avatars dressed in olive drab,

in cone hats and black pajamas?

What is the mystery of the shrine

tended only by the python and cobra king?

 

The blue marble breathes.

The ad men on Madison Avenue pitch their tags.

They fornicate and ride the shafts to Shangri-La

while their wives bake and smoke

and make love to the cabana boys out back.

Priests and whores clamber over rocks,

pavement, and pews to worship the sun and the moon.

Who is the sandstone god?

Who is the prophet, the maker of worlds?

Monkeys swing from New York to L.A.,

smoking ganja in tweed and conical hats,

inquisitive and demanding as they try

and try again to decipher hieroglyphics

from a race of apes in swaddling clothes

and black pajamas and wooly mammoth skins.

What is the mystery of the shrine?

It is a primitive world missing the Buddha’s ear

that pirouettes in space and spins, spins, spins.

~William Hammett

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Wild Blossoms

I picked flowers for you today
in the countryside in the green field
with wild blossoms of every size
and the color of Solomon’s regalia.

I put them in water

from the pure, clear stream

that still runs through my heart

and, I hope, yours as well.

~William Hammett

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Links in the Merlin Double Helix Chain

The Flying Bellinis, hand to wrist
above the big tent sawdust,
know the continuum of daredevil “ahhh!”
from night to night, from father to son.
The daisy chain’s endless green and white
tied together with matrimonial bands
stop and start, dip and chart
the Billboard hippie fest—can you dig the light,
man and wife spawning the generational heart?
Watch Whitman stitch the leaves of grass,
crossing Brooklyn Ferry before the lilacs bloom
in the dooryard when Lincoln heaves the torch.
Most of all, Joyce riverrun past Eve and Adam's,
and the first shall be last and the last
shall be first—oh I’m talking syntax and pages
that loop like gyres, and to every season,
there is pern, pern, pern, Seeger and Yeats
says Qoheleth: live, die, plant, reap,
laugh, weep, and dance under Scottish Skye
to the music of the spheres still spinning
despite Galileo’s culling of cepheid stars.
Uther Pendragon begets, and the once and future
marries Guinevere again and again and again,
while Lancelot, the queen’s joyous guard,
finds a way to split the round, pierce her mound
every time. Place your bets on the neon ground.
Which brings us to Merlin, the master hook and wheel
who pivots and joins the constellations nine
with magic born of Barnum and Igraine.
To every sex and seed there is a reason,
a time and purpose under heaven for lay, laid, and lain.
It’s coffeehouse beat, a Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg howl.
I am, you are, he she it is the Walrus
disguised by the mystery tour’s Franciscan cowl.
Be off now. Get with child a mandrake root.
All the stones are one. All the stones are one.
Let us start when everything’s begun.

~William Hammett

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The Spitting Image of Joan Baez

She was the spitting image of Joan Baez,
and I knew her and I loved her.
The sound of the redbird was sweeter,
the sky was bluer, and water
and my thoughts were as clear
as the music in which we lived.
And oh, the grass was dark green
and a bed upon which we lay our thoughts
beneath three-masted sailing clouds
or the quiet gaze of the moon.
It made all the difference,
like a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain.
Do you know what I mean?
Can you possibly understand
what I mean?

~William Hammett

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Two Ways to Dance

Let them sing and chant,
the ones hooded in widow’s black,
of serendipity and pain,
of blood and wood
and a world of perpetual rain.
Incense from the virgins
clouds the nave and the swinging brain.
Let them dance a jig on angel wings
from Eden to the harlot and the beast,
to the catastrophic end of things.

I shall not moan for the Sky Father

but will search for the coquette

at the outdoor Parisian café.

The City of Lights is a moon,

and I shall dance a jig that sings

for Monique or Marie or whomever

she may turn out to be.

I shall drink an aperitif

to the juice running from the pulp of life

and the beginning of all living things.

~William Hammett

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Tidal Surge

The waves wash over welcome sand,
the Oversoul such a wide and ponderous thing.
There is freedom on the land
for legs and claws, feathers and wings
and a simple life of quotidian things
and me.

The tide rolls out to the deep

and carries away the steps on the path,

the settling of accounts by cabin’s light.

It is a relief to once again roll into the sea,

the home where there is only a present tense

of to be.

~William Hammett

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The Ark

There are two of every kind,
though the battle lines are a bit blurred these days.
Who measured these awful cubits of would?
The boat is tilted, crowded and heaving
as if it had no axis, no sun to worship
on days when Proteus sweeps the oceans
into a shroud because Frost could make no peace
between fire and the weeping polar ice.
The incense from the forge and factory
does not appease the carpenter or his boss,
who thought the trip on a heavenly whirligig
might last a hundred billion apocalyptic spins
after Adam knocked up fruit-filled Eve.
We drift through space, a milkweed spore
on an ark, nothing less and nothing more.
The wheel and a spark of electric flint
have become the nuclear flu, a covid strain
with binary digits running God’s motherboard.
Let there be bread for the wandering wastrel horde
riding the nonstop snow-piercing equatorial train.
Let there be a dove with an olive branch,
a night when only dolphins and crickets sing.
Let there be a hundred million miracles
on this troubled, ancient, spinning thing.

~William Hammett

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Poor Man's Yoga

In the park in the fall,
I hold my arms outstretched
as if I had just awakened from sleep,
though that happened many years ago.
I try to touch my toes several times,
always breathing, always breathing,
but I can’t reach too far beneath my knees.
It’s almost time to go home, I think,
or maybe not quite yet.
I turn my head to the left, breathing,
and see a robin sitting on a branch
that has lost all but three browning notes
that once waved a symphony.
I turn my head to the right, breathing,
and see a young mother and her child.
He is laughing at me, a wrinkled thing,
and I begin laughing too.
I have become the cliché,
the old man in the heavy overcoat
on a bright chilly afternoon
sitting on a park bench.
“Hello, little boy. Namaste.”
I stand and sit three times in a row,
always breathing, always breathing.
It is October indeed
and almost time to go home.
Shadows reclining on the grass
will soon stir and whisper and rise,
tall and dark and definitive,
and start walking down the concrete path.
It is October indeed.
It is almost time to go home.

~William Hammett

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The Vatican Blues

I attended an audience with the Lord,
a small white robe and zucchetto
floating on the balcony like a dove.
He looked at the sea of nuns and veils
heaving like waves from a Galilee wind,
sun painting the colonnade the color of clouds.
Latin syllables flew through Saint Peter’s Square
like pigeons, landing on Babel’s obelisk and cross.
“What we need is a song,” said a priest from Budapest.
Snake played the bass, the tall giraffe on the ‘bone
while a beast with whiskers lightly scared the snare.
Black girls in silver sequins snapped and swayed,
background singers chanting “ooh poo pah doo.”
The ship lumbered through the Med,
but the albino could not calm the storm,
did not walk on water, did not cross the sea
of eyes looking to the balcony of be.
The whore of Babylon lit a cigarette,
then crushed it with a stiletto heel.
The seven hills of Rome were done,
leveled by an acid dream of horns and eyes
and a dragon dressed to the nines in fire.
The multitude nodded off and fell asleep by one.

~William Hammett

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