The Poetry of William Hammett

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Wednesday, December 24, 2025

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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Tuesday, December 16, 2025

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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Thursday, December 4, 2025

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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