Brain Chatter

Neurons doing the mambo sixty thousand times a day
Shakedown shakedown neuroplastic barn, surgical hay
hey nonny nonny no and oh by the way I taught Shakespeare
but that was a long-time brain chatter rain shatter
what is all this nowhere nowhere just run and hide your head
and you might as well be dead but no that’s not what I meant
it is word nudity Ginsberg and Joyce on steroids
but the licorice pizza keeps making amends
and I am not the walrus but I know who was
oh Carly Simon you was hot and called to say
happy birthday as a favor in a galaxy far far away
and how about those shrinkings and Harrison
but not Bergeron as in Vonnegut who knew
the inside out of life and cracked the code but
does anyone read literary fiction in the age of man
half a million strong with the New York State Thruway
closed man can you dig it ladies and gentlemen
Crosby Stills and Nash a little less bottom end
on the guitar please it’s getting to the point
where word salad is the entrée and of course
the main course is Ducks Newburyport
in the longest damn novel and I’m going for it
rain shatter who the hell is Quigly I remember
mama and George Goebel a photographic memory
but not like Poppy’s playing I wonder wonder who’s
kissing her now and how now brown feasibility study
by the fucklehead evangelicals who say the world
is going to end because they never looked at the sky
and the earth ain’t flat well well St. Paul was such a drag
I mean get laid dude and don’t let me down
the rooftop concert was pretty maybe I’m amazed
but I’ve seen the horse throat billy goat
on the road less traveled oh my that one that one poem
is spot on and burns and hurts like “wrong way Corrigan”
and I’m pretty rain in Spain and then there’s
Molly Bloom yes I said yes I will yes
pardon the intrusion James but I say yes
and you say no and Ulysses will keep sailing
after the war because he is too restless to hang it up
and that’s where I stand not gently into the night
and any road will take me there amen.

~William Hammett

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Sailing Wine-Dark Seas

You wore the black cowl of a monk,
but the pine bed was open only at the top.
It was you, but your lips were pale
and the makeup was so white.
Your hands were clasped
in contemplation or maybe prayer,
but was there any thought
in the cold clay destined for dust?
Was the glass half empty or half full?
I could not tell.

The warriors viewed the hero’s stillness

and chanted words by the wild flames

that turned the night yellow with shame.

A Geatish woman with hair bound up

sang a dirge for the coming days

without the man she’d known as lord.

 

They had fashioned a funeral pyre

for Beowulf the brave,

slayer of dragons and Grendel,
hung it with helmets, shields, and armor

and treasure from their days

when blood gave color to the cheek

and strength to the bones.

The smoke curled, unfurled a soul

from black cherrywood dropping embers

onto the holy runic stones.

 

I shall put aside my iron tools,

shall cease carving figures out of wood,

shall stop trying to reconcile

twenty-first century riddles and lack of bile,

its should or could or would.

Rather, I shall sail wine-dark seas.

Perhaps you live in the land

that dips below sunset’s horizon

where the ocean quietly rolls

into that we which we cannot understand.

Perhaps we shall meet, or not.

I toast you with mead,

you, who were in the lead

by a handful of years

so as to eat the bread

and drink from cups of blood.

 

Brother, where art thou?

Sailing in the wine-dark seas.

Sailing in the wine-dark seas.

~William Hammett

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They

They say wonders never cease.
Who is they,
this multitude in a plural pronoun
that weighs in, tips the scale,
knows jack about everything but Jill?
No matter.
They are probably wrong.
The gnarled oak root
grabs the postman by the ankles
through a crack in the sidewalk,
sending him to the emergency room,
letters from Paris and Peoria
carried by a carefree wind
that has no dog in the fight
over the perpetuation of wonder.
The final farewell from Ellen
to Maurice splits his heart in two forever.
The check from Uncle Henry
to cover the chemo is deposited
in the nearest sinking sewer,
and the boy dies with a moth-eaten pancreas.
Wonder? Wonder? Isn’t it a pity.
They say this and they say that.
They are dumber than rocks
and as invisible as a bilgewater rat.
They are naysayers, morons, pantaloons
who don’t know the price of rice
though the claim whispered at meals
is that honey cures the plague.
I wonder who they are.
I wonder if there is such a thing as wonder.
Lost in thought,
my ideas are cartoon bubbles,
and I am nothing more than they.

~William Hammett

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