Sample Poems by David Floyd
Poem
Dog's tooth petals skinny-dipping
in the lake. The sun setting
the scene in its clean composition.
There's something tenebrous
inside you that wants to break
out of your body
already singing. You forgot
about the politics of memory.
Never mind. It was you
who imagined the lakeă
giving permission
to the possible. Place two smooth
stones rounded by rain
on your eyes. See
if they're thinking of water.
Feel revolutionary but have no cause.
Be longheaded enough to want
to watch a muskrat plow
through water peppers.
If it's not raining,
it's about to. There's no Lady
in this lake, but you still
see the sky in it.
You're a syllable
wanting to be a word.
You know that happiness,
too, leaves a scar.
Something's happening;
it's been happening. All your life it seems.
There's a crash site inside you
no one's found.
Pool a piece of lake
into your hands. It won't be
clear as vodka and won't taste
as good. Keep drinking.
After the Party
Because, in the end, what's unsaid
jumpstarts a life of its own,
the storyteller puts the characters
in a car with no dialogue,
the hood still warm from their arrival.
The woman has wine on her breath,
the man has something hard on his,
and the storyteller lets the night collect
its necessary scenery: fog, no
streetlights, some deer that won't figure in.
All the man has to offer
are lies: some sweet, some selfish.
All the woman wants is behind her
in a past that isn't as present
as the present, as personal
as this haze.
The man knows this road,
knows so many roads he thinks
of himself as a connoisseur of roads;
he keeps them in his wallet,
unfolds them like pictures of children.
But the storyteller tires of what the man knows,
lets whatever is going on with him go.
How can a man want nothing
and still want nothing to mean something?
the woman thinks, knowing
this soft-pedal.
When the characters get home
the storyteller will have them open
and close the door so softly it will sound
like they've broken into someone
else's house; they'll fix themselves
nightcaps, open drawers, make some noise.
There will be things that have to be said.
Someone will make sure of it.
The Man Made of Words
is tired of all the naysayers,
theorists, and rapscallions who claim
words have no meaning.
He knows he is the literal
embodiment of locution,
the watchdog of shibboleths,
conundrums, agency, and curses.
His syllables resist scansion.
There are certain poets he'd like to see
eat their own wordsă
he'd heat up a bowl
of alphabet soup for them,
serve it with an obscene measure
of cayenne pepper, let them lick
their residual chops.
Even when clichţs creep up on himă
–a man of words and not of deeds
is like a garden full of weeds”ă
he stays put in the cage he's been put in,
fingers bits of straw, leans
more toward capaciousness.
The letters in his head
run to other letters, turn
into words, definitions
he'll keep to himself
when the runes
of his bones get soft:
aurora borealis
willow warblers
solace
Sonnet for the Nothing Man
He woke up with the stars in his face,
to the gentle indifference of the world.
Tired of the hubbub of his dreamsă
promises left in the hairăthe true faith
he has in faithlessness, he felt a wild
navigation within beginning to
calibrate. A tuneless cadence he could drum
his fingers to, tap his toes. Not a trace
of what he was was left. If put into words,
it would be like a sweet tyranny of rain
from without baptizing and soaking through
within. Its percussions on the rooftops.
The yellow flowers in the kitchen looked blue.
Prayerless, he waited for it to stop.
Philadelphia Serenade
All's almost soundless on your streets tonight,
like a brush stroke on a makeshift trap drum.
The Eagles are playing. Your hometown fans
are cooped up in their apartments and bars,
watching the game on big-screen TVs, praying
for heroics. Bits of sound sometimes slice
out onto your pavement like stereo
when something good must be happening.
I'm one of the roughs, but I have no bridge.
I am neither here nor thereăI'm leaning more
toward fitting my skin into a fit mood
than broadcasted glory. Another time
it might be different. Another time,
when the weight is dark and the night is sold,
when I'm not trying to climb on the backs
of my milestones for sweet affirmation,
when there's nothing deep smoking in my blood,
I might be as intentional as
a cocked gun or a bible-thumping priest.
For now I'm trying to sing your praises,
lay you down gentle. Bless the ragged man
who's asleep under the awning, beneath
your starless sky. Bless that old woman
in the red housedress who is mumbling
to herself on her stoop as I pass by.
She's muttering, the world's coming to an end,
and I almost believe her. I'm leaving you
a few pennies on the sidewalk, heads up,
for luck. I'm leaving my shadow behind
to walk along your buildings' wallsătake care
to let it down easy before it's burned
by the sun. I'm putting my chewed gum
on South Street's urban, rainbow-colored tree.
I am getting ready to get ready.