4 poems
Book of the Damned
after Malcolm Lowry and Charles Fort
The blackbound copies that became bibles for study.
Learning that skirted between reality and unreality.
The late hours paced through and discussed over.
The blackbound intermediateness of meaning.
Books that were books without the silence.
The arcana of people disappearing in plain view.
Love of the paradox. Elegant disturbance.
The universe of lyric fragments. A luxurious
fogbank coming in from Eastern Europe.
Available and unavailable friendship.
People disappearing in plain view.
Books that allow them to remain.
Colonialism
So much the history of adults:
they colonised my body with their possession,
the bruises from them, the cuts and welts.
The body I lived in that wasn’t mine,
my own body that was taken from me,
held captive to their discipline and temperaments.
They colonised me with their claims, ownership,
subjugation. In this way, my body
was a landmass, a sovereign claim, an occupied territory,
no different from the land I was living on:
California, with its own history of subjugation and ownership,
along with its upheaval and persistence to survive.
Even California protested by earthquake, by tidal wave,
by counterculture, any attempt to cleanse itself
by breathing still in its open spaces.
Likewise, I would learn to live in my own body
without the belt or forced definition.
I would take to the California road and thread my way
to the expanse of myself, shed my clothing
and grow my hair, to become my hair,
assume my own clothing. I would stand for land
and not for country or any anthem. I would be California free
and take back my own language, my own tribal allegiance,
my own embraced history of land, ocean, fern, forest.
Island of Pelicans
(“Alcatraz”)
Go back far enough and every name for land
has an historical translation or an original name.
I loved the history and challenge of this island,
its view of the world without access to the world.
The cold water road
that gullied its bodies, its suicides, its famous inmates.
I loved Alcatraz’s Native American occupation,
the years of its social statement and reminder of history
that doesn’t get spoken. I loved
the salt-infused bars of every cell window, framing
the landscape out of reach, even the guards and their families
on that rock, almost as imprisoned as the inmates.
The thrill of riding the boat out to history,
walking those spectral lines into A Block, D Block,
the mess hall and morgue, to feel up my wife in solitary—
telling her I was taking her to “a small, romantic island getaway.”
To sit on the cement steps of the yard and feel the chill
of what small freedom was like, the sun on my face,
ocean breezes buoying the linens of fog,
the blue and yellow light in the air holding the gliding of pelicans,
the eternal cries of seagulls through our haunted history—
almost endless, almost human.
Ghazal for the Wolf-Image
Below the redwood cliffs of Requa, the bridal path trailed to the sea.
A wolf led me to follow the spouts of distant whales to the sea.
Northern tribes named the wolf-image “Amaroq.” In the midst
of nature and smoke, I came to you, a willing cascade of shale to the sea.
I marveled at the wolf’s sable, loved its tracing of fur, its coat merling,
its brindled grey. I followed him to you, finally availed to the sea.
My desire for you is my desire for freedom. Love, my desire for you
is desire for the boundlessness of love, held naked, unveiled to the sea.
In the gathering silver of waves, we became faunal and pacific.
In the platinum ripple of moonlight, we came, whole and pale to the sea.
I rejoiced to become a dusky body in nature, on a beachhead in Requa.
Each twilight now, we run to the bay’s opening, entailed to the sea.
Take me, woman, as I come nicked to this world, free in your arms.
Amaroq, constant wolf image leading, my secular grail to the sea.
Nicholas Samaras’s book, Hand of the Saddlemaker, won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His next book, American Psalm, World Psalm, (2014) was published by Ashland Poetry Press. Individual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Poetry, New York Times, etc.