Three Poems

Steve Barbaro

Sorta

I.

          I like 
        lakes; I like 
          not quite 
        evading modern 
            places: I like 
the armature of the moment E-shaped
crowds spread in a lamplight
    filled bubble across a vast 
      lawn high-pitchedly. 

II. 

The face of the sum of each
     day really

is covered with bulbs 
blasting the tallest,
                  roundest 
        light towards flatnesses & I 
    watch, waste, go 
     away, carry 
          clear 
        bags holding 
      liquids when they’re most 
           inert, fondleable. 

III. 

I like ponds; I like shrillful
   strayings circling 
modern places: I like, like 
 the plenitude of the days 
  U-shaped crowds curl 
          like faintly 
  shriveled bubbles over 
   the corners, 
the casings of steep 
         lawns. Limbs 
              rhyme. 

For a Friend

I. 

              into will: was it dumb
                  motion 
                   shrilled as 
                such or simply
   will alone
           stripping
               itself 
        down to 
             a crude 
                  but more
            pure
               force— 

II. 

—silence congeals but conceal, here, the clatterings— 

III. 

          will’s
source: was it a crude 
        but more
     pure 
           force 
        culled there-
               from or simply 
                            dumb
            motion shrilled
             yet sub-
                   sumed— 

The Lighthouse Verdict
Curtailed distance as a vague harangue.
Binoculars: coverings, inducements. Shuttlings.
Distance, pronounced: a discreetly hissing wound?
The toy gyroscope is not rattling at the staircase’s
Bottom, nor does the shrill rattle down the steep staircase
Reflect anything but passing foolery, a mind at low play
Pushing up but mostly just against its own boundaries.
Binoculars: self-extension purely realized; or, best
Eyes.    A set.       One.          One set.
Most of the instruments dusty & dark in the cabinets …
And the cabinets kept, per design, at ten-foot
Intervals throughout the lamp-cluttered, musty
Upper room. Twin rattles down the staircase: someone’s Home? The loose breath of the straying mind: glass is fogged.
A crowd pushes like something’s limb across the sand.
The staircase, say it, staircase—one pair of arms? Of legs?
There’s a system well imposed & upon—see it—the face.