August 10-16, 1998: Josh Adams and Wayland Matthew Fox

Week of August 10, 1998-August 16, 1998

Josh Adams and Wayland Matthew Fox

Josh Adams
josh@csa.com

Bio(auto)

I’m Josh Adams, 19 years old, junior English/Theology major at Georgetown University in Washington, DC Trying to justify my existence, found poetry, said, “Why not ” Love: Coleridge, Keats, Eliot, Ginsberg, Oppen, Berrigan, and Radiohead Hate: Most of the poems I write Off to do the Childe Harold thing in August, will be studying in Florence, traveling around Europe, and enjoying last jaunts of now jaded youth Thank you for reading.

The following work is Copyright © 1998, and owned by Josh Adams and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsover without written permission from the author.

October 14th, 1995

Buried underneath the shadows of
Dreams I find his smooth, opal face

Eyes are staring out of it at
Eyelids, closed, staring out at me

Thoughts hang suspended in
The arc of a coffin, while

A woman with a handkerchief is
Thanking the company for

Coming to express their guilt and
Cameos in the death of a great man

Accomplices, actors all, she is keeping
Them here to see what they

Did But the death, played
Out in sparse scene with few

Props is over now The television
In the hospital room is silent

And the mouth on the face is
Silent And the tumors in the lungs

Are silent And shouts of incoherence
Are silent too He will take his secret

Of standing impossible in our midst and
Raping our souls to the grave
There will be no one to mourn him
There The antiques in the house

Will move slowly to oblivion
In his wake, and the friends who

Cursed him alive will see him
Dead and breathe a sigh of relief.

To Gabriel

The only thing I am holding
In these hands are my poems

They are laughing and the mouths are
Bleeding with angry tears

With strength surprising
They yank head back by hair

And the scent of dead trees is
Filling nostrils with stark memories

And the grip of hand on paper
Is white on white knuckles

The only calm, small, stillness is voice
Singing inevitable, these were inevitable.

Static

A blockage of time and
Touch spread across raindrops
And a sigh spent in minutes
Before midnight strikes
Ending a day, forging, 
Forcing new perspective
On abandoned thoughts
On a crackle through wires
Wishes that it would be easier
To say what comes, but losing
Words is a habit,
It comes naturally.

Wayland Matthew Fox
mfox@bradshawcassettes.com

Bio(auto)

I am Wayland Matthew Fox, residing in Houston, Texas with my wife who is my best friend and sometimes muse, three challenging children, two cats, two dogs, and a parakeet I like to argue, start revolutions, end revolutions, argue, make love, do sweat lodges, garden and write poems (not necessarily in that order) My poems have appeared in local publications, most recently in The Austin Writer, a newsletter for the Austin Writers League I look forward to growing old and one day leaving the planet.

The following work is Copyright © 1998, and owned by Wayland Matthew Fox and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsover without written permission from the author.

Darkness Lost

The sun went down but darkness never came All night stores, midnight bankers, and the new street lamps outside my
window-
All in the name of safety and convenience, have driven the night sounds
and Shadows deep into some hidden forest that I find only briefly
In the still somewhat private closet of my own fitful sleep
My ears are filled with clicks and beeps –
And my body is bombarded by the constant onslaught of radiowaves
And microwaves and technological tidal waves And the howl of the coyote is only a memory
My desire is controlled by the Whore of More-
And I have forgotten what it is that I really want –
And the dreams and nightmares that once instructed me
Now envelop the world and they are broadcast day in and day out
On some twenty four hour news channel in a language that I do not
understand And I am lost in some new age digital wishing well-Its three a.m And the face on the screen is giving me an 800 number
The woman I love sits on the side of our neatly made bed-
And she is on some distant shore across a great body of water
That is alive with devouring mothers and absent fathers
Or dead with poison gases —
It is there I will take my chances
I will swim to her and be eaten alive or lose my breath but
I swear I will not perish The bone of me will find her again and
We will hold each other above or below the world-the madness My voice will keep her sane and her song will sing sweet in my ears —
And the dragon will rise up between us in spirit and in flesh–In
passions embrace
And with all of our love and all of our sorrow,
We will seek out that hidden forest
Where the night sounds and shadows have gone We will revel in that darkness in ritual and in song-
And we will dance ourselves to sleep and fly to worlds unknown
And then returning to the morning where our children wait,
We will fill their eyes with what we have seen and what we know,
And their ears with new stories to unfold To their hearts we will give our attention and our time And we will all bow down and kiss the earth.

The Ancient Order

At seventeen, the son wears the mask of the stranger
One decorated with instructions from an ancient order Some of my friends say: “Put big chains on him like you would a baby
elephant!
Some others say: “Let him go free or he will destroy your house
At forty-six, the father, eyes and heart open, bends again toward earth

To plant seeds of spring, with instructions from an ancient order,
The stranger has left the house and travels to a land of shadow
Seeking his own calling in the time between day and night The ancient order kept, the son wanders, the father grieves, the spring
comes
Seeds have been planted before, given by the father’s own hand Some under fair March skies when the son was born
And the promise of new life was in both hearts –
Some in the barefoot days of summer
When the promise of abundance was in both hearts
Some with the falling of leaves to blanket the earth
And the promise of daydreams was in both hearts
Some with Decembers darkness when earth turns within
And the promise of slumber was in both hearts
The grandfather knows the son, the stranger, and the father
In his bending, he has touched the earth enough to remember who he is At seventy-five, he gives the blessing and the warning to the stranger
and the father In the middle place where I stand, the heart breaks open like the
cracking of an egg,
The stranger, now with wings from the ancient order, seeks the stars
from which he came One day he will return to plant seed and cultivate his own bend.