Poetry: Selections from William Taylor Jr.

Art

 

I’m working at my painting  

trying capture the figure of a woman

but the hands are giving me trouble.

 

I’ve never learned to love

power or money enough 

to hold much of either 

 

always just enough

to get me through the day.

 

I’ve lost faith in the prospects

of myself and most others.

 

I no longer believe

there is much that 

can be saved.

 

I’ve made what peace with it I can.

 

The world and its people out there

doing their harm.

 

The future like a dark 

and ill-formed beast

perched atop some building 

in the distance.

 

I sit momentarily safe enough

behind these walls

trying to paint better hands.

Something as Decent

 

I am once more drunk 

in the afternoon 

 

call it my little bit of

raging against 

 

the machine, 

 

the dying of the light

 

and the general

dreariness of things. 

 

I'm drinking wine

at a fashionable

Polk St. bar

 

the people are pretty

and dull

 

their chatter 

is a kind of music

 

and you

 

if these words have

somehow found you

 

I hope you're okay    

 

whoever 

wherever    

whenever 

you are

 

I hope that something good

still exists for you 

 

I hope there is still music

 

a distant woman's laughter

 

or at least something 

as decent 

 

as being drunk 

in the afternoon.

The People Are Like Wolves to Me

 

I walk the city,

its hills and alleyways,

nervous beneath the sun.

I’ve got the ancient and abiding sorrow of things

pulled about me like a tattered shawl,

my memories of everyone

who was ever any any good

crumpled in the pockets 

of my coat 

along with old letters

and pretty stones.

I see everybody's loneliness

flowing through their hairstyles

and their laundry all strung up 

and swaying between buildings

like strange flags.

The people are like wolves to me

the way they are always hungry

the way they circle about

with shining eyes

in search of weakness.

A woman in a doorway

calls me beautiful    

and asks to tell my future.

I politely decline 

telling her I know it 

well enough.

We never asked for this, you know 

we were perfectly content 

to bask oblivious in the void

yet here we are caught

in the fraying net of existence

as the poems and the years 

grow thin.

To be clear

I am not demanding justice 

or recompense

for what has become of us,

I am merely petitioning

that this beauty 

this terror

this suffering through the moments

be noted in the ledgers 

of the universe

even if as a footnote.

Let it not be stricken

from the record.

In Search of It

 

I’m at the de Young Museum in San Francisco

viewing the works of Tamara de Lempicka,

her beautiful Art Deco women and men,

 

pressing myself close to the paintings

studying the shapes and colors

trying to hear their secrets.

 

The people have failed me 

the government has failed me

I have failed myself

 

all of which is commonplace

 

but I’ve grown bitter with hope

forever tricking me 

into mucking through it all

just to reach the next rotten thing.

 

Yet here I am in search of it  

wandering the rooms and hallways

gazing upon the creations of the dead

 

wondering if Tamara de Lempicka can save me

when nothing else has,

 

wondering if the others crowded about me

the tourists, the old men, the young girls

all shuffling and staring, are wondering the same.

 

I wonder if this glass of wine in the museum garden

in tandem with the chilly sunlight and the women 

in their fashionable coats will have the power 

to pull me back from the edge of things?

Will writing it down in my little red book bring some justice?

Will translating it to my laptop and sending it to a journal

where it will be read by 7 people finally beat back the dark?

Will printing it out and reading it aloud

in a North Beach bar where it will be lost

amidst the noise and laughter set things right 

within me when all else has failed?

It hasn’t so far, 

or maybe it has.

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in San Francisco. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a volume of fiction. His work has been published widely in literary journals, including Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and The Chiron Review. He was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award, and edited Cocky Moon: Selected Poems of Jack Micheline (Zeitgeist Press, 2014). His latest poetry collection, A Room Above a Convenience Store, is available from Roadside Press.