White Wolf

A white wolf wanders through the streets,
the heated concrete its new home.

Does he think of his family?
Does he long for his family?

White wolf, I cannot repel from this place.
I am transfixed as you pass.
The world rotates
and I rotate with it.

Does he hunger for truth like I do?
Does he look into the void and wonder?

White wolf, you are free to run
along the length of the beach,
yet I find you sniffing trashcans
in an alleyway.
You are thinking about where
your next piece of food will come from
and whether or not tonight you will die.

Your blue eyes reflect the sun
as you turn to look at me.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Poetry, a Rebuttal

for John Reuter

Poetry is so simple, you say,
that anyone can do it.
The poetry world is full
of people who don't have anything
to talk about, their stories
aren't interesting, their poetry
unfathomably bad, you say.

Since it is so easy to write poetry,
I want to write you this poem.
I didn't take me long to write,
it's not full of similes and assonance.
Though perhaps "assonance"
has an assonant quality to it.
And perhaps "unfathomably bad"
is an analogy of some kind.
And perhaps I can't avoid being a poet
as much as you cannot avoid
being an intellectual.

Poetry is as old as language itself.
It is in the drinking water.
It is the air that a baby breathes
for the first time, coughing.
It is deep within our bones.
It clutches us to remember it
every night before we rollover to sleep.

Poetry (complex mistress and forgotten
utopia), there is a monster at your gates.
He spits fire and quietly decays
the foundation of your home.
He is the holy Intellectual, pious
to the god Aristotle and all
his linear plot structures.

And yet, the glass blowers blow
the kilns still fire
the canvasses dance with paint
the blank page yearns for words.

It is these things that give me solace.
The progression of art is alive
and it breathes in poetry
like gust of wind,
filling the lungs with music.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Yes! I Cry Out

Yes! I cry out. Yes!
The little mouse
and restful eyes
lead me to linger
at the gate once more.

Yes! I cry out. Yes!
A million times yes.
My need to hunger again.
My need to hunger again.

Yes! I am the atom.
I am the flesh.
I am the organs.
I am the I.

Yes! Thankfully yes,
yet she says no
and I still smile
like the grass in a field seeding
like a hill offset by rain
like the trees, multitude of trees
like the beer fermenting in the closet
like the echo of shoes on the pavement
like the first born child saved.

Yes! I still smile
the earth below me
reaching towards existence
like a million and million particles
maybe more - explained in a number
of ways, but always returning
to that one reoccurring dream:

Yes! My mouth bloodied and silent
among the endless road, not
before the handful of ladybugs
pulls me upward to the stretched
ocean of the sky, chaos
in a drinking fountain, softly bubbling.

Yes! I cry out. Yes!

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Priest of Poetry

for Soroya

Have I taken a vow
of poverty for my art?
Reading sacred texts
and holy men, I do not doubt
that I have become a priest
of poetry.

"I am a nun to theatre,"
she muses.
There is passion in her eyes,
her concentrated gaze
peering into me.
I am naked.
“Then I am a priest of poetry,”
I smile back.
“How poetic,” she says,
emptying her coconut porter.

Years of celibacy, it seems, carved
on belts, silence in the church
of my mind.

I give my life to you, poetry.
I will scrawl notes in your margins.
I will paint cathedrals with words.
I will take communion every day:
it is with the breaking of the spine
of the book that we remember you;
it is with the drinking of verse
that we remember you.
I will sweat rhythm,
sing stanza, whirl dizzily.
I will stand on the street corner,
shouting the names of the dead.

I am a priest of poetry.
I carry my bible with me everywhere,
mumbling its incantations
to the wall.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

The Bus at Night

The drink of the night --
caressed and stumbling.
Slurred meth and lost teeth.
I watch the honey pour out
on hand tattoos and missed stops.
The eyeliner smudged, the eyeliner
questioning like language.

A body of winkles, a face
of aged crevices, the weathered
blankets below the eyes --
those shallow creatures of quiet remorse.

A man enters the bus, removes his bags,
and puts on a very large, black mustache.
He stands and looks at his reflection
in the glass.

Another pours whiskey into a half
empty coke can. The bus
stinks of the stuff.

A body shakes violently impatient.
She carries a bouquet of flowers
with her everywhere.

The scent of her fabric
stays with me through the night.
The weave of her skin:
braille to my fingers.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

While

While the boy sucked on sugar cubes
while Susan huddled under the bridge out of the rain
while Thomas doubted
while the bus driver watched in disbelief
while the husband thought of nothing
while the stench of peanut butter wafted up
while Penelope wandered the streets looking for love
while hundreds and hundreds of ants invaded
while Joseph became irritated by triviality
while mustaches quivered
while Megan poured cereal into a rather large bowl
while french fries fried in a grimy McDonald's
while rest area restrooms were closed for renovation
while a hungry bear searched for food
while the villagers played soccer
while Johan cuddled the kitten he found in the ditch
while the planets kept spinning and the universe expanding,
I prayed for an end to this poem
and you hoped for resolution.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Poem While Listening to Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 1st Movement

It begins, the light shines through the window.
Stronger still, she holds me and reverberates my song.
I can feel the life now, at the root of her tongue.
The harvest is quick. No one remembers my name.
She calls out to me and I do not call out to her,
it is useless and sad against the bark of the tree.
The mechanism of love rings truth to bathe in.
Our passion (though hidden) is naked before God.
Yeses and noes play a seesaw of formation.
Little by little, little by little: acquiesce.
The spring has come and love come undone,
this is the act of creation: acquiescence.
The mouse finds its home, the mouse finds it home.
The mouse does not find its home. I am home.
Running slowly downstairs uncovers nothing.
Running quickly upstairs shows, thankfully, nothing.
I am a rabbit of melancholy. She is the ocean.
Deeper now, deeper still, the legs of a chair.
Rustic winds and the underlining forgotten metaphor.
Wrestling with or against the ebbing tides,
I am an overturned apostrophe.
She steals glances of my broad smile.
There is quiet now, the light still shines through the window.
It started with a pace and more than halfway through it continues.
There is a dance we are reconstructing, an old dance
of placid grass in the rain. I am home.
She hums the same tune she has hummed for years.
I listen apprehensively, making notes here or there.
It reminds me of jazz, but I do not dare mention it.
My eyelids are heavy now, but my heart beats strong.
She tries to tickle me. I am not ticklish,
but I pretend to be because it brings her delight.
There is another swell, then movement again.
Breath.
Then silence.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.