Would that War Admiral were less himself,
as the lengths shatter between the two gaits
that define his place behind Seabiscuit,
and the non-winning end he had never felt,
late in his career. 1938
held a bare resemblance to other years,
which held their own, even in their decease,
as the finish line extracts all will to quit.
O, swift coming colt- your image dies in me,
as your eyes feed the wind that comes with defeat,
the stormy gusts of swifter forms passing- wait
before giving it all up to decay.
Nothing can ameliorate such eyes,
save for tomorrow’s: let them come. Let them rise!
Copyright © by Dan Schneider
Against his flesh, if ever flesh was him,
the gun is pressed, and inflects his weakness
for mayhem, and all that is his utmost sum,
laid out in bodies, stretched across Texas.
Strangely, this was disturbing some essence
with a resilient pang, a touch of the far
side of being. To him it was presence
which made the man a man, and not the other
way around.
When the sun rose one morning
a gentle part of him clutched at his breast,
but could not best the desire for nothing
which gave him his name, and made him insist
on its fullest use: John Wesley Hardin
crafted strength from where his quick draw began.
Copyright © by Dan Schneider
Live it out, Ezra Pound, do not instigate
more eyes to incite what you already are
into some form of martyr. You reprobate,
without a platform!, does any ego bar
you from you? Or does nothing worthy prove
itself virtuous? Are you all that they say
you are- the one whose provocations move
poet after poet to greater display
of themselves? Or is your name already
vanished into parody? Have you a start
for those who have not encountered your steady
verse, laced with the subtlety of a fart
in a church filled end to end- to its girth-
with droners and deaf-mutes? Do you know their worth?
Copyright © by Dan Schneider
To hold one’s speech, and to castrate the tongue,
is an act that is given in Bloomington,
Minnesota. Angela has come undone
in her twenty-eighth year of remembering
little as to who she is. And when she does
she is outside herself, yet feels it the truth,
although examination easily shows
self-construction the cause, and not the proof,
of the distortions she feels herself to be.
Then it is over. Like a dream it bends
to that part of herself she lets herself see
in her young son’s eyes. Lonely, he pretends,
as she once did, in a chill sterile place,
imagining the years of his coming face.
Copyright © by Dan Schneider
The child wades in an ancient Florida
as his parents watch, swaying in the sun,
until afternoon gives way to hunger,
as the father calls out that swimming is done.
But the child is tickled, and stung over
and over, without uttering a sound,
until his father turns to his mother
and rushes the ocean, with a single bound,
to pull off some jellyfish- cause of the blush-
that have stung his son, who barely mutters
of pain. To him life is sharper in the crush,
as his mother pulls off more of the creatures,
remembering Jacques Cousteau, and his dives
to where hang octopi in warmer tides.
Copyright © by Dan Schneider
This Indian dead- a Cheyenne or Sioux?-
bleeds into the earth, providing a feast
for the things crawling around under the boot
of the Buffalo Soldier, finding peace
a thousand miles away from the home
he knew as a child, out in the fields
unrelented by sun, the scarlet womb
which cast him liberty in a green deal
he would not renege on, even if he should,
for he could track rabbits three miles to death,
then walk for a day unlost in the woods.
So the Army was a natural breath,
and his gun a symbol of personal rise
from slave to master in a dead man’s eyes.
Copyright © by Dan Schneider
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