Doppelganger

I think that somewhere, perhaps,
against all odds, as astronomical
as a metallic man in Vegas
giving me pocket change,

my double, a ghost
in a three-piece suit,
follows me as fastidiously as a butler.
I glimpse him from the corner of my eye,

and he is briefly there,
picking up paper I dropped
or making excuses for a clumsy run-in
I had with a pedestrian.

In short, he is picking up my mess,
the inevitable dregs fallen from my life
like scales fallen from the skin of Adam.
if I turn my head sharply,

looking long and hard,
he disappears. But that is the way it is, I suppose,
when one tries to glimpse
the minions of God.

It Is A Fearful Thing

The evening sky is beautiful but bleak,
purple and red bruises, brutal,
blossoming on the horizon
in fatal, flayed moments of twilight.

There is nothing you or I can do
but wear heavy clothes of sackcloth and wool,
wrapping our palsied souls
in the penance of dry, broken leaves.

It is a fearful thing, I think,
to watch death painted wide
on a canvas stretched by faceless pagans
between bare branches of a failing year.

There is redemption, to be sure,
but its implausible story is written on the pages
of a calendar not yet printed.
In the spring, it will hang on a nail driven hard.

(At the risk of being redundant, Chapter and Verse will remain open even though I created Publexicon. By the way, everyone’s link on Chapter and Verse is intact and will remain so, plus I have spread a little “link juice love” by linking everyone on Publexicon as well. If I have forgotten anyone, or if the links don’t work, don’t be shy or hesitate to tell me about it.)

Pic: Copyright, William Hammett, 2007

A Pebble of Bone

There’s a man walking down the road
of gravel and regret.
Old and tired,
he’s bone-weary from miles
of hoping that his next footfall
will see a blue lake
or an early grave—
either would be okay
if he could just stop measuring time
with steps that began in Eden.

I look from my cabin window
and he is gone.
Until I look more carefully, that is,
and hear the gravel shuffled and ground
with a cadence of glaciers shaving creation down.
Like everyone before him,
he has become the road.
I go outside and pick up
a pebble of bone, a reminder
that we, too, carry the sins of the world.

Pic: Creative Commons 2.5

PS. Please note that Chapter and Verse is still open for business :)

Stone Canyons

The grimace flies by,
the trickle of pedestrians
tucked into overcoats and suspicion.

There is no conversation on the underground bullet,
Fifth Avenue a stampede of meaningless strut.
Taxis weave, leaving yellow ribbons on the street.

Hookers pose in Times Square like mannequins.
There is no life in the museum.
Freeze frame: everything is silent.

Picture: copyright, William Hammett, 2007

Eight Threads from the Morning News

"Found poems" are fascinating, juxtaposing random words and phrases from written source materials such as newspapers in such a way as to suggest any number of meanings. It is an avante-garde form, I suppose, since the found poem creates a tone more than anything else. I first discovered this form by reading Annie Dillard's Mornings Like This, a collection of her found poems. Below is a found poem I did a few years ago based on one page from the morning paper.

Eight Threads from the Morning News

This column is dedicated to the professional hairstylists of the world.
The sad tale begins.
I wasn’t concerned.

On New Year’s Day, Debbie discovered a lump in her breast.
On Saturday, the woman was walking, talking, laughing.

More than 300 Baptist students wore 50s style clothes
and ate root beer floats delivered to them
by parents on roller skates.

What’s going on?
It’s your call.
Dark sunglasses are good.

A standing-room-only crowd responded to the symphony.
Basically Beethoven.
“This is what we work for,” he said.
“To have an overflow crowd, and I think we have it.”

Then, contemplating the box of hair color,
I remembered I’d been damaging my hair.
The moral of this story:
when it comes to your roots,
trust only the experts.

Signs have been posted
encouraging area residents
who witness littering
to report the incident.

Personalities are cloaked in closets.
I think about tales I hear from a co-worker.
I think of my daughter’s closet.

Copyright, William Hammett, 2003